The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

(NOTE: 2nd post is from 3/23 BOTW archives)

News of the Tautological
“Yemeni Opposition Proposes Transition of Power”–headline, Associated Press, April 2

These Guys Failed Logic 101
“Vice President Joe Biden called [last month] for a nation-wide effort to make the United States the world leader in college completion by 2020, offering a ‘College Completion Tool Kit’ to help,” Reuters reports. Whatever. But this detail late in the story caught our attention:

The plan does not come with any new money. However, Biden did stress that the United States has to be willing to spend more on making education affordable.

Got that logic? The more of your money the government spends on something, the more “affordable” it is.

NewsBusters.org reports on a similar crime against logic. In this case the perpetrator is Andrew Romano of Newsweek, who wrote one of those stories on how ignorant Americans are. Erica Hill of CBS’s “Early Show” explained the article’s premise:

Before immigrants can become U.S. citizens, they have to pass an official test. Recently Newsweek magazine gave that same test to 1,000 Americans. Just 62% passed. 29% of respondents didn’t know the name of the Vice President. It’s Joe Biden, by the way. 73% had no idea what the U.S. was fighting against during the Cold War.

The second example is evidence of troubling ignorance. As to the former, we know Joe Biden’s name, and we’re convinced we’d be smarter if we didn’t.

Now, here is one of Romano’s explanations for this ignorance:

One of the big ones is income inequality in the United States. We’re one of the most in-equal [sic] societies in the developed world. And when people don’t have a lot of money, there’s a difficulty getting a good education, there’s a lack of opportunity and a lack of knowledge. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t do as well as northern European countries, sometimes on these surveys.

Gosh, if only we offered free public education to the poor, we could–oh wait! We do? Hmm, could it be, perhaps, that the problem isn’t “income inequality” but failing schools?

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for thef “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”