It may not have been one of my most important journalistic assignments, but going up to Bristol, Conn., to spend a Sunday afternoon in October 1991 with Chris Berman, Tom Jackson and the rest of ESPN's NFL Prime Time crew still rates among the most enjoyable. I remember how agog I was as they led me into their inner sanctum, a dimly lit conference room with mammoth bowls of chips and popcorn, footballs for tossing around (for mood establishment) and, most impressively (especially for 1991), 15 or so televisions arrayed along one wall so they could watch every game in progress.

A leading conservative trope these days seems to be a genuine (although I wonder how genuine) puzzlement over liberal anger. For reasons we'll get to shortly, the Fourth of July strikes me as a very appropriate occasion on which to explain that anger's sources. Permit me, then, as a certain famous American document once put it, to submit these facts to a candid world.