"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."
Otto von Bismarck

I received an odd forwarded email the other day that purported to reveal all sorts of inflammatory stuff about Barak Obama. It darkly suggested that he might be some sort of radical Muslim agent, among other things. The email claimed credibility by virtue of the fact that it had been checked at the prominent Internet fraud clearing-house, snopes.com. "...it is factual. Check for yourself.", the message began.

I did. I went to snopes, and found that assertions in the email had been examined and refuted. Exact language from the email was there, statements or insinuations discredited as false or misleading, paragraph by paragraph, line by line.

There is a piece from the Washington Post that attempts to explain the source and motivation for rumors like those contained in the email.

The pervasiveness of misinformation that seems to precede elections undermines our trust in civil society, and belies our reverence for democratic process rooted in truthfulness.

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