In a crisis, how do we keep individuals from publicly sharing sensitive information which can endanger lives within minutes? Verification of facts is of utmost importance, but is it immediately possible given the scope and instantaneous nature of the internet?

Fearful of appearing biased, the elite political press failed to call sufficient attention to the Republican Party's radical agenda and disdain for facts. The result is that in the name of balance, the press actually put its thumb on the scale, and prevented a true reckoning.

In a fun way, we can teach ourselves and our kids to become better political consumers than we have been, because our world now demands it and we can no longer afford our ignorance.

The Paul Ryan speech has now triggered a spasm of fact-checking. Maybe what's changed is that surviving serious professional news people are "as mad as hell and not taking it anymore."

Considering that facts are always true, it's surprising how often they can deceive us. That's why all the fighting between the presidential campaigns over the facts and whether they're being manipulated to mislead is much, much more than just petty politics. Thankfully, at least for the moment, we've come light-years from being trapped in a fiction that "fair and balanced" is the best way to cover all the serious issues of the day. Sometimes there is a right answer, and we need people in the media to have the courage to call some balls and strikes as our leaders and those around them are throwing fastballs and curves at us.

How did politicians completely lose their fear of getting caught? When did they lose their shame? When did it become acceptable political behavior to twist reality or just make things up?

It's unsettling when the fact checkers get something wrong, as occurred in a recent PolitiFact review of the claim that median incomes rose $5,500 while Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts. PolitiFact grades this claim as mostly true, when it is mostly false.

When fact-checking organizations tend to find many more conservative lies than liberal ones, rather than respond that conservatives tell far more lies, the fact-checkers go looking for liberal fabrications and find them whether they exist or not.

Rachel Maddow let the folks at Politifact have it again on her Tuesday show. Maddow, who is a harsh critic of the organization and its "truth-o-me...