USB mouse clicks seem to go to /dev/null

I have 2 usb mice and 1 usb keyboard. I ran into this sequence of problems
where my mouse clicks were working for most things I clicked on, and the working
things changed over time:

1) I couldn't click on icons on the desktop but the gnome-panel was fully functional
2) Started a terminal (from gnome-panel launcher)
3) Couldn't move window around (focus and clicking did nothing, mouse movement fine)
4) Believing it was the window manager, I hit CTRL-ALT-Backspace, and logged in
5) Icons on desktop still unresponsive
6) Started gnome-terminal and firefix
  - now gnome-panel was unresponsive (couldn't start any other apps)
7) Started "xev" from terminal and the dialog got the focus.
  - clicking in the dialog usually did nothing but behaved as if I was clicking
in the terminal (highlighting rows of text on double clicks)
  - Control-C events were picked up but I couldn't kill it because the dialog
had the focus.
8) Plugged in my second USB mouse and it was working fine. First one still broken
9) Plugged-out and -in my broken mouse and then it was working fine

So it looks like it isn't metacity or any particular application (although I
could always click on the gnome-terminal launcher and it seemed that once an
application was launched the mouse clicks for it would go to /dev/null).

If you want any info I'd be happy to provide it. I'm just trying to help out
people who actually want to make Linux better for all.

Thanks for a great distrobution!