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

Take That, Taliban!
” ‘American Idol’ Top 3 Unveiled”–headline, Hartford Courant, May 12

Bottom Stories of the Day
“Cascade Bicycle Club Leader Quits for $95,000 Job With Seattle Mayor”–headline, Seattle Times, May 13

Bin Laden Wasn’t All Bad. Oh Wait, Maybe He Was.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a group that advocates “peaceful coexistence” and keeps tabs on radical Islam, takes note of a disturbing press release from the Muslim American Society, which runs a big mosque in Boston:

On May 4th, 2011, an official Muslim American Society press release bemoaned “the terror and the loss of blood that came with Osama Bin Laden’s death,” and painted a positive picture of the Al Qaeda leader. The release was penned by North Carolina Muslim American Society leader Khalilah Sabra.

The press release, titled “Agreeing to Disagree About the Death of Osama bin Laden,” lauded bin Laden’s early career:

Osama bin Laden cared unrelentingly about the Afghan Muslim children in the same way he cared about his own children, and believed in the right to liberate the Afghan people from their Russian aggressors. . . . He was a visionary who believed in the possibility of an Islamic state in Afghanistan and the possibility that this thing might someday be. There was nothing wrong with that dream, even if it differs from the one that al Americans have for themselves.

A follow-up press release (released six days later, according to AFPAT, though erroneously dated May 2) was titled “Retraction of Agreeing to Disagree”:

[The earlier] email does not represent in any way the position of the Muslim American Society and its leadership. We are investigating the matter internally to prevent this from happening again.

“Muslim American Society has some explaining to do,” AFPAT says with dry understatement:

There are two possibilities here. Either there is an internal divide, or this release/retraction is a technique that gives Muslim American Society a way to have its cake and eat it too: on the one hand, it can deny that its official “Press Statement” was its official position. On the other, it can wink to radicals and claim that the retraction was only to satisfy the unbelievers.

Is this a version of the double game typically played by Islamists–speaking softly in English to the general public and hatefully in Arabic to their constituency?

There’s actually a third possibility. When an individual upsets people by saying X, then retracts X and claims it didn’t reflect his true beliefs, it’s a safe bet the last statement is a lie. Similarly, the bin Laden eulogy might simply have been a classic gaffe: an ill-considered expression of a sincere sentiment.

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.”