Of all the rites of American politics that attend the presidential election, none is more irritating than the inevitable third-party bubble. Around this time four years ago, a coalition of irrelevant old politicos -- former Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford officials and a former governor of Maine -- formed a group called Unity '08 to create a bipartisan presidential ticket. They had big dreams of holding online primaries and recruiting candidates like New York City's independent mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The effort sputtered, then pooped out . But the repeated failure of the centrist third-party movement has not discouraged its promoters. The just-launched "Americans Elect" effort promises to be "the first ever open presidential nominating process" through an online convention. "We will attract millions of registered voters," the group claims on its website. "We will attract serious, qualified presidential candidates." Both are unlikely to happen -- so far the group has signed up about 17...

It was just three short years ago that most Republicans with Blue State or national ambitions believed we had to address climate change. Today, the list of Republicans who once tried to woo Democrats and Independents just happens to overlap with the list of Republicans who have recently decided -- in the face of consistently worsening extreme weather, no less -- that climate change isn't happening after all: John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, Scott Brown, Chris Christie, even Sarah Palin. Pawlenty's evangelical pastor, Leith Anderson, has publicly endorsed taking action to reduce carbon emissions, and Pawlenty even went so far as to apologize for once agreeing with his spiritual mentor. Pawlenty's about-face begs the question: what happened to the rising tide of evangelical environmentalists who were supposed to be the Earth's salvation? In 2005, the Washington Post and The New York Times both ran long features introducing their readers to this new ideology of "...