"The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately," President Obama told NBC's Jay Leno last night.
Wait, "unfortunately"? Does the president really wish more Americans were killed in terrorist attacks? Indeed, orders of magnitude more, since nationwide traffic fatalities typically run between 30,000 and 50,000 a year?
Of course not. Obviously when he deployed that adverb he was thinking of the unfortunate souls killed in car accidents, not the victims of terrorism. He simply misspoke--just as Todd Akin did last year when he used the unfortunate phrase "legitimate rape." But for some reason, the World's Greatest Orator and the most powerful man in the world is held to lower standards of verbal exactitude than a lowly congressman from Missouri.
James Taranto, Wall St. Journal, August 7
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