Testing a new power: John Dingell, Jr. should retire

On Tuesday, I called for Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee to retire. Thirty minutes later, he did. Behold: the power of the Gillette-Torvik Blog.

Today I read an article about Michigan Congressman John Dingell, who is serving his 30th term. Tomorrow he will become the longest-serving member of Congress ever. It will be his 20,997th day on the "job."

Mr. Dingell is 86 years old. He should retire.

Birthers have been around longer than we think.

In March, I pointed out that a lot of what we call politics is really a non-cartoon example of Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy." As I noted then, this is not an original thought.  However, Reuters has another example of this phenomenom. Democrats used to be birthers. Of course, they were not questioning whether President Obama is a natural born citizen. Instead they were questioning whether George Romney, Mitt Romney's father, was eligible to become president of the United States.