The Wall Street Journal: Ethics Shmethics
You know those pull-out quotes that print publications use to highlight an article? Bigger type announcing the more compelling statements to be found within? It's designed to convince you to stop your browsing and want to actually dig in and find out who said that juicy thing and why. So you'd think the quote...since it's called a quote...and has, you know, quotation marks around it, actually appears somewhere in the piece, right?

Not necessarily. Even when it's a quote like "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander-in-chief."

Also, you'd think that a sentence like "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam," implies that the person saying it was there, on the boat, you know, at the same time as Mr. Kerry. Hence allowing the conclusion that follows.

Not necessarily.

Kevin Drum has the story and the picture at Washington Monthly.

Can we please please get a clip of a Republican saying "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'was' was"?

[MORE: Read about the history of the guy who wrote the crazy opinion (the one without the quote he was quoted as saying) here.]