Ann Coulter's Revisionist History

A lot of what comes out of Ann Coulter's mouth defies easy fact-checking -- for instance, her claim that Hillary Clinton is a secret Marxist who'd let a dirty bomb into Manhattan given half a chance.

But Coulter's account of how an audience of Columbia University students greeted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech is just flat-out, disprovable hooey.

Here she is in the New York Observer:

You know, I give a lot of college speeches, I know how colleges behave, and there is the least free speech on a college campus as any place in America. It is like Iran -- so for them to be saying they are allowing this guy to speak because of free speech, you know, your head explodes.... And if you watched the speech, he was wildly applauded for every anti-American remark -- the only one that upset them was when he didn't endorse sodomy.

Interesting. So you might think, then, that he would be applauded for this remark, a not-very-veiled accounting of American misdeeds:

[I]n today's world, ruling powers...wish to justify their own wrongdoings, though, by creating nonexistent enemies, for example, and have insecure atmosphere. They try to control all in the name of combatting insecurity and terrorism. They even violate individual and social freedoms in their own nations under that pretext. They do not respect the privacy of their own people. They tap telephone calls and try to control their people. They create an insecure psychological atmosphere in order to justify their warmongering acts in different parts of the world.

But he's not. Watch for yourself; the passage comes at 3:10.

In fact, of the ovations Ahmadinejad received, three were for expressions of support for Palestine and criticisms of Israel; one occurred when, defending Iran's executions, he noted that the U.S. also practices capital punishment; one came when he criticized the U.S. for aiding a "terrorist" group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran; and one came when Ahmadinejad got the bell letting him know his time was up.

Ahmadinejad was also applauded for wishing the students good luck in their future endeavors, and for objecting to Columbia president Lee Bollinger's lengthy and denunciatory introduction -- which, by the way, received numerous ovations from the supposedly pro-Iranian, anti-U.S. crowd.

Ann Coulter photo by Scott M. Lieberman/Associated Press