Our say: John Paul Jones needn't be asked to show his ID

You might think that if there's someone at the Naval Academy who will never be asked to show an ID, it's John Paul Jones, lying sedately in his crypt under the academy's Chapel.

That will most likely continue to be true. But a recent story raised at least a slim possibility that the Revolutionary War naval hero (or at least the body presumed to be him) might someday, in a manner of speaking, be asked for proof of identity.

As Washington College professor Adam Goodheart recounts in an article in the April Smithsonian Magazine, the memorial service on Jones' arrival in Annapolis, 100 years ago this Monday, was one of the...