NORWAY: The Price of a Lie

It sometimes seems that elected officials can get away with a good deal of wrongdoing, as long as they honestly own up to their sins when they are caught. Let a politician be trapped in a bold-faced lie, however, and he may well be finished. Britain's War Minister John Profumo learned that lesson eight years ago when he falsely assured Parliament that he had never consorted with a tart named Christine Keeler.

Last week another and more prosaic lie proved the undoing of Norway's chunky, affable and usually adroit Prime Minister Per Borten, 57.

Aboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Oslo...