More Bushwhacking

Where Liberty Boundis truly effective is in its firsthand accounts from people accosted and detained by police officers and FBI and Secret Service agents for doing little more than exchanging anti-Bush e-mails or speaking out against the war on terror in public places. One gentleman, who's identified only as "Winston," says he simply used the phrase "the twin towers" on an Amtrak train, only to be greeted by cops in Denver who accused him of talking to people on the train "about making bombs." On an audiotape of the interrogation, an officer tells Winston "we live in a different time now" and warns him to stop talking about "anything touchy" or else he will be yanked from the train.

There are several other examples, including a Navy vet named Michael Moore who was interrogated by feds after they intercepted an e-mail he sent to a friend critical of the Bush administration. The film also mentions how, when Bush spoke at SMU in November 2002, Secret Service agents interrogated a dozen anti-war protesters, who, they claimed, were "threatening the life of the president." Rose says there could have been "hundreds" more examples in the movie, but "some were just afraid and didn't want to be in the film. And since we finished the movie there's been this issue with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and racial profiling and so many more examples. This could have been a whole film dedicated to that. But when I made this film we hadn't gone to war yet, and it evolved as the war did."

If nothing else, Bush has made good on one promise left over from his 2000 campaign: to put people back to work--if, mind you, those people are writers, Web-site operators and filmmakers who want to see the president put out of work in November. Rose is just one of many wielding a documentary as a weapon this election season, trying to put butts in seats and unseat Bush.

"When Michael Moore said, 'I don't want to influence the election,' that was dishonest," Rose says. "I do want to influence the election, but it's not like I am directly influencing anything. I hope the movie makes people start questioning and looking at things and questioning the media and their own beliefs and not just believing because it's on CNN or Fox. I am not campaigning for Ralph Nader or John Kerry. I am not telling people who to vote for, just to think. " --Robert Wilonsky

Attack and Counterattack

For those who were too busy with summer vacations to notice, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--a group of Vietnam vets who were profiled in the Dallas Observer a few weeks back ("Fog of War," July 29)--haven't stopped attacking John Kerry's war record. If anything, they've stepped up their efforts. SBVT members have recently made appearances on all three 24-hour cable news networks, in addition to getting coverage in The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News, among others. SBVT also just released a TV attack ad that summed up their message: Kerry's medals weren't earned, and his war record is bunk. The commercial was condemned by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and former Vietnam War POW, who called the spot dishonest, among other choice words.

None of the criticism leveled at SBVT has slowed them, however. When we interviewed SBVT spokesman John O'Neill, he told the Observer that his organization wouldn't rest and that it would use "whatever medium available" to help prevent Kerry from being elected president. He wasn't kidding. O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who first became a Kerry antagonist in the '70s when the two debated on The Dick Cavett Show, will soon release his new book, Unfit to Command. Last week, even though it wasn't yet available, the book was one of Barnes & Noble's best online sellers. Apparently, that pissed off Kerry fans--or someone, at least. An unknown hacker gained access to www.barnesandnoble.com, switched an older photo of Kerry with one from his earlier days and changed the title of the book to "Fit to Command."

Those crazy political operatives. Do the high jinks ever end with those guys? --John Gonzalez

Who Ya Callin Geek?

It wasn't hard to find QuakeCon at the Gaylord Texan Resort last week. You could follow the Domino's Pizza guy making one of the endless deliveries, or trail any of the scores of pale, black T-shirt-wearing young men lugging computers and monitors through the resort's endless hallways.

Or you could just listen for the sound of gunfire and explosions.

For three days last week, QuakeCon--part tradeshow, part video-game tournament--turned the Gaylord's convention hall into a massive dimly lit replica of a computer freak's bedroom, as thousands of gamers from across North America gathered to compete for $150,000 in prizes. And if you're thinking to yourself "big geekfest," well, smile when you say that. Torbull is.

Torbull, aka Craig Levine, is a 21-year-old Florida college student and managing director of Team3D, a professional gaming team. That's right, his team is paid good money to blow the heads off other digital players in games like Counterstrike and Quake.