Page A24 of today's New York Times had the jump of a story on the John Kerry campaign, which included this passage:

At the chili feed in Peterborough and another in Keene on Thursday, [Kerry] was roundly applauded when he took issue with Dr. Dean's assertion that the capture of Saddam Hussein "did not make America safer."

Every person in the room, he said, "would agree that the world is safer" because of the capture.

At the last stop of the day in Keene, where he arrived almost an hour late because of foggy roads, he demanded of Dr. Dean, "How can you possibly say that America is not safer?"

Right next to it -- one column over -- was the headline "Terror Alert Is Raised to 'High,' Increasing Scrutiny of Travelers."

Yet people are reading these two stories as if one doesn't have a thing to do with the other.