by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 3:00 P.M. EDT

A Teachable Moment
A local insurgent attacked a settlement near Crawford, Texas, yesterday, Reuters reports:

Some 800 white wooden crosses, bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq like her son, have lined the road near the area where [Cindy] Sheehan has pitched a tent. Witnesses said they saw a truck dragging a pipe and chains drive over some of the crosses on Monday night.

Larry Northern, 46, of nearby Waco, Texas, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief in connection with the incident, Crawford Police Chief Donnie Tidmore said.

Now, we have no truck with mischievous criminals, but at the same time it's important to understand what motivates people to do things like this. After all, one man's vandal is another's freedom-fighter. The Sheehanoids should be asking: Why do they hate us?

Think about it: If outside settlers were occupying your land, demonizing your leaders and slandering your country, wouldn't you have feelings of rage and hopelessness? Again, we're not condoning what Larry Northern allegedly did. Our point is that only by understanding what drove him to this desperate act can we put an end to the cycle of recrimination.

There's One for You, Nineteen for Me
In a speech last week to the self-styled Veterans for Peace, Cindy Sheehan issued the following declaration:

Another thing that I'm doing is--my son was killed in 2004, so I'm not paying my taxes for 2004. If I get a letter from the IRS, I'm gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal. This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral. You killed my son for this. I don't owe you anything. And if I live to be a million, I won't owe you a penny.

And I want them to come after me, because unlike what you've been doing with the war resistance, I want to put this frickin' war on trial. And I want to say, "You give me my son, and I'll pay your taxes."

This has received less attention from Sheehan's critics than many of her other pronouncements, perhaps because in the land of the Boston Tea Party, all of us harbor a little secret sympathy for tax protesters. But Sheehan's gesture is even more empty than it appears, for you can't just "not pay" your federal taxes.

According to Time magazine, before losing her job for absenteeism, Mrs. Sheehan worked for a government agency in Napa County, Calif. Presumably local governments in California do not pay their employees in cash, which means that estimated taxes would have been withheld from her paycheck.

So how exactly is she carrying out this protest? Did she file a frivolous return claiming a refund on all taxes due for 2004? It's unlikely that the Internal Revenue Service would fall for such an obvious trick and issue a check. More likely, she simply is refusing to file a return--which is illegal, but which deprives the government only of taxes that were underpaid.

It is quite possible that Mrs. Sheehan overpaid her taxes. It's not clear when she stopped working, but if it was before the end of 2004, then taxes were withheld under the assumption that she would be working for the entire year. Because the income tax system is progressive, the average annual tax rate is lower if a taxpayer works only part of the year. Moreover, by failing to file, she would forgo any deductions to which she is entitled, such as for mortgage interest or state and local taxes (and California is a high-tax state).

It is possible to reduce one's withholdings by claiming nonexistent dependents on the IRS's W4 form. But if we take Mrs. Sheehan at her word that her tax protest came in reaction to her son's death rather than in anticipation of it, she would not have done this prior to earning the income in question.

The only way Mrs. Sheehan's protest would amount to anything significant in financial terms would be if she had a large amount of taxable income from investments (à la Teresa Heinz Kerry)--and even then, her husband would have paid half the taxes on any assets they owned jointly.

One final wrinkle: U.S. servicemen are subject to withholding but not taxation on their military pay while stationed in a combat zone. That means that Casey Sheehan is entitled to a refund, which his parents, as his next of kin, could claim. It's possible that the result of Mrs. Sheehan's protest is that her fallen son ends up paying taxes he didn't even owe on the money he earned helping bring freedom to Iraq.

Bangladesh Bomb Boom
" A series of bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in dozens of cities across Bangladesh Wednesday, striking regional capitals as well as the national capital, Dhaka," CNN reports:

According to police, at least 115 people were injured with 350 bombs detonating. Bangladeshi media reported at least one fatality.

Three hundred fifty bombs? Wow, someone's really mad about the Bangladeshi occupation of Iraq!

Today Turtle Bay, Tomorrow Jerusalem
"The United Nations bankrolled the production of thousands of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan 'Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem,' which have been widely distributed to Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip, according to a U.N. official," the New York Sun reports:

The U.N. support of the Palestinian Authority's propaganda operation in the midst of the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip has provoked outrage from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who are blaming Turtle Bay for propagating an inflammatory message that they say encourages Palestinian Arab violence. . . .

The Arabic slogan, which refers to disputed territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has become ubiquitous in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers this week are evacuating 21 settlements. It's served as the central message of a Palestinian Arab effort to spin the withdrawal as a victory.

A special representative of the United Nations Development Program in the Gaza Strip, Timothy Rothermel, told Fox News that his office provided financial support for the production of materials that make up the Palestinian Authority's propaganda campaign, timed to coincide with the Gaza pullout. The Palestinian Authority's withdrawal committee developed and produced the posters and other items using U.N. money, Mr. Rothermel said.

In addition to the slogan "Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem," many of the materials displayed the logo of the United Nations Development Program, which operates in 166 countries and spends about half a billion dollars a year.

Opponents of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton tried to block his nomination by arguing, among other things, that he doesn't believe in the U.N. Is this sort of thing that the opponents believe in? Bolton's diplomatic efforts are widely credited with ending the U.N. General Assembly's "Zionism is racism" calumny. Now that he's ensconced at Turtle Bay for the next year and a third, let's hope he's working to put an end to this kind of nonsense too.

Leahy Yaps
Yesterday we noted a Washington Post report that Democrats had conceded the futility of waging a campaign against Judge John Roberts. Today's Post reports a few Dems are desperately trying to dispel this impression:

Major liberal groups accused Democratic senators yesterday of showing too little stomach for opposing John G. Roberts Jr.'s Supreme Court nomination, saying newly released documents indicate he is much more conservative than many people first thought. . . .

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement: "Those papers that we have received paint a picture of John Roberts as an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then, and now. In influential White House and Department of Justice positions, John Roberts expressed views that were among the most radical being offered by a cadre intent on reversing decades of policies on civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, privacy, and access to justice."

Unlike in previous fights (Bork, Thomas), senators like Leahy look less like junkyard dogs than like lapdogs for various far-left interest groups. The key numbers in terms of Roberts's confirmation are 55 and 7--the number of Republicans in the Senate, and the number of Democrats committed to refraining from partisan filibusters. Thus efforts to keep him off the court are indeed futile.

But Leahy & Co. may be helping conservatives in future confirmation fights. If Democrats stick to the message that Roberts is "a conservative but not an ideologue" then they can argue next time around that they're opposing a nominee because he is an "ideologue," and that they have nothing against "conservatives." If Leahy and others on the far left of the Senate insist on labeling Roberts an "ideologue," it will be much harder for the Democrats to maintain the fiction that the word has any meaning.

Diverse Comes to Worst
"The Broward County School Board plans to suspend its Diversity Committee after a few members made inflammatory comments about gays," reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

"I think we're all in agreement about that," Board Chairwoman Stephanie Kraft said Tuesday. Members of the gay community had approached the board once again with demands to disband the watchdog group

The 19-member Diversity Committee came under fire this summer over its treatment of the Anti-Defamation League's We Are Family video, which features Barney, Kermit the Frog and other children's characters singing about their friends.

While discussing the video, committee member and radio host Steve Kane said he worried it could be used to promote a pro-gay agenda and introduce children to homosexuality. He resigned last week.

While applauding Kane's departure, Katy Peterson, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church in Palm Beach Gardens and a supporter of gay rights, said there are other anti-gay committee members who "take the School Board's thoughtfully crafted and progressive diversity policy and use it for toilet paper."

She wants them to leave as well.

It seems the Diversity Committee's problem is too much diversity!

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
"This is a crisis of crisis proportions for the DMV."--Janis Hazel of the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted by the Associated Press, Aug. 17

They Really Ought to Leave This to Doctors
"Mo. Officials Probe Intestine Infections"--headline, Associated Press, Aug. 16

Drawing Snickers From the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"Study Details Bar at Center of Milky Way"--headline, Associated Press, Aug. 17

'Period' Doesn't Always Mean 'Full Stop'
Yesterday we noted this amusing claim from the Web site of Seattle's King County Health Department:

No method of contraception or disease prevention is effective when practiced incorrectly or inconsistently. A 1988 National Survey of Family Growth found abstinence to have a contraceptive failure rate of 26% when not practiced consistently. So, in abstinence, as in condom use, consistency is key.

We know a professor of great renown, blogger Eugene Volokh, and he tracked down the misunderstanding that gave rise to this boner:

Here's what's really going on: (1) a confusing term being used by public health scholars, which (2) likely led to confusion on the part of the person writing the Web page, which (3) translates into false claims being passed along to the public. If you look at abstracts of the 1988 Survey, you find that 26% is the failure rate for "periodic abstinence," which means "rhythm and natural family planning."

That's right: 26% is the failure rate for the rhythm method, not for deliberate decisions to abstain. Public health scholars apparently refer to the rhythm method and similar practices as "periodic abstinence," which is literally accurate, but potentially confusing to nonexperts, since it's close to a term ("abstinence") that means something quite different in lay discussion. The Web page author seemed to have been confused, interpreting "periodic abstinence" simply as "inconsistently practiced abstinence," and thus labeling it simply as "abstinence." And readers will therefore be getting false information: "Abstinence" in lay discussion generally refers to a deliberate decision not to have sex at all--rather than just to a decision to have sex only on one's presumably less fertile days--so people will read the claim as pointing to the dangers of abstinence, rather than the dangers of the rhythm method.

You've got to hand it to Volokh: With a problem scientific, he's colossal and terrific.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Eric Ivers, Michael Segal, Ron Ackert, Brendan Schulman, Ed Lasky, Jared Silverman, Joel Goldberg, Charlie Gaylord, Rick Walsh, Frank O'Rourke, Michael Lehr, Andrew Robinson, Paul Wood, Alan Utter, Jim Fehrle, Kevin Patrick, Ruth Papazian, Phil Buckleman, Steve Stephens, Michael Graef, John Forsberg, Daniel Foty, Ed Sterrett, Paul Wicht, Bill Stafford, Jon Hufford, Ike Andrews, Jim Sharp, Vern Beachy and Jeff Gilbert. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: How about a constitutional right for Iraqis to share in oil wealth?
• Manuel Miranda: The risk of running up the score on the Roberts confirmation vote.
• Slade Gorton and Hank Brown: E pluribus unum? Not in Hawaii.
• Max Boot: Why is Terrell Owens such a jerk?