Heaven and Earth, Horatio

Friends, you can't make this stuff up. The Wall Street Journal informs us

Colorado Flying-Saucer Believers Have Ghost Hunters in Their Sights.

DENVER—There has been plenty of partisan rancor across Colorado as Election Day approaches. Here in the capital, it's out of this world.

Ballot Initiative 300 would require the city to set up an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission, stocked with Ph.D. scientists, to “ensure the health, safety and cultural awareness of Denver residents” when it comes to future contact “with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles.” . . .

Promoting the initiative: Jeff Peckman, a silver-haired entrepreneur who lives with his parents. "Low overhead," he explains. Mr. Peckman is a firm believer in intergalactic life, though he has never been personally contacted by an alien. That gives him more credibility, he says; it's harder to dismiss him as biased. ....

“We need to get this out of the realm of the Tooth Fairy and into the realm of diplomatic protocol,” says Ricky Butterfass, who works on the campaign.

But wait. It gets better. The major opponent is... a ghost-hunter. Bryan Bonner "dismisses the unidentified-flying-object buffs as delusional if not outright frauds."

One thing about Mr. Bonner: He spends his spare time crawling through spooky spaces, deploying remote digital thermometers, seismographs, infrared cameras, electromagnetic field detectors and Nerf balls in pursuit of evidence of the paranormal. He is, in short, a ghost hunter.

And he has rallied his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society to fight Initiative 300 as an embarrassment to science—and to Denver.

Replies Clifford Clift, a Colorado UFO researcher: "The paranormal group is saying we're outlandish?"

So apparently the paranormal folks are accusing the UFO folks of being an embarrassment to science; and a ghost hunter is calling UFO hunters "delusional." Friends, if the irony were any thicker, we could coke it up and smelt steel.