What people adore about superhero movies is the signal quality of the Christopher Nolan films - their complete lack of irony when it comes to the portrayal of heroism and the need for heroes to confront evil.

America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

Obama's coalition would have consigned him to the political margins as little as 12 years ago, but the nation's demographic changes are moving far more quickly than most Republicans anticipated.

Your race and gender don't change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will.

There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.

If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right's deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.

The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.