Rhetoric

"If you've ever given money to an environmental organization ... you might even be a terrorist, or at least an accomplice. At least that's what Nick Nichols seems to think. Nichols views wouldn't matter if he were just another backwoods loser. On the contrary, environmental watchdogs fear he's at the vanguard of efforts to exploit the nation's post-September 11th mood by tarring the entire green movement as extremists. ...

Since September 11 the FBI has issued 43 terrorism alerts, inducing feelings of fear, anxiety and helplessness in many Americans -- a condition that Washington, DC psychologist Rona Fields describes as Acute Prolonged Stress Syndrome. "After so many vague alerts, many based on uncorroborated evidence, it's fair to ask, What's the point? Why spook a country that's already spooked?" writes Geoffrey Gray.

"If a last-minute provision in the Senate farm bill becomes law, irradiated hamburger could become known by a more appealing name: pasteurized beef," New York Times reporter Elizabeth Becker writes. "Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee, said today that he had inserted the provision in an effort to 'more clearly define pasteurization,' the process by which disease-producing bacteria have long been destroyed in some foods through heating.

"As the Enron scandal progresses, opportunistic politicians are trying their best to turn the company's name into political shorthand to discredit just about anything," writes Bryan Keefer. Terms like "Enronomics" and "Enronization" have entered the vocabulary as shorthand ways of discrediting political opponents. "In political parlance, 'Enron' has now become a verb and an adjective," Keefer writes.