U.S. Government

"Just like in the old days, the military wants you," writes Beth Snyder Bulik. "But these days, Uncle Sam has a better pitch. With the help of big-time ad agencies and sleek messages, the stalwart armed services have modernized their marketing and advertising o and attracted a new generation of recruits in the process." Tactics used to promote its "Army of One" slogan have included interactive games on the Internet and sponsorship of a NASCAR race car.

"Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit," writes Joshua Micah Marshall. The Bush administration, he says, specializes in "a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. ... Many of the administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions - tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower - that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely disproven until events played out in the future."

"Gosh, I thought this was just some lunatic conspiracy theory," comments Tom Tomorrow, the world's best cartoonist.

"Democrats and moderate Republicans alike are accusing Bush of having the worst environmental record in history -- of surreptitiously tearing down the regulatory framework that yielded vast improvements in the nation's air and water quality and land conservation over the last 30 years," writes Amanda Griscom. In response to growing criticism of its environmental policies, the administration has "made every effort to finesse its public-relations strategy, but none whatsoever to change its approach to environmental policies themselves. ...