All voters in the 13th Congressional District received a letter in May from Republican Vernon Robinson containing many criticisms of Democratic U.S. Rep. Brad Miller. The News & Observer will periodically try to sort through some of the charges and countercharges made by both candidates in TV and radio ads and campaign mailings.

Here are a few of the criticisms, and what the record shows:

CHARGE: "Brad Miller is a childless, middle-aged personal injury lawyer whose ideological world view was formulated when he joined the hippie peaceniks who volunteered on Gene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign."

FACTS: Miller and his wife are childless. His wife, Esther Hall, can't bear children after having had a hysterectomy at age 27. At age 53, Miller is middle-aged, and he was a lawyer who handled many personal injury cases. As a 14-year-old student in the ninth grade in Fayetteville, Miller said, he did hand out literature for McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign.

CHARGE: "During the Vietnam conflict, Brad did not answer his country's call to serve in the military, but sought sanctuary on a college campus. 206,000 North Carolina boys served in uniform during Vietnam and 1,609 of those brave souls came back in flag-draped coffins."

FACTS: Miller graduated from a Fayetteville high school in 1971. Miller said he had a high lottery number and did not seek a student deferment. By the time he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975, American troops had already been brought home. Miller had the option of volunteering to go to Vietnam after high school.

CHARGE: "When Brad left the country to attend the socialist schools of Europe, he was further indoctrinated against Judeo-Christian values, the necessity for a strong military, the wisdom of limited government and the principles of free market competition."

FACTS: Miller received a master's degree in comparative government from the London School of Economics in 1978. He and his wife are members of Church of the Good Shepherd in Raleigh. Both have taught Sunday school. His wife has served on the church vestry, which is the administrative body of the church.

CHARGE: "When Brad chaired the state Senate's redistricting committee, he saw an opportunity to draw himself into Congress."

FACTS: When North Carolina gained a new congressional seat after the 2000 census, Miller did use his position in the legislature to draw a favorable congressional district, which he has twice won.

CHARGE: "Brad decided to distract and deceive the voters by making up heinous lies about his opponents and spewing vicious hate speech."

FACTS: In a 2002 TV ad, Miller did accuse his opponent, Carolyn Grant, of using $40,000 from her son's college fund to buy herself a new car. The accusation came from divorce papers. Grant sued, and Judge Howard Manning called the accusations "negative character assassination." Grant dropped the suit this year.

CHARGE: "Brad Miller has compiled a loony-liberal voting record that is radical, fringe, extreme and far outside of the mainstream."

FACTS: Miller was the 91st most liberal member of the U.S. House in 2005, according to the nonpartisan National Journal. That made him the third most liberal North Carolina House member, following Mel Watt and David Price.

CHARGE: Miller "habitually publishes statements in which he uses the 'c' word and the 'p' word. The public use of such profane and vulgar language is decidedly uncongressional, beneath the dignity of the office, offensive to women, and an embarrassment to the voters of the 13th district."

FACTS: Miller sometimes posts a blog, a kind of diary, on the online site of The Daily Kos, the largest liberal Web site in the country. The "c" word that Miller used is crap. The "p" word that Miller used was to say that he was "p-- off." Miller said he regrets using the latter phrase.