by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, October 25, 2002 3:36 P.M. EDT

Wellstone Dies
Sen. Paul Wellstone is dead. The Minnesota Democrat's small plane crashed in northern Minnesota, killing him and seven others, including his wife, Sheila, and his daughter Marcia.

Wellstone, 58, was elected to the Senate in 1990, defeating incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz; he won re-election in a 1996 rematch. The Almanac of American Politics describes his pre-Senate career:

[Wellstone] went to teach at Carleton College in Minnesota in 1969. He was a "rock-the-boat professor" at Carleton, where he published little and taught the politics of protest. He made a name for himself in local politics by leading protesters in sympathy with Hormel meatpacker strikers in Austin and getting arrested while picketing a bank that had foreclosed on local farmers; he ran for state auditor and co-chaired Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign in Minnesota.

One of the most liberal members of the Senate, Wellstone was the only senator facing a tough re-election challenge to vote against the resolution approving war with Iraq two weeks ago.

Recent polls had showed Wellstone with a small lead over his Republican challenger, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman. "Our prayers are with the Wellstone family," a Coleman spokesman tells the Associated Press. "That's all I'm going to say."

On Oct. 16, 2000, Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri died in a plane crash as he campaigned for the Senate seat then held by John Ashcroft. Carnahan ended up winning a posthumous victory after the acting governor promised to appoint his wife, Jean, to fill the seat. (Jean Carnahan is this year's most vulnerable Democratic incumbent.) Minnesota election law--scroll down to Subdivision 2(b)--appears to allow the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (as it's known in Minnesota) to nominate a replacement for Wellstone on the ballot: "If [a] vacancy in nomination occurs through the candidate's death or catastrophic illness, the nomination certificate must be filed within seven days after the vacancy in nomination occurs but no later than four days before the general election."

Our Peggy Noonan has a remembrance of Wellstone.

Bellesiles Resigns
"I have accepted the resignation of Michael Bellesiles from his position as Professor of History at Emory University, effective December 31, 2002," says a statement from interim dean Robert Paul. Bellesiles's antigun book, "Arming America," has drawn fire for research techniques that are shoddy at best. We'll have more on this next week, but if you're interested in the background, you can read our Kim Strassel's columns on the subject from April 5, 2001, and Feb. 22 and June 6, 2002. Over at InstaPundit.com, Glenn Reynolds has been all over this story, so check it out too.

You Don't Say--I
"Arrests Thwarted Next Attack, Police Say"--headline, USA Today, Oct. 25

The Firing Line
Lots of interesting details are coming out about 41-year-old sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. It turns out he has a New Jersey connection. The Camden Courier-Post reports that he registered his car in Camden on Sept. 11 of this year--"just minutes after a caller told police a bomb had been placed in the building":

A police report shows the bomb threat was made at 8:52 a.m.

Register tapes showed Muhammad's paperwork was rung up at 8:59 a.m., said Darlene Bonnette, an agent in charge of the office. Police arrived at 9:01 a.m., according to the dispatch report, and an evacuation began.

"Maybe he didn't want to wait in line at Motor Vehicles," Bonnette said.

The paper reports it was the first bomb scare at the motor-vehicle office in eight years. If the police report's timing is accurate, the bomb threat came exactly one year and six minutes after Islamic fanatics slammed the first plane into the World Trade Center.

Interviews with people who knew Muhammad paint a picture of an angry loser. "He would say things against the government," Felix Strozier, an erstwhile business partner, tells USA Today. "The more I think about it, . . . it seems like I can remember him being bitter, just bitter about life." But Reuters reports that a staff member at a Tacoma, Wash., homeless shelter where the suspect stayed "said Muhammad never demonstrated any hatred except when discussing talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who Muhammad said would be 'the downfall of mankind.' "

USA Today adds that Muhammad nicknamed his 17-year-old companion, John Lee Malvo, "Sniper." The two had "a relationship nurtured over chess and the honey sandwiches that Malvo often made," and Malvo "adored him." Earlier reports that Malvo was Muhammad's stepson apparently weren't true.

The Smoking Gun has a collection of Muhammad documents, including a restraining order from his ex-wife that declares: "He also has served in the US Army as a Demolitions/Weapons expert and 'can make a weapon out of anything.' "

You Don't Say--II
"Military Training May Make It Easier to Be a Killer, Some Say"--headline, Dallas Morning News, Oct. 25

Is John a Jihadi?
As his adopted name would imply, Muhammad is a convert to Islam. What is the relevance of this to his alleged crimes? "If he is indeed the sniper, John Muhammad fits a pattern," argues Steven Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror," in today's New York Post. Schwartz cites Marin mujahid John Walker Lindh, shoe bomber Richard Reid and enemy combatant Jose Padilla, who are all, like Muhammad, "marginal, misfit individuals who entered Islam in the West, heard the appeal of the radicals, and acted on it":

They may not be easily identified as "card-carrying" terrorists. But they are still terrorists, seeking to fulfill the ideological dictates of the Wahhabi death cult that rules Saudi Arabia and seeks to control Islam throughout the world.

American Muslim leaders, not surprisingly, disagree totally. The Council on American Islamic Relations issued a statement from executive director Nihad Awad:

"We are concerned that because a suspect in this case has the last name of 'Muhammad,' American Muslims will now face scapegoating and bias. Police reports indicate the suspects acted alone, based on their own motivations. There is no indication that this case is related to Islam or Muslims. We therefore ask journalists and media commentators to avoid speculation based on stereotyping or prejudice. The American Muslim community should not be held accountable for the alleged criminal actions of what appear to be troubled and deranged individuals," said Awad.

ABCNews.com notes that in at least one respect, the sniper's actions are contrary to the teachings of Islam:

There are key differences things mainstream Muslims want the rest of the world to know.

For example, they disapprove of the sniper boasting to police: "I am God."

"No good Muslim would ever call himself a god," said Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

On the question of slaughtering infidels, however, Muslims remain divided.

What Color Is Your Pair of Shooters?
Muhammad and Malvo are both black, which is counter-stereotypical. Most high-profile serial killers are white, and according to a study the New York Times cites, "55 percent of sniper killers are white." As Jonah Goldberg notes in today's Wall Street Journal, during the sniper investigation, reporters and "experts" frequently repeated the view that the sniper was white.

Today's Washington Post suggests this presumption may have informed police work on the case too. The Post reports (credit Andrew Sullivan with noting this) that Baltimore police pulled Muhammad over on Oct. 8, "the day after a 13-year-old boy in Bowie was wounded as the eighth victim of the sniper":

Muhammad was allowed to go, although his name was put into an information data bank in Baltimore, the sources said.

"Everyone was looking for a white car with white people," said one high-ranking police source.

If this indeed was the approach the police were taking, it is racial profiling at its worst. At the time, there was no evidence whatever of the sniper's race, so any assumptions police made stemmed from pure prejudice.

It's a prejudice some people haven't gotten over yet. The Post offers this suburban Maryland anecdote:

Jennifer and James Tyson, an African American couple from Upper Marlboro, said they were not convinced police had found the sniper because the two arrested men were black.

"That's very surprising," said James Tyson, 33, a recording studio owner. "Most serial killers are not African American."

Maybe O.J. Simpson can lead the search for the real sniper.

The Stowaway
Columnist Michelle Malkin reports that John Lee Malvo, Muhammad's young acolyte, is "an illegal alien from Jamaica who jumped ship in Miami in June 2001." Border Patrol agents picked up Malvo and his mother, Uma Sceon James, and James "admitted that six months earlier, 'she and her son were passengers on a cargo ship that was filled with "illegal asians (sic)." ' " The Border Patrol recommended that the Immigration and Naturalization Service detain the pair pending deportation:

That's not what happened. About a month after their arrest, Malvo and his mother were set free by the Seattle district INS--contrary to what the arresting Border Patrol officers had determined should be done. And in clear violation of federal law regarding the removal of illegal alien stowaways.

Malkin's report is certainly damning about the INS. Before the nativists on Pat Buchanan's payroll go berserk on us, however, we'd like to point out that Muhammad, the senior member of the pair, is a U.S. citizen, born in Louisiana.

So What Would the Right Week Be?
"One thing we do know for certain about Malvo is that he picked the wrong week to be a teenage murderer."--Dahlia Lithwick, Slate.com, Oct. 24

Great Moments in Journalism--I
Newsday's Ellis Henican decided to do a little Moose hunting but ended up shooting himself in the foot instead. Here's how his column began on Wednesday:

Cut Moose loose.

Charles Moose, chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland, seems like a very nice fellow. He'd probably be just the kind of chief you'd want overseeing the new anti-shoplifting squad at the White Flint Mall. He'd be great setting up speed traps on the Washington Beltway. He'd be aces responding to the latest string of house burglaries in Chevy Chase.

Routine suburban stuff, Moose is your man.

But as the top law-enforcement official in charge of a multi-jurisdictional manhunt for the deadliest serial sniper this country has ever known?

The next day, the sniper suspects were caught. Henican's column today begins sheepishly but quickly turns into bull:

On second thought, how 'bout Chief Moose for director of homeland security?

There's nothing like a couple of high-profile arrests to turn a beleaguered suburban police chief into America's beloved super-cop.

So I'll make the chief a deal: I'll credit him for his spectacular success yesterday. And he'll credit us for ours.

Because old-fashioned police work played a crucial role in fingering John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo as the apparent Washington snipers.

And so did old-fashioned news reporting.

Great Moments in Journalism--II
"CNN even asked CBS late last week if it would supply real actors--the ones who appear on the CBS prime-time series 'Crime Scene Investigation'--to comment on the case. CBS declined."--New York Times, Oct. 25

The Spores' Source?
The sniper suspects may be behind bars, but whoever was responsible for last year's anthrax attacks--another case in which "expert" opinion holds that the perp is a white American loner--is presumably still at large. Here's an interesting development in Pakistan that may or may not be related: Amir Aziz, a "prominent Lahore surgeon," has been arrested "after allegations that he supplied anthrax spores and biochemical weapons formulae to Islamist terrorists," London's Independent reports. FBI agents also "suspect him of treating Osama Bin Laden for a kidney ailment and helping wounded Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters escape from Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, the Times of London reports Scotland Yard's antiterrorist branch and the British intelligence service MI5 have nabbed Abu Qatada, "described as Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador' in Europe." Longtime readers of this column will remember Abu Qatada as the original terrorist welfare queen.

'New Middle East'
Secretary of State Colin Powell plans a Nov. 6 speech in which he'll outline the administration's "plan for a 'New Middle East,' focusing on democratization and economic development in the Arab world," Ha'aretz reports, citing "Israeli government sources who were briefed on the speech":

However, the sources said, Powell will refrain from directly criticizing existing Arab regimes and will not call for their replacement with democratic rule. Instead, he will speak of the need to make existing institutions more democratic by promoting women's rights, increasing freedom of the press, expanding economic and educational opportunities and making government more transparent.

Is Arab democracy a hopeless cause? It seems to be a common view that Arabs and Muslims are predisposed to authoritarianism; perversely, those who hold this view often accuse critics of Arab tyranny of "racism." But there are some encouraging signs in the Arab world. Reuters reports that citizens of Bahrain "voted in force for their first parliament in 30 years in a peaceful election that is expected to consolidate sectarian stability in this Gulf Arab kingdom." Granted, Bahraini democracy isn't up to American standards--the elected parliament has "equal legislative powers to another council appointed by the king"--but it's a start.

The Wall Street Journal (link requires subscription) reports Qatar--a country that adheres to the same extremist brand of Islam as Saudi Arabia--"has gone through a social revolution that has given women--and men--freedoms unheard of in most of the Arabian Peninsula":

From lifting the prohibition on alcohol to abolishing censorship, Qatar has gone to great lengths to underscore just how different it is from Saudi Arabia. In the capital of Doha, which the Lonely Planet guidebook called the "dullest place on Earth" just a few years ago, nightclubs advertise happy hours and women cruise down the palm-tree-lined boulevards at the wheels of oversize sport-utility vehicles.

The Saudis, needless to say, have reacted with "irritation and dismay." Imagine how they'll feel with a free Iraq next door.

More 'News' From Reuterville
Check out this bit of anti-American propaganda:

If President George W. Bush believes that ordinary Iraqis will welcome U.S. troops with open arms he may be in for a rude surprise.

However much they fear to say what they think under the ruthless rule of President Saddam Hussein, their feelings of deep-seated hatred towards Bush are only too clear.

They see the United States as primarily responsible for the sanctions that have destroyed their economy and the social fabric of their once-prosperous lives, as well as leaving an estimated 1.6 million children dead and many more stunted.

As much as the deprivation, they resent the humiliation of having been driven back into an almost pre-industrial age.

Nowhere are these sentiments more in evidence than at the Mansour Hospital for Children, where youngsters with cancer lie dying from what doctors believe are the effects of the 1991 Gulf War.

The product of Iraq's Information Ministry? Nah, it's too well-written for that, and the reference to Saddam's ruthless rule is at least a slight nod in the direction of the truth. It's Reuters, of course.

Jordanian-Style Editing
An Associated Press dispatch that appeared in the Jordan Times Sunday didn't read like the AP; it was full of inflammatory anti-Israeli language. A reader wrote to us asking if the Times was fabricating stories and falsely attributing them to the AP. Well, not quite. We tracked down the original AP dispatch in the Factiva database, and it turns out the Jordanians simply did some creative editing. Here are the opening few paragraphs, with the changes noted in red (text e-mail subscribers can see it at this link):

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) -- Four Israeli occupation soldiers were wounded early Saturday when their explosive device went off prematurely as they were preparing to blow open the door of a Palestinian suspect's suspected Palestinian activist's home in the West Bank city of Nablus, the army and Palestinian witnesses said.

Witnesses said the unidentified "suspect" was not home at the time.

In what are almost daily arrest sweeps, the occupation army said it detained eight Palestinians, five in and around Nablus, and three near Ramallah.

Does the AP permit its member newspapers to alter its dispatches and turn them into political commentaries like this? Beats us; we couldn't find any policy statements on the AP Web site. But if the Jordan Times guys want to publish stories that are appallingly slanted against Israel, why not save the work of editing and just subscribe to Reuters?

Gideon's One-String Guitar
Consider these comments on the prospective war in Iraq:

Listening to the President talk . . ., one might think that a war with Iraq would be quick and easy. Mr. Bush might have been giving a pep talk before a game. But it would almost certainly not be quick or easy. And not beneficently simple in its results. A war with Iraq could devastate a huge area of the Middle East. It could arouse many Arabs, even those critical of Saddam Hussein, against the United States.

If U.S. planes attack, there is every reason to fear that Saddam Hussein would strike at Israel, trying to rally Arabs to his cause. Missiles could do severe damage to Israeli cities, even if they used only conventional warheads. Then Israel would retaliate, inevitably and unnecessarily. And the whole political complexion of the gulf crisis would change. Would it be possible to keep the Saudis, the Syrians and other Arabs in the anti-Saddam coalition? To see such dangers is to begin to understand the possible political consequences of war.

These comments are flat wrong. How do we know, when the war hasn't even started yet? Because they refer to the Gulf War of 1991. Both paragraphs are from erstwhile New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, the first from Nov. 23, 1990, and the second from Dec. 14 of the same year.

Lewis has retired from the Times, but in the Nov. 7 issue of the New York Review of Books, he weighs in. Gen. Lewis, it's clear, is still fighting not the last war but the penultimate one:

An illuminating [New York Times magazine] piece on [Paul] Wolfowitz, "The Sunshine Warrior" by Bill Keller . . . gave a sympathetic view of [Wolfowitz's] belief that the assertion of American power can turn Iraq into a democracy and help transform the entire Middle East. I was moved by his optimism, as I read, but I kept thinking of one thing: Vietnam. Here, as in Vietnam, the advocates are sure that American power can prevail--and sure that the result will be a happy one. But here, as in Vietnam, so many things could go wrong. Iraq is a large, modern, heavily urbanized country. If we bomb it apart, are we going to be wise enough to put it back together? Have Mr. Wolfowitz and his fellow sunshine warriors calculated the effects of an American war on feelings among Arabs and other Muslims? What would follow Saddam? The nature of a post-Saddam government in Iraq is a crucial concern for Iran, Turkey, Syria, and others; but the Bush administration has shown no sign of having an answer to that question.

It is of course possible that Lewis is right this time around, even though he was totally, stunningly wrong 12 years ago. But in his NYRB piece, which runs more than 3,200 words, he never discusses the Gulf War, let alone comes to grips with his own misjudgment of it. Nor does he acknowledge the possibility that the optimists might just be right, as they were in 1991. One can't help but wonder if there isn't an element of wishful thinking in his prediction of American failure.

The World's Smallest Violin
The Washington Post's Nora Boustany interviews Akram J.M. Douri, who heads the Iraqi Interests Section, the Baghdad regime's quasiembassy in Washington, "not about politics, but about how diplomacy is conducted by someone in his situation." Douri, who served in Washington during the 1981-85 "golden period in U.S.-Iraqi relations" and returned in 1993, seems doleful: "Diplomacy? This has turned into a huge fight with problems. Everything we studied at school about social evenings and Vienna waltzes has flown out the window":

With daily talk of war against the government of Saddam Hussein, Douri says he feels frustrated about carrying out his mission here as a diplomat. "Diplomacy can only be cultivated in a healthy ambiance. Any diplomat's ambitions, as someone who wishes to succeed, should be to elevate ties to an optimal level," Douri said. "The only way you can do that is by contributing something different, something new or unique to enhance the relationship. Circumstances of our work here do not allow this."

Douri also says: "You call this a relationship? I feel upset at times." Sounds like he should be talking to Dear Abby, not Nora Boustany.

By Any Other Name
The peace movement continues to flourish, with still more distinguished Americans signing the "Not in Our Name" petition. In alphabetical order:

• Hurt Me Again, "Slaves & Cowards, Inc."
• CIA Agents, "Thanks for putting your names here, makes our job so much easier"
• I M ALameDuck, "Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to LameDucks"
• L Eagle Alien, "California Pollworker"
• Naive Idiots All, "Save my children from your stupidity"
• Snardinus The Bald, "Medieval Warrior dedicated to the eradication of leftists"
• Phoney Baloney, "Gullible Liberal"
• Fat Bastard, "Overweight homicidal Scotsman"
• Com E Bastards
• Get Those Iraqi Bastards, "A freedom-loving American who wants all terrorists stopped, at all costs. God bless America"
• Anita Bath, "I woulda pledged but things have been kinda slow since I got outta rehab"
• Lima Bean, "Tootie Frootie"
• M. Becile, "Society for the preservation of psychopathic mass-murdering dictators"
• Get Bentz, "What the hell is a Community Integration Specialist?"
• Keith Edward Bentz, "Community Integration Specialist"
• Thewebrules Bestof
• James Bond, "secret agent"
• Lain Chamber, "Neville"
• Pino Chio, "Puppet makers"
• Otto Clave, "concerned instrument"
• Opin Ionjournal Com, "Taranto fan"
• Leftist Crazee, "Ostrich"
• Edouard Daladier, "Président du Conseil, député radical, 'le bull of Vaucluse' "
• James Tarrantos Eviltwin
• I.D. Iot, "Thinkers United"

Stupidity Watch
From a report in the Kingston, N.Y., Daily Freeman on a campaign appearance by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, an upstate New York Democrat:

"When (former President) Bill Clinton left office, we were on the verge of solving the problem of North Korea," Hinchey said. But now, he said, Bush branding North Korea part of an "axis of evil" prompted the country to renew its nuclear program.

"Many, or most, of us across the USA have been living in a growing degree of fear for more than a year," USA Today founder Al Neuharth observes in his column today. "What has caused this mentality? In my book, the shrill scare talk and saber rattling at the White House."

America's sense of fear might have something to do with that surprise attack by Muslim terrorists just over a year ago. Remember that? Neuharth apparently doesn't; his column makes no mention of it. Apparently when he got old, his memory was the second thing to go. Too bad he hasn't forgotten what the first one was.

How to Misread a Poll
In his "TRB" column, The New Republic's editor, Peter Beinart, provides an interesting example of a fallacious interpretation of poll results. Beinart wants to argue that the Iraq issue, contrary to the common wisdom, actually works in favor of Democrats:

Two key assumptions have led the commentariat astray. The first is that this campaign is a struggle between "the economy," which favors Democrats, and "national security," which favors Republicans. That's misleading because "national security" lumps the war on terrorism and the prospective war on Iraq together. And politically, they couldn't be more different.

In the Gallup poll, voters who cite the war on terrorism as their most important issue back Republicans by a massive 48 percent. Similarly, in a recent [Minneapolis] Star Tribune poll, voters who cared most about the war on terrorism favored Republican Norm Coleman by 31 points. But voters who cited war with Iraq as their primary issue favored Democrats by 16 points in the Gallup poll and [Paul] Wellstone by 32 points in the Star Tribune poll. The media is treating "national security" as one pro-Republican issue when, in fact, it's two--one pro-Republican and one, apparently, pro-Democratic.

The problem with this analysis--aside from Beinart's failure to say what proportion of those polled were in each category--is that the assumption that the war on terror and the war in Iraq are separate issues is itself a matter of opinion. That's certainly not the way President Bush sees it; he's plainly defined the prospective Iraq action as part of the wider terror war. It's obvious that there's likely to be a large overlap among those who agree with the president's conception of the war, those who favor action in Iraq, and those who vote Republican--so the results Beinart cites tell us precisely nothing.

You Don't Say--III
"GOP Win Will Result in Ideological Shift"--headline, Washington Times, Oct. 25

'You Are Nothing but a Pathetic Sucker'
Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, has no Democratic opponent in next month's election. But he does have an opponent who's running as a Democrat, The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last reports. Independent Nancy Spannaus has been airing ads that describe her as "the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia" and "the only Democrat on the Virginia ballot for U.S. Senate."

Spannaus is a follower of perennial Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, the Harold Stassen of the political fever swamp. Virginia Democrats are none too pleased that Spannaus is representing herself as one of them, and little wonder:

If you're wondering why the Democrats are so eager to distance themselves from Spannaus, just visit her website. For starters, she's not very voter-friendly: In a posting on her site she says that if you don't want to "get off your duff and fight alongside LaRouche and me . . . you are nothing but a pathetic sucker." In one leaflet she opens by saying, "I'm here, again, to help you save yourself once more." In another she asks voters, "Are you sane enough to vote for me?" The world, she says, is coming apart, and it can only be stopped by the Spannaus-LaRouche team. "We are the wave of the future--if you are to have one, " she says ominously.

Spannaus, like LaRouche, predicts an imminent economic collapse: " 'To put it bluntly,' she said in early October, 'the depression is on, and the only sane thing to do, is to fight for LaRouche's "November Program." ' In full I-told-you-so mode, she says 'it is a plain fact, that Lyndon LaRouche is the world's most accurate economic forecaster,' because he's been predicting a 'New Stone Age' for several decades now." (If the war in Iraq goes well, that would make LaRouche the Tony Lewis of fringe politicians.)

The state's Democratic Party chairman has "sent Spannaus a cease-and-desist letter saying that she was 'misleading' voters with her ad campaign," but she doesn't seem to have heeded the warning. "We are very unhappy," Democratic spokeswoman Carolyn Fiddler tells Last. But, perhaps wishfully, she also says Spannaus is "not the biggest ping on our radar right now."

Seek and Ye Shan't Find
The Google search engine is excluding scores of Web sites "that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi or related to white supremacy" from searches on its French- and German-language sites, CNET News reports. That's understandable--French and German law doesn't include a free-speech guarantee that protects such stuff. But why is Google also censoring Jesus-is-Lord.com? CNET describes this as "a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion," and it's a bit intense for our taste, but, as CNET notes, such sites "do not appear to violate either German or French laws."

You Don't Say--IV
"Refiners, Environmental Group Differ on Pollution Control"--headline, Dow Jones Newswires, Oct. 24

Jimmy Carter's Love Goddess
Yesterday we noted that that Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a flying saucer in 1969. It turns out UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer debunked Carter's claim in the July/August 1977 issue of The Humanist:

The incident occurred in Leary, Georgia, about forty miles from Plains, on the evening of January 6, 1969. Mr. Carter was the local district governor of the Lion's Club, and had come to Leary to boost the local chapter. While standing outdoors at approximately 7:15 pm, waiting for the Lion's Club meeting to begin, Mr. Carter reported seeing a single "self-luminous" object, "as bright as the moon," which reportedly approached and then receded several times. Mr. Carter reports that his "UFO" was in the western sky, at about 30 degrees elevation. This almost perfectly matches the known position of Venus, which was in the west-southwest at an altitude of 25 degrees. Weather records show that the sky was clear at the time of the sighting.

No other object generates as many UFO reports as the planet Venus. Venus is not as bright as the moon, nor does it actually approach the viewer, or change size and brightness, but descriptions like these are typical of misidentifications of a bright planet. Every time Venus reaches its maximum brilliance in the evening sky, hundreds of "UFO sightings" of this type are made. At the time of the Carter UFO sighting, Venus was a brilliant evening star, nearly one hundred times brighter than a first-magnitude star.

Sheaffer notes that "Mr. Carter is in good company in misidentifying Venus as a UFO." Indeed, "during World War II, U.S. aircraft tried to shoot down Venus on numerous occasions." If only they had succeeded, the ex-prez from Plains would have been spared some embarrassment.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Jim Orheim, Marie Bourgeois, Shelley Taylor, C.E. Dobkin, Jerome Marcus, Michael Segal, Edward Morrissey, Andy Hefty, John Hartness, Aaron Spetner, Elliot Ganz, Ed Graff, Johnny Lanctot, John Ryan, Bryan Lee, Mara Gold, Bob Dudolevitch, Napoleon Cole, Wayne Rutman, Roger Heinig, John Lott, Joel Goldberg, Joseph Strapp, B.J. Kirkwood, Bill Stafford, Nancy Eckert, Ted Sienicki, Jeffrey Weinstein, Milton Freund, Peter Shafran, Natalie Cohen, Benzion Mandelbaum, Anthony Gill, Barak Moore, S.E. Brenner, William Specht, Raghu Desikan, Darren Gold, Naftali Friedman, Peter Wehner, John Newman, Greg Lester, Chuck Gitles, Ken Woodard, Michael See, Steve Harkins, Joel German, Arnie Dupuy, Ken Borgerding, Pavel Bouska, Keith Parker, John Opiee, Mark Brown, Richard Miniter, Bill Williams, Drew Cooper, Jeff Stier and Ken Silber. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Who's campaigning to deny the links between Iraq and al Qaeda?
• Daniel Henninger: The sniper story on cable has been pure melodrama.
• Peggy Noonan: The sniper is caught, and America gets another reminder of its vulnerability.
• Kim Strassel: Economic issues help a GOP House candidate.

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: The USDA joins the scare over non-"organic" food.
• Tony & Tacky: Is an NRA bumper sticker a sign of danger?
• Eric Gibson: VH1 goes behind bars to explore the musical lives of inmates.
• Jonah Goldberg: The media's "racial profile" of the sniper turned out to be dead wrong.
• Mark Oppenheimer on the sniper's tarot card.

And don't miss "WSJ Editorial Board With Stuart Varney," tonight at 9 EDT and PDT on CNBC.