James Taranto (born 1966) is a Manhattan-based columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of its online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com. He is best known for his daily online column, entitled Best of the Web Today, in which he links to and comments on news stories and Web sites submitted by readers.

Most of Taranto's commentary is politically oriented and conservative/neoliberal in perspective. He lambastes various public figures and organizations, from John Kerry, often described as "the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam," to Reuters, for which he uses headlines with excessive use of quotes in mockery of the service's overuse of scare quotes.

Taranto comments occasionally on topics of special interest to him such as the Roe effect (which proposes that parents who support abortion rights will have fewer children, causing support for abortion rights and politically liberal causes to decline among young people) in his column and also wrote an article about it. Taranto occasionally propounds subtle deductions derived through detailed calculations based on published statistics.

Best of the Web Today features a number of recurrent in jokes and self-referential word plays that are not readily apparent to novice readers. One of Taranto's pet peeves is the metric system of measurements, "an outmoded collection of weights and measures based on pagan superstitions about the power of the number 10."

Best of the Web Today also includes non-political items which are concerned with journalism nationwide. Often-seen titles are "You Don't Say", "This Just In", or "Stop the Presses", followed by a common-sense headline such as "Shedding a Few Pounds Beneficial for Obese" (June 1, 2004) or "Sperm May Play Role in Growth of Embryo" (May 13, 2004). Another commonly used title is "What Would We Do Without Experts?", followed by headlines such as "Experts Remind Staying Warm Important After Cold Contributes to 5 Deaths" (January 7, 2004). "World's Smallest Violin" is his lead-in for stories about whiners undeserving of sympathy. A more recent recurring feature is "Bottom Stories of the Day", rounding up supposedly unimportant or unsurprising news items, such as "No E. Coli Reported in Tompkins County" (December 8, 2006).

Taranto exposes what he sees as overly harsh punishment of minor drug- or weapon-related offenses in schools under the title "Zero-Tolerance Watch". He corrects his previous mistakes under the title "Homer Nods". Taranto used to publish a section called "Good News Watch" to counteract what he viewed as liberal media bias in covering the 2003 Iraq war and the subsequent U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Other recurring features include "Homelessness Rediscovery Watch" and references to Generalissimo Francisco Franco (in turn an obvious reference to the catch phrase from Saturday Night Live).

Taranto attended California State University, Northridge but "never bothered to graduate".