Why are people having so much trouble understanding rhetorical devices?

You may remember Justice Scalia the other day tweaking the kids at Princeton for not being able to handle r eductio ad absurdum : It's ...

"Man convicted of molesting a dead deer and shooting horse to have sex with it 'assaulted female cop after shoplifting from Walmart.'"

Now, there's a headline ! And it happened in Wisconsin. In the aptly named city of Superior .

James Taranto has a question and a prediction about social conservatism.

The question: If liberal baby boomers stubbornly refuse to see the damage that their idea of "progress" has wrought, what about yo...

The 5-year-old boy who chose to be Daphne from "Scooby-Doo" for Halloween.

And the mother who chose to blog about it. So now there's a viral photo on the internet of a boy dressed as a girl and endless speculat...