Advertising Age's Bob Garfield in his Ad Review column gives the ad campaign created by Qorvis Communications for the Embassy of Saudi Arabia zero stars. "The ads are signed 'The People of Saudi Arabia,' but that's a lie," Garfield writes. "And so is the premise. For decades, the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and other so-called 'moderate' Arab states has been a deal with the devil. We sponsor their corrupt, repressive, authoritarian regimes with cash and weaponry. They sell us oil. Such unholy alliances, dictated by Cold War realpolitik, were bound to create backlash ....

"In the eight months since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret," reports USA Today. "Hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult.

Tobacco PR lobbyist Rick Berman runs a lucrative business smearing public interest groups through his industry-funded fronts such as ConsumerFreedom.com and Activistcash.com. Berman can dish it out, but apparently he can't take it, nor stand the truth. He is threatening to sue food safety activist Jeff Nelson of VegSource for revealing that Berman lines his own pockets from his "non-profit" enterprises. According to Nelson, "Berman claims he wants to 'expose' funding sources of non-profit activist organizations.