Right-wing media are misrepresenting an Illinois bill to falsely accuse President Obama of hypocrisy.

On July 19, in remarks on Trayvon Martin, Obama called for a review of Stand Your Ground laws, which made it legal for people to defend themselves with lethal force if they believe their lives or safety are in danger, even if they can retreat. Conservative media figures responded by distorting a 2004 bill Obama supported while serving as a state senator in Illinois to accuse him of hypocrisy.

During an appearance on Fox News' America's Newsroom, guest and conservative radio host David Webb, pointing to Obama's remarks, accused the president of “political hypocrisy,” claiming, “In 2004, it was President Obama who co-sponsored a bill in Illinois that strengthened the Stand Your Ground law.”

John Fund, a Fox News contributor and National Review columnist, wrote that Obama “co-sponsored a bill that strengthened his state's 1961 Stand Your Ground law” despite spending “part of his surprise appearance at last Friday's White House press briefing urging that the Stand Your Ground laws that exist in 31 states be reexamined.” 

Likewise, conservative blogger Jim Hoft wrote: “On Friday Barack Obama called for a review of the controversial Stand Your Ground laws that were at the heart of the killing of Trayvon Martin. But back in 2004 Illinois state Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored legislation expanding the state's Stand Your Ground laws.”

But as Slate's Dave Weigel explained, the bill Obama supported, Illinois's 2004 SB2386, was “substantively different” from Stand Your Ground laws:

“Stand your ground” is substantively different than what Obama backed in Illinois. He backed a tweak to the “castle doctrine,” which reads like this.

A person is justified in the use of force against another when and to the extent that he reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to prevent or terminate such other's trespass on or other tortious or criminal interference with her real property (other than a dwelling) or personal property, lawfully in his possession or in the possession of another who is a member of his immediate family or household or of a person whose property he has a legal duty to protect. 

“Stand your ground” takes the concept of the castle doctrine and turns it into a traveling force field of sorts. Here's Florida's language:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

It should also be noted that Florida enacted the first Stand Your Ground law in 2005, a year after the Illinois bill in question had passed.