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

There Goes the Neighborhood
“UN Worries al-Qaida Is Moving Into Syria”–headline, DailyCaller.com, May 18

Shortest Books Ever Written
“Why Soccer Is Better Than Football”–headline, The Wall Street Journal, May 18

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Soap Lake Will Remain ‘Soap Lake’ “–headline, Seattle Times, May 19
  • “Ron Paul Endorsed by Jon Hansen After Paring Back 2012 Presidential Campaign”–headline, Huffington Post, May 19

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
Since we started today’s column by discussing a logical fallacy, let’s conclude it with another one. On Friday we said that literary agent Miriam Goderich’s explanation for the 1991 brochure claiming Barack Obama was born in Kenya “begs the question.” This brought several emails from pedantic readers eager to tell us that “beg the question” does not mean simply “raise the question”–a common mistake–but has a specific meaning in logic.

Guys, we know, and we used the term advisedly. Here’s an explanation from BegTheQuestion.info:

“Begging the question” is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

A simple example would be “I think he is unattractive because he is ugly.” The adjective “ugly” does not explain why the subject is “unattractive”–they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.

Another way of putting it is that you beg the question when your response raises the same question that you were purporting to answer. The question that Goderich was implicitly answering was: Where did the error regarding Obama’s birthplace come from? Her answer told us only that she failed to catch it–not where it came from. We were right to say she begged the question because she begged the question. Oops, there we go.

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