Thursday, April 26, 2001 12:49 P.M. EDT

Smearing Kerrey
Writing in the New York Times magazine (link requires registration), Gregory Vistica publishes allegations by a member of a Navy commando team led by Bob Kerrey, who later became a Medal of Honor winner, governor of and senator from Nebraska, a Democratic presidential candidate, and now a private citizen and head of the New School University in New York.

The former commando, Gerhard Klann, says that at Thanh Phong, Vietnam, in February 1969, Kerrey ordered him to kill an old man, and that Kerrey held the unarmed old man down while Klann killed him with a knife. Klann says that Kerrey's squad then rounded up women and children and killed them. An account in the Omaha World-Herald sticks to Kerrey's recollection of events: "When we received fire [during the approach to the suspected Viet Cong post], we returned fire. But when the fire stopped, we found that we had killed only women, children and older men."

The distinction between Klann's account--which describes what is arguably a war crime--and Kerrey's--which describes a tragic accident--seems unbridgeable. A Times editorial (link requires registration) says Vistica's story "raises questions of credibility for Mr. Kerrey." But Smartertimes.com argues it also raises questions of credibility for the Times.

As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports, Newsweek, where Vistica worked for many years, turned down the story. As for the Times, both its editorial and today's front-page news article on the subject, tell "very little about the background of the writer," notes Smartertimes. To add to the record, we've reprinted a Wall Street Journal review of Vistica's 1996 book, "Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy." The reviewer is scathing: "Never before has a book left me feeling so dispirited and almost physically soiled. . . . This classic exercise in revisionism is clearly in the historical tradition of 'my mind is made up--kindly do not confuse me with the facts.' "

The Times editorial also claims the Vietnam War "seemed to lack any rationale except the wrecking of as many lives as possible on both sides." Retorts Smartertimes: "Well, the South Vietnamese who fled by the thousands in rickety boats to avoid communist rule understood that there was a 'rationale' to the war."

Hillary's Illegal Votes
Last November, the New York Daily News reports, at least two dozen votes in New Square, N.Y., were cast by people who were not properly registered. Since Americans vote by secret ballot, there's normally no way of knowing how people voted in cases like this. In this case, though, we know for a mathematical certainty that almost half of the illegal votes had to have gone for Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, and it's highly probable that all of them did. That's because her opponent, Rick Lazio, got just 12 votes in the Hasidic village, vs. some 1,400 for Hillary. Hillary's husband, then president, subsequently pardoned four New Square embezzlers, and the whole mess is under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

Clinton Bashing
The Washington Post reports on Hillary's first party at her $2.85 million "neo-Georgian mansion" in Washington--a $1,000-a-ticket political fund-raiser for her colleague from Washington state, Maria Cantwell. Hillary's husband, meanwhile, "has spent only a few nights in his Washington home, and made a rare public appearance last month at the Italian Embassy, where he was honored by the International Brain Injury Association, presented with a humidor (no joke) and mobbed like a rock star," the Post reports.

'I Pray All the Time'
"I pray every day--I read the Bible every day," President Bush tells Fox News Channel's Brit Hume:

HUME: Do you do Bible Study as well?

BUSH: Yes. In the morning. And I pray all the time. I mean, when I am alone in the Oval Office that something might be on my mind, that I have a concern for a family member and I will pray. I don't think that I could be sitting here as comfortable as I am and as peaceful as I am had it not been for my religion.

Bush Goes Green
The president's turn toward environmentalism is alienating some allies, Robert Novak reports: "Conservative business organizations and think tanks are not only unhappy with the substance of Bush's turnaround but feel they have been cut out of the process and cannot adequately express their views." In contrast, ardent supporters of the Kyoto global warming accord like Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change are being welcomed to the White House, Novak says.

Getting Railroaded
Reason magazine has recently become the High Times of the policy world. The Los Angeles-based monthly has long championed the legalization of drugs on principled (though in our view wrongheaded) libertarian grounds. Under new editor Nick Gillespie, however, Reason has been running pieces that actually celebrate drug use, such as this signed editorial in which Gillespie acknowledges that he has "used drugs on a recreational basis" and declares on behalf of casual stoners everywhere: "Far from our drugs controlling us, by and large we control our drugs; as with alcohol, the primary motivation in taking drugs is to enjoy ourselves, not to destroy ourselves. . . . There is such a thing as responsible drug use and it is the rule, not the exception."

We imagine the editorial meetings at Reason consisting of a bunch of earnest, well-scrubbed young wonks in bow ties sitting around a table debating the fine points of Social Security reform amid a haze of marijuana smoke. But as ridiculous as this image is, every now and then a story comes along that makes us thankful to have some libertarians around. Reason's Washington editor, Michael Lynch, published such a piece on the magazine's Web site last week. Picking up on an Albuquerque Journal report, Lynch notes that Amtrak, the federally run passenger railroad, has been sharing information about its riders with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He tells the story of Vietnamese immigrant Sam Thach:

In February 2000, a DEA agent showed up at his sleeper cabin after his train pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to court records, Amtrak provided the drug cops with info from their computer terminal. The cops learned that Thach was traveling from Fullerton, California to Boston Massachusetts. "The $702.50 ticket was purchased with cash on the day of travel," notes a government court brief. . . .

"Salazar observed that Thach's eyes were opened wide, he swayed and shuffled his feet, and his hands shook while he placed them in and out of his pockets during the conversation of his travel plans," the court brief notes. That, and the fact he had a cell phone and a backpack in his sleeper, was enough for Salazar to start a search of the cabin. Thach was carrying $148,000 in cash, which he claims were proceeds from a lucky gambling streak. Salazar was dubious, and when Thach couldn't produce receipts, he brought in a drug dog to sniff the cash. The first dog found no evidence of drugs on the money, says Adrian, so they brought in another, one with an apparently more refined nose. It caught a whiff of cocaine, as it probably would if it put its snout in your wallet, since much U.S. currency has been thus "contaminated" since before Miami Vice went off the air.

Thach wasn't arrested, but Officer Salazar confiscated all but $1,000 of his cash under civil-forfeiture laws. Because civil forfeiture isn't a criminal proceeding, Thach must prove his innocence in order to get his money back. Now, we'll admit we're suspicious of Thach's story. You'd have to be crazy to carry that kind of cash around; plenty of people would love to grab it, and they don't all work for the federal government. But for the government to take away a man's money without so much as accusing him of a crime is outrageous and un-American.

Here's the most galling part: Amtrak gets a 10% cut of all assets drug agents seize on the basis of information the railroad supplies them. And you thought airlines treated their customers badly?

Yesterday's Albuquerque Journal reports that Amtrak has now "pulled the plug" on the computer it had been using to share information with the DEA. "However, Amtrak police said this week they will continue to provide information they glean from the ticketing system to other police agencies across the United States to help catch train-riding drug couriers. Amtrak police also will continue to receive a portion of the assets that drug agents seize off trains around the nation."

My So-Called Life
They're probably too old to smoke pot, but the haze is awfully dense up in the editorial offices of the New York Times. Yesterday the paper published an editorial (link requires registration) that was a stunning display of unclarity. Titled "Reproductive Rights Under Attack," the editorial inveighs against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which would make it a crime to injure or kill a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. The Times claims the act is a threat to legal abortion, and we've already explained why this position is sheer nonsense. What's notable about this editorial is the length to which the Times' editors go to avoid using straightforward language:

In essence, the bill would elevate the status of a fetus, embryo or other so-called "unborn child" to that of a "person" by amending the Federal criminal code to add a separate offense for causing death or bodily injury to a "child" who is "in utero."

What's with all the quote marks? Doesn't the Times stylebook point out that it's redundant to write so-called before a phrase that's in quotes? And what is the Times' approved language for describing an "assault" on a "pregnant" "woman" that "kills" her "so-called ' "unborn" child' "? Behold:

Violence against women that results in compromising a pregnancy is a terrible crime.

We'll send $1 to the first reader who can explain to us what compromising a pregnancy means. Is it like being a little bit pregnant?

The Torch Flames Out
Slate's Jacob Weisberg says Sen. Robert Torricelli, a Democrat from New Jersey, "ought to resign, whether or not he deserves to go to jail." At issue is whether Torricelli accepted illegal gifts; the senator denies it, but a series of newspaper articles have detailed a trail prosecutors are exploring. Weisberg follows the liberal conventional wisdom and turns this into an indictment of the campaign-finance system, but Weisberg himself acknowledges:

Modern corruption in Washington takes more subtle forms--insider stock deals (of the kind Torricelli has taken in the past) or generous lobbying contracts after leaving the government. The last time cash bribery brought down a sitting senator was in 1980 when Harrison Williams, also of New Jersey, was indicted in the ABSCAM scandal. Even then, the handing over of actual loot seemed almost comically anachronistic.

As Weisberg fails to note, Abscam was a federal sting operation; the bribes Williams took weren't even genuine. If the campaign-finance system that governs all 100 senators and 435 congressmen produces so much corruption, how come so few politicians get caught?

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Two 18-year-olds in Burbank, Calif., are in jail on the basis of a third-hand report that they planned to bomb Burbank High School. Patrick Longmire, a special-education student at the school, and his friend Christopher Mannino of nearby Van Nuys, who doesn't attend Burbank High, pleaded not guilty yesterday. The Associated Press reports:

Longmire and Mannino were arrested Saturday after a parent, whose child is a friend of Longmire, told police they had sought a third friend to help them make a bomb. The young man refused and police found no explosives but said they had enough information to believe there was a threat.

Jonathan Rauch, writing in The New Republic, recounts the following story:

I know a young man--I'll call him Peter--who came from his native Hong Kong last year to study at an American high school. Peter's English was not too good, and his knowledge of American sensitivities was imperfect, and soon he found himself teased by another boy who loved to mess up Peter's designer hair. They had a tussle. Then, in an e-mail to a friend, Peter said he would "kill" this boy the next time the boy touched his hair. The e-mail was reported to the school, and the school warned Peter, which was fine. And then the other boy's parents filed formal charges against Peter and demanded that a court expel him from the school. Suddenly Peter and his aunt and uncle were being served documents and dealing with lawyers and being summoned to court. Peter went back to Hong Kong. In a sense, I suppose, he got his American education.

Astonishing, isn't it, to think the teen would find less freedom in America than in a territory now under communist sovereignty? Rauch's article is a brilliant exposition of how what he calls "bureaucratic legalism" has supplanted the "hidden law" of customs and manners and rendered America, on the whole, a less civilized society. He traces many of our most unpleasant social conflicts--including those over sexual harassment, abortion, euthanasia and pornography, as well as school discipline--to the impulse to impose formal rules at the expense of sometimes-hypocritical informal social arrangements.

There's only one flaw in Rauch's article: He tendentiously draws a moral equivalence between liberal and conservative responses to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which of course grew out of a sex-harassment lawsuit. Liberals, Rauch argues, were hypocritical because they sought to exempt Clinton from laws they supported. But conservatives were no better, he suggests, because they sought to enforce against Clinton laws they opposed.

But the two positions are not equivalent. While the liberal one is hypocrisy of the rankest sort, the conservative one is defensible. A basic part of the social contract of a democratic republic is that if we disagree with a law, we obey it while seeking to change it through legal means. Surely that isn't too much to expect from the president, who has more power than any other individual to change bad laws.

Dispatch From the Porn Belt
In Massachusetts (Gore by 27.3%), the Radcliffe Union of Students "hosted an informal sex toys workshop . . . in an effort to help women realize that they can provide their own sexual pleasure." The event at Harvard (which acquired Radcliffe in 1999) featured an hour-long presentation by someone the Harvard Crimson identifies only as Megara, an employee of Grand Opening, "a sex boutique in Brookline that caters specifically to women."

"I expected people to think it was unusual," student Lisa Vogt, who organized the presentation, tells the Crimson, "but most of the people I've talked to have been very excited." Says another participant, Julia Reischel: "Contrary to popular belief, I think this is an empowering thing to go to for women. It really demystifies sex and makes it something you can talk about, makes it less scary." Is a little mystery really such a terrible thing?

Simpson Verdict Upheld
The California Supreme Court lets stand the $33.5 million civil judgment the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman won against O.J. Simpson in 1997, two years after he was acquitted of their murders. Simpson had appealed the jury verdict, but the California court yesterday rejected his appeal without comment, the Los Angeles Times reports.

What if His Name Were Jacob Ezekiel Weiss?
Yesterday we noted the story of Carol Ann Martin, a Vermont woman who wanted a vanity license plate saying IRISH. A judge ruled that she couldn't have it because it might be construed as a slur. Reader Jennifer Black points out that we missed the funniest detail in the story. It turns out that the hypersensitive judge, Matthew I. Katz, has a vanity plate bearing his initials, MIK. Mick, of course, is a derogatory term for Irishmen.

Bush Wins California
Disability activists objected to the plans for a new 60-foot-tall sculpture of Cupid's bow and arrow by pop artist Claes Oldenburg that is to grace the Gap's new San Francisco headquarters. Specifically, they wouldn't stand for Oldenburg's plan to put the sculpture in the center of a grass-covered plaza. "Grass is not wheelchair-friendly--so it's not considered an 'acceptable surface' under the Americans With Disabilities Act," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The artist vetoed the wheelchair guys' preferred solution of paving the park with concrete. Finally, a compromise was reached: "Instead of grass, the giant bow and arrow will be surrounded by a bowl of low bushes that will keep everyone out. So in the name of 'equal access' for all, we're going to have equal inaccess for all."

We know what you're thinking: That's all very well and good if you're in a wheelchair, but what about blind people? Planners are "considering putting up a raised plaque where the visually impaired can trace the outline of the sculpture with their fingers." Tracing it with their finger? That's a far cry from being able to look at the thing. There's a fairer way, a way that would ensure that everyone has an equal chance of seeing the sculpture. Just put it someplace where the sun don't shine.

(Thanks to Mike Daley, Roman Martinez and Robert Ortiz. If you have a tip for Best of the Web Today, e-mail us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)