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What an eerie coincidence. It turns out that 1969 gave birth both to the Monty Python comedy troupe as well as to Christine O'Donnell , Tea Party darling and Republican nominee for one of Delaware's two U.S. Senate seats. What do Monty Python and O'Donnell have in common? Why, witches, of course!!! One of the highlights from the Pythons' 1975 feature film, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is a scene that employs a scientific method -- one that I can easily see some Tea Party candidates employing in public policy if given the chance -- to determine whether a woman is, in fact, a witch. In one of the most bizarre beginnings to a political advertisement EVER, 2010 Senate candidate O'Donnell announces that "I am not a witch." O'Donnell, as you may have heard, admitted in 1999 on Bill Maher's ABC show, "Politically Incorrect," that she had "dabbled in witchcraft" and had a date "on a satanic altar." Whether or...

There's growing concern with higher education's affordability problem, as well there should be. It's hard to see how college will promote social mobility if a kid's ability to access it is increasingly linked to whether or not his family has money. So it's heartening to see college leaders attempting to provide solutions. But it'd be even better if we first saw them earnestly attempting to understand where the real sources of trouble lie. I'm afraid that step's being skipped a bit too often, running the risk of making things worse. Here's a recent example. At this month's Regents Board Meeting , University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly was explicitly asked to name some solutions to promoting affordability at his institutions. There were many ways he could respond. To his credit, Reilly acknowledged the importance of growing the state's paltry support for need-based aid and he said that multiple solutions were needed--there...