Today’s Journal Sentinel’s “Crossroads” section is a virtual festival of fallacious thinking, misunderstanding of reality, and just plain wrong-headedness.

Reader Advisory Committee Member Kelly Kasum Ressel, for instance, criticizes those meddling local bureaucrats who mandate that pool owners put up proper fencing to keep children out. She complains that this places the responsibility on the pool owner rather than where it belongs, on the children’s parents. What she actually has a quarrel with is the old common-law doctrine of the attractive nuisance, which does exactly that. The governments are actually helping pool owners, since if sued under that doctrine they can argue that erecting a fence that complies with local ordinances is exercising reasonable care.

Shouldn’t even “Advisory Hits” have some standards?

Patrick Dorwin of Badger Blogger is quoted in the so-called “Best of the Blogs” implying that drilling in the ANWR will bring down our heating-oil prices this winter. I hate to break it to you, Patrick, but any new drilling wouldn’t yield actual fuel for at least 10 to 15 years — until about 2030, according to the Bush Administration itself — and when it does, it’s not going to make much of a dent in prices. I know that polls show that half of Americans think expanded drilling will lower gas prices by next year, but one would hope our “best” bloggers would stick to the facts rather than faux populism.

Now let’s turn to the letters page. Hoo boy. James Pawlak thinks our history textbooks ignore all the “persons seeking religious freedom” who populated the U.S. Without going too deeply into the history of the American colonists, I can tell you that the most commonly used examples — the Pilgrims and Puritans — wanted the freedom to practice their religion and make sure everybody else in their colony practiced it, or else. That’s not the usually intended meaning of “religious freedom.” (I’m not even going to get into Pawlak’s views on the role of white men in American history.)

Retired MPD Captain Glenn D. Frankovis thinks Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn should send some officers to St. Paul to help with security at the Republican National Convention. What concerns me here is that he twice refers to this as sending “troops.” This paramilitary mindset is a dangerous one, and all too common in those running security for large political gatherings. I hate its spread to urban police forces.

Then there’s blockhead William A. Draves, who thinks that a small gap between Wisconsin males’ and females’ ACT scores — in favor of males — while Wisconsin colleges are graduating more women than men is evidence of some sort of anti-male conspiracy. Of course, Draves either doesn’t know or chooses to ignore that test scores are but one aspect of students’ qualifications that college admissions offices evaluate; high school grades weigh at least as heavily, if not more, and girls generally outdo boys in that arena. He also plays statistical games by not telling us the percentage of college applicants that are male, only the percentage of graduates, as if the other number doesn’t matter.

Well, I’m exhausted. It’s tough when people are being wrong in the newspaper. Especially those the newspaper itself chooses to feature.