by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, September 26, 2006 2:40 P.M. EDT

Now Playing on WSJ.com: John Fund talks with Ed Crane about Barack Obama and Jim McGreevey.

The Swift to the Race
Sen. George Allen's latest trouble is a report on the left-liberal Salon Web site that three of Allen's college football teammates "say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s." One of the accusers, Ken Shelton, also claims that during the same period, they were on a hunting trip on which "he remembers Allen asking [teammate Billy] Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. 'He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox,' Shelton said." (Lanahan is dead, so this story is on Shelton's say-so alone.)

But Salon says it contacted 19 of Allen's former teammates and college friends, and the other 16 say they don't remember his ever behaving in a racist manner (though two were troubled by his display of the Confederate flag). The New York Times and Washington Post both picked up the story, treating the claims as legitimate. Not surprisingly, the Allen campaign is up in arms: "this Salon story is evidence of the Democratic Party growing comfortable with the alleged 'Swiftboating' tactics they'd previously decried," declares a post on the campaign's official blog.

The Swift Boat analogy--to the veterans who accused John Kerry of exaggerating his Vietnam War heroics--is apt. Consider the similarities:

• Detractors of the candidate are making unverifiable allegations of bad behavior dating back more than 30 years.
  
  
• The candidate's supporters who remember contemporaneous events say there is no truth to the charges.
  
  
• To the extent that the charges are plausible, it is because they are consistent with a pre-existing conception of the candidate: in Allen's case, that he is racially insensitive or bigoted; in Kerry's, that he is a phony or that he betrayed his fellow servicemen.

We'd say a fair-minded observer would have to give Allen the benefit of the doubt--which is what we said about Kerry in 2004. One may, of course, be more inclined to believe the charges about Allen than about Kerry, or vice versa, because of one's own personal or partisan prejudices. Every one of us is human.

But newsmen are supposed to strive for objectivity and fairness. That the press reported the Swift Boat story largely as a smear campaign against Kerry whereas it is treating the Allen charges as legitimate and serious suggests a strong partisan bias at work.

As the Post's Thomas Edsall told Hugh Hewitt the other day, "whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it, many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left."

Anthrax Amateurs
It's often said that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, but that isn't quite true. Putting aside attacks by lone nuts with apparent political motives (the guys who shot up the El Al counter at Los Angeles International and a Jewish community center in Seattle, for instance), there were also the anthrax attacks, which we first noted Oct. 9, 2001. Envelopes carrying the biological agent were mailed to Senate and news-media offices. (The Wall Street Journal didn't get one, though we did have to put up with steaming of our mail for a while.)

The Washington Post reports that "the FBI is now convinced that the lethal powder sent to the Senate was far less sophisticated than originally believed, widening the pool of possible suspects in a frustratingly slow investigation":

The finding, which resulted from countless scientific tests at numerous laboratories, appears to undermine the widely held belief that the attack was carried out by a government scientist or someone with access to a U.S. biodefense lab.

What was initially described as a near-military-grade biological weapon was ultimately found to have had a more ordinary pedigree, containing no additives and no signs of special processing to make the anthrax bacteria more deadly, law enforcement officials confirmed. In addition, the strain of anthrax used in the attacks has turned out to be more common than was initially believed, the officials said.

As a result, after a very public focus on government scientists as the likely source of the attacks, the FBI is today casting a far wider net, as investigators face the daunting prospect of an almost endless list of possible suspects in scores of countries around the globe.

The government at one point identified former Army scientist Steven Hatfill as a "person of interest"; he denies wrongdoing, has never been charged, and is suing to clear his name. The FBI's continuing mystification as to the culprit--the idea that it could have been anyone--does lead one to suspect that it might have been a foreign terror organization.

Al Qaeda in Iraq? How Could This Be?
"A senior Al Qaeda operative who engineered a brazen escape from a high security American prison in Afghanistan last year was killed in a predawn raid by British soldiers in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood in southern Iraq on Monday," the New York Times reports:

Two companies of about 250 soldiers wearing night goggles and carrying night-vision rifles stormed a house in the neighborhood of al-Tuninnah in Basra, intending to capture the operative. The spokesman for the British military in Iraq, Maj. Charles Burbridge, I [sic] identified the operative as Omar al-Faruq. But they were fired upon as they entered and shot back, killing Mr. Faruq.

Major Burbridge said Mr. Faruq was "a terrorist of considerable significance" who had been hiding in Basra, but he declined to say whether this was the same man who escaped from the American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, last July. Mr. Faruq's identity was confirmed by an American official in Washington and by an official in Basra, who was not authorized to speak on the subject.

But we thought al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq! All right, all right, we know the argument is that if Saddam Hussein hadn't been toppled, Faruq wouldn't have been in Iraq. That is, he wouldn't have been in Iraq where allied troops could kill him. This is supposed to be an argument against our presence there?

Red Metaphor Alert
From KCNA, the North Korean "news" agency:

Rodong Sinmun Monday ridicules Japan's application of "financial sanctions" against the DPRK as a farce of a jester of a circus troupe. The Japanese authorities, bereft of reason, are foolishly performing short-sighted and senseless buffoonery reminding us of a rural vendor, regarding "financial sanctions" as "a panacea," says a Rodong Sinmun commentary Monday. . . .

Dancing to other's tune, Japan is attempting to pressurize and strangle the DPRK with such "financial sanctions" to drive it somewhere. It is, however, a poor, third-rate diplomacy of bat-blind philistines.

Japan is whipping itself into senseless frenzy to please the whim of its American master. . . . It does not warrant surprise, considering that Japan has made it its physical quality to lick the boots of the American master and tail behind the U.S. It is unseemly for Japan, styling itself "a big power," to behave like this.

Hey, the Truth Hurts
"Bush's Information Offensive"--headline, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 25

Heinz 57 to the Rescue
"Romney Grilling 'in Bad Taste' "--headline, State (Columbia, S.C.), Sept. 24

Jet Fuel, for One
"U.S. to Allow Some Liquids on Airliners"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 25

Why Not Just Elope?
"Experts: Price May Block Singles Vaccine"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 25

Ah Yes, Those Were the Salad Days
"Firm Recalls Salad Products With Spinach"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 25

'Hi, I'm Newark L. Smith'
"Security Chief Named for Newark Airport"--headline, WINS-AM Web site (New York), Sept. 26

Help Wanted
"Asylum Seeking Rapist to Fight Continued Imprisonment"--headline, Daily Mail (London), Sept. 25

News You Can Use
"Thrown Eggs Can Cause Serious Eye Injury"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 25

Bottom Stories of the Day--I

• "Authorities Unsure Why No One Saw Child Abuse"--Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 24
  
  
• "Radio Ad Won't Air, Car Dealer Decides"--headline, Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 26
  
  
• "Columbus Officer Won't Face Charges of Assault"--headline, Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 26

Bottom Stories of the Day--II: Goodbye, Columbus

• "Paroubek: News About Risk Circulated Three Weeks Ago"--headline, Prague Post, Sept. 23
  
  
• "Clooney Shrugs Off Talk of Candidacy"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 26
  
  
• "C.U. Students Discover Ithaca Farmer's Market"--headline, Cornell Daily Sun, Sept. 26
  
  
• "New Russian Ambassador to Estonia Not Promising Change to Bilateral Relations"--headline, Baltic Times (Riga, Latvia), Sept. 26

Up Close and Personal
"People from as far away New Mexico and the Netherlands were in northern Ohio over the weekend, getting up close and personal with skunks," the Associated Press reports:

Poling and other polecat enthusiasts gathered in North Ridgeville, about 25 miles southwest of Cleveland, for the sixth annual Skunkfest.

The event raises money for Skunk Haven, a nonprofit group that saves and rehabilitates injured skunks. And, pet skunks compete in beauty, personality and costume contests.

The domestic skunks all have their stink-glands removed. Meanwhile, Willy Volk of Divester.com (we think that's pronounced DIVE-ster, not di-VES-ter) tells a story of a man who got up close and personal with a scary fish:

This may be one of the all-time, stupidest things I've ever heard. And I've heard of divers doing lots of dumb stuff. However, last month, Dave Marcel was diving in the waters off Key Largo and did the unthinkable: he decided to kiss a nurse shark. I guess the shark just wanted to be friends, though, because it responded by biting Marcel's face, leaving him with a severely damaged lip that required extensive reconstructive surgery. To add insult to injury, the blood from the attack attracted snappers, who immediately swam up and helped themselves to a few nibbles, too. According to the cosmetic surgeon who patched Marcel, "Dave's lip looked like it had been put through a meat grinder or a garbage disposal." Ouch! If you can't imagine what the kiss-cum-bite must've looked like, it's all on video.

Why on earth would someone want to kiss a shark? Well, Marcel claims he's kissed sharks "hundreds of times " before: "You kind of pick them up, rub their belly, scratch them, hug them. You might as well give them a smooch while you're out there." Right. Surprisingly, it doesn't sound like Marcel has learned his lesson, either. According to him, his personal guidelines for the future will limit his shark-kissing to when the fish is NOT upside down. As though THAT were the problem.

That reminds us of a joke: What's the difference between a dead shark on the road and a dead skunk on the road?

Skid marks!

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Michael Segal, Greg Baruch, C.E. Dobkin, Evan Slatis, John Kranz, Burt Jennings, John Greenberg, Samuel Walker, Joe Bacon, Kyle Kyllan, Jeff Stier, John Forsberg, Brian Azman, Michael Hopkovitz, Casey McEnelly, David Martin, Chris Nicastri, Jim Moran, Joseph Tully, David Morrison, Justin Lodge, Dave Tinkle, Craig Ray, Mark Schulze, Dan Kelly, Steven Getman, Daniel Foty, Ethel Fenig and John Sanders. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: How to defeat selective politically motivated leaks.
• David Forte (from the Claremont Institute): The left needs to come up with a better case against the Electoral College.
• Roger Scruton: Noam Chomsky should have stuck to syntax.