WSJ editor is a skeet photo truther

The White House released a photo Saturday to help prove that President Obama does in fact go skeet shooting "all the time." Fact-checkers at the Washington Postweren't satisfied that the photo demonstrated the frequency of Obama's skeet shooting.

And then there's James Taranto, editor at the Wall Street Journal. He out and out doubts the authenticity of the photo. He writes in his "Best of the Web" column:

[A] lot of people, including this columnist, doubt that the photo depicts what it purports to show...

The photo, purportedly shot last Aug. 4 (which happens to be the president's birthday), shows Obama holding a shotgun. The barrel is smoking, indicating that the gun has just been fired. What's odd about it is that the president is aiming straight ahead, as if he were firing a rifle at a stationary target.

But in skeet shooting, the target, a disk known as a clay pigeon, is moving. It is launched from one of two "houses" and travels in a parabolic trajectory across the field. In order to hit it, one has to move the gun so as to follow the path of the clay. It's not impossible that one would fire at shoulder level, as Obama is doing in the photo, but it's unlikely. We therefore surmise that the picture is the product of a photo shoot, not a skeet shoot.