Thanks to the internet archives, we can see what the Cato Institute's "Project on Social Security Privatization" looked like last year and compare that with its new look, now that the stock market crash has reminded the public about the reality of privatization. In the Orwellian new version, all references to "privatization" have been airbrushed out of history and replaced with the word "choice."

For an interesting example of propaganda during wartime, check out "A Challenge to Democracy," a 1944 documentary produced by the U.S. government about the massive internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. "This weird film -- the U.S. government's view of life inside its World War II Japanese-American internment camps -- is an early exercise in political damage control," writes reviewer Ken Smith. "One of its more enjoyable aspects is its baldfaced use of pleasant-sounding euphemisms to recast the nasty things it shows us. ...

"Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration's drive for war," writes Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.'s own intelligence purposes. ...