An e-mail sent to millions of Americans [3] claims that Hillary Clinton [4] has refused to meet with mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq. Another [5] claims that Barack Obama [6] was educated as a Muslim extremist. In yet another [7] e-mail hoax, Mike Huckabee [8]'s campaign manager has supposedly resigned, throwing his support behind Mitt Romney [9]. None of these stories are true, but Christopher Hayes thinks they may be changing the game of politics. The anonymous "e-mail forward" has become a "new right-wing smear machine," he reports. "Rumormongering and whisper campaigns are as old as politics itself," but "never has there been a medium as perfectly suited to the widespread anonymous diffusion of misinformation as e-mail. ... For a certain kind of conservative, these e-mails, along with talk-radio, are an informational staple, a means of getting the real stories that the mainstream media ignore. ... Faced with dubious attacks, circulating below the radar, campaigns find themselves in a familiar bind, one that handcuffed Kerry [10] in 2004 when the Swift Boat [11] charges first cropped up in ads, talk-radio and e-mail. If you respond, you run the risk of bringing the original false accusation to a wider audience."