In a candid interview about being a conservative reporter, Weekly Standard senior writer Matt Labash explained to JournalismJobs.com why conservative media has become so popular. "Because they feed the rage," Labash said. "We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. ... Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket." Former executive editor of George Magazine Richard Blow commented on the interview, "I suspect that liberals would rather calm angry passions than incite them, that they seek harmony rather than promote division, and as earnest as that may sound, I still think it's better."

"Documents released yesterday in the case of a drug company whistle-blower shed light on how extensively doctors were involved in promoting unapproved uses of a Warner-Lambert drug, Neurontin. Warner-Lambert paid dozens of doctors tens of thousands of dollars each to speak to other physicians about how Neurontin, an epilepsy drug, could be prescribed for more than a dozen other medical uses that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The top speaker for Neurontin, Dr. B. J. Wilder, a former professor of neurology at the University of Florida, received more than $300,000 for speeches given from 1994 to 1997, according to a court filing. Six other doctors, including some from top medical schools, received more than $100,000 each."

Columnist Paul Krugman compares the war on Iraq to the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, saying that "if you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial" because "much of the supposed justification for the war turns out to have been fictional. The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found. ... Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told Vanity Fair that the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken for 'bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.' ... For the time being, the public doesn't seem to care - or even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of Americans either believe that W.M.D.'s have been found, or aren't sure."

"The American people were manipulated" about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, says a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Several U.S. intelligence officers who are angry about the politicized distortion of their work and have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. "While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes," they stated in an open letter to President Bush, "never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war."