You’ve seen this happen whenever kids compete on the playground: one child fails in spectacular fashion, and immediately issues a plaintive cry for a “do-over.” So it goes in the Pachyderm Party, where tea partyists listen to luminaries like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck drive the level of discourse down to grade-school levels. Having failed [...]

I grew up during the heyday of the Saturday morning cartoon. Week after week, I’d watch the adventures of characters such as Scooby Do, Spider-Man and Jonny Quest, all rendered with colors that were only slightly less vivid than those of whatever breakfast cereal I was consuming. But not even the countless hours of animated [...]