About PolitiFact's In-Depth Piece On Walker At Marquette

First of all, read this exhaustively-investigated story by a Pulitzer Prize winner reported to the limits of sourcing and available documentation.

This will be just the first of many investigative pieces about Walker by various media if he really runs for President.

And while the piece strongly erases the claim that Walker was kicked out of school, it documents other nagging questions - - some also noted previously, here - - about related Walker circumstances and claims, as the PolitiFact piece says:

Today, he tells national interviewers he was just one semester short of completion, and left for a career opportunity in the private sector without thought to a potential career in politics -- a sort of reluctant warrior entering the public arena. 

"Not long after Tonette and I were married (in 1993), there was an opening in the state Assembly," Walker said in an expansive book-promotion interview at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia with talk radio host Chris Stigall on Nov. 21, 2013. "A number of my friends said, you talk about this stuff all the time, why don't you run?" 

But his account is incomplete and at odds with itself on several counts. 

Walker actually has about a year left in school, maybe more, based on Marquette records and available evidence -- considerably more than the 15 to 17 credits he mentions to interviewers. 

He earned 94 credits and had senior status, accumulating a 2.59 grade point average, the Walker campaign for governor said in 2010. 

His credit total is 34 short of the 128 minimum needed to graduate in one major, a total that requires an average of 16 per semester. 

Walker told the 1990 yearbook interviewer he was triple majoring in political science, philosophy and economics; that likely would have meant an even heavier load. 

Asked now about the apparent discrepancy, Walker told us he wasn’t sure exactly how many credits he needed because he hasn’t looked it up.

Also:

Walker, for his part, has emphasized how marriage and fatherhood strained his available time and finances.

Critics don’t argue that point, but they have cried foul at how he frames it. 

In January 2013, Walker said in his annual "state of the state" speech that, "I thought I would squeeze in a course here or there and finish things off in a year or two, but then Tonette and I got married." 

A story in Time made a similar point after its reporter interviewed Walker. After taking the Red Cross job in 1990, the story said, "at first he tried to be a part time student, but quickly the births of his children took that option off the table." 

In reality, Walker didn’t marry until 1993, and his first of two sons arrived in 1994.

Walker's supporters will argue that this is all ancient history, but I think the past is prologue because the discrepancies and the way Walker has failed to correct them reinforce Walker's ignorance or inability to speak truthfully, as also noted often by PolitiFact.

Walker will find that life as a national candidate is more than calling into local talk radio and saying whatever comes to mind without challenge by the host.