Best of the Web Today

Cut and Run and Then Run Back
With Hillary Clinton being written off (perhaps prematurely), the eight-month general election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama seems to be getting under way. Obama, apparently moving to the right, is now threatening military intervention in Iraq after years of demanding America's immediate surrender. As the Associated Press reports:

McCain criticized Obama for saying in Tuesday night's Democratic debate that, after U.S. troops were withdrawn, as president he would act "if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq."

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called 'al-Qaida in Iraq,' " McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. He said Obama's statement was "pretty remarkable."

Quips Glenn Reynolds: "In Obama's defense, he probably reads the New York Times, which always calls it 'Al Qaida in Mesopotamia.' That may have confused him."

Obama's response to McCain, described in the same AP dispatch, makes even less sense:

"I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that's why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets," he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

"But I have some news for John McCain," Obama added. "There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. . . . They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq "so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place."

So let's see if we have this straight. Al Qaeda in Iraq isn't worth fighting because it wouldn't be there if it weren't for Bush and McCain. Obama is going to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq to go fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although he will send them back to Iraq if al Qaeda are there, even though he now wants to withdraw notwithstanding al Qaeda's presence.

Yes, we can!

By the way, the left has been denying al Qaeda's presence in Iraq since before the 2003 liberation. This is from a February 2003 article in In These Times, a leftist magazine:

[Secretary of State Colin] Powell told the world, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants." This information, Powell said, came from "detainees." But American officials have admitted those very detainees are subjected to torture, raising questions about the reliability of that information. . . .

Meanwhile, someone at Britain's Defense Intelligence Staff leaked a document to the BBC indicating that its agents doubt there is any link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. And the the [sic] New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials "said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden's network." The Times quoted an unnamed intelligence official: "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there . . . the intelligence is obviously being politicized."

At least Zarqawi isn't in Iraq anymore.

Blame Canada?
"Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously," reports Canada's CTV:

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

Apparently the real enemy isn't Canada, it's cynicism.

Let's Get Metaphysical
Mystified by the Obama phenomenon? Let Susan Neiman of the Einstein Forum, writing in the Boston Globe, explain it all to you:

Strange as it sounds, this is an election where metaphysics may count more than demographics, and focusing on the latter misses the point. Metaphysics determines what you hold to be self-evident and what you hold to be possible; what you think has substance and what you can afford to ignore. Hope is based on, or undermined by, your metaphysical standpoint. . . .

If it's a message so catchy that it has now made the rounds of cyberspace as a star-studded video, it's also one with roots as deep as Immanuel Kant. The "Critique of Pure Reason" is not easy reading, but it makes some startling claims. Kant tells us that Plato's ideal of a perfectly just state was always dismissed as a utopian dream; but if everyone had worked to realize those ideals, they would be true today. . . .

Obama's is a message to demand more--and not just for the young. His idealism is unsettling to many not because it's naive, but because it poses a challenge. If you assume that things cannot get better you have nothing to do but sit back and watch them get worse.

Yes, we Kant!

McCain's Canal Birth
Having failed to gin up a sex scandal, the New York Times tries a new tack to stop John McCain:

Mr. McCain's likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a "natural-born citizen" can hold the nation's highest office.

The Times labors mightily to present this as an actual controversy. It notes that in 1790 Congress passed a law "that did define children of citizens 'born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born,' " and, further, that "laws specific to the Canal Zone," then a U.S. territory, leave no doubt that McCain was born a citizen. So why does the Times think this is an issue? Because "whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months." And if it's on the Internet, there has to be something to it.

The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post have both dealt with this question, the latter way back in 1998, and both concluded with little trouble that McCain is indeed natural born. So he should have no problem--unless, perhaps, his mother had a caesarean section.

Where's the Rest of Me?
Our Feb. 15 item on Democratic "superdelegates" listed Barack Obama's delegate count as 157.5. Some readers wondered how he could have a fractional delegate. The Associated Press explains it:

[Hillary] Clinton picked up a half superdelegate on Wednesday, increasing her overall total to 1,277.

The anomaly happened because the Democrats Abroad will send 22 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, each with a half vote. The system is designed to enable the group to send more people to the convention, without inflating its voting power.

An optimist would say the glass is half full.

The Penn Is Mightier
From a New York Observer profile of Mark Penn, a pollster for the Clinton campaign:

A source in the campaign, speaking on background, said that Mr. Penn's philosophy was perfectly represented by a comment he made during one of Mrs. Clinton's debate preps at campaign headquarters in early winter. About 15 staffers were in a room with Mrs. Clinton discussing how she could best respond to a particular line of attack. One of the aides, the source recalled, had an idea.

"I think you need to show a little bit of humanity," said the aide.

Mr. Penn interjected. "Oh, come on, being human is overrated."

"Being Human Is Overrated": What a great title for Penn's campaign memoir.

Problem and Solution

• "Hillary Seeks Rx for Campaign"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 27

• "Doc Traded Rx for Sex, Then Taped It, Cops Say"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 27

At Long Last, an Anxious Nation Exhales
Michael Bloomberg takes to the op-ed page of the New York Times to deliver an anticlimactic announcement:

I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not--and will not be--a candidate for president.

Just for the record, we aren't running for president either. We were going to say so in an op-ed for the Times, but our bosses at The Wall Street Journal won't let us write for the competition. So if you happen to see anyone who's a Times reader, please spread the word.

The Exception That Proves the Rule
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports on the latest politician to get into trouble:

La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid told a City Council audience last night that an incident last week where police found him and a city employee apparently intoxicated on a city street was "unfortunate," and he promised it would never happen again. . . .

La Mesa police responded to a 911 call from a resident about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and found Madrid and city finance department employee Trisha Turner – both apparently intoxicated – in the mayor's Eastridge neighborhood.

Madrid was lying on the sidewalk near the passenger side of his Ford Explorer. Turner was in the driver's seat, her feet pointed out the open door. Vomit was observed around the SUV.

We wondered what party Madrid belongs to, but the U-T omitted that information. So did the Associated Press and San Diego's KNSD-TV and KGTV. This must mean . . .

But wait. We did a Google search, and it turns out he's a Republican! It also turns out, however, that he participated in a rally to save an Air America station, fought the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, and is a global-warmist true believer. So maybe the reporters just assumed he was one of them.

We Blame Global Warming
"Putin's Anointed Heir Shows Hints of Less Icy Style"--headline, New York Times, Feb. 28

A Fashion Train Wreck
"Amtrak Warns of Bad Ties in Northeast"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 28

World's Shortest Book
"New Eminem Book to Detail His Thoughts"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 27

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb
"Trout Bearing Chemicals Are Even in Our National Parks"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 26

News You Can Use

• "Rats' Whiskers Have Feelings, Too"--headline, Time.com, Feb. 27

• "Can't Name the 11 Planets? Here's Help From a Montana Fourth-Grader"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 27

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "It's Official: Johnny Depp Is Coming to Wisconsin"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 26

• "House Postpones Ethics Vote"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 27

• "U.N. Report Blames Israel for Palestinian Terrorism"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 27

Back to the Future
From the Chicago Sun-Times's "Chicago 24/7 Crime" column:

A man in his 40s who inhaled a powder that helps extinguish fires was hospitalized after a fire that police said was burning in an empty baby stroller in the vestibule of a North Side building early Wednesday.

The fire started about 1:20 a.m. in an empty baby stroller in the vestibule of a building in the 5000 block of North Western Avenue, according to a Lincoln District police sergeant.

Fire crews responded about 1:15 a.m. to a fire at 5037 N. Western Ave. where a man in his 40s inhaled a power [sic] substance that helps extinguish fires, according to Fire Media Affairs spokesman Richard Rosado.

The Chicago Fire Department discovers the secret of time travel, and the Sun-Times treats it as a routine police-beat story? That is what we newspapermen call "burying the lead."

(See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary on Opinion Journal. Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, N. Eckert, Gene Dillenberg, Jim Orheim, Larry DesJardin, Conn Carroll, Jeff Spiegel, John Newman, James Holm, Johnny D'Angelo, Douglas Noren, John Williamson, James Paternoster, Ray Hendel, Arnold Nelson, Andrew Robinson, Steve Bunten, Jared Silverman, Keith Barron, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Mark Van Der Molen, Christian Peck, Alan Utter, Mark Finkelstein, John Sanders, Merv Benson, Dick Maguire, Michael Throop, Jerry Skurnik and Kevin Bloom. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)