By Tom Carter Why has our political discourse become so uncivil?  There are a number of explanations, but the most important is that we simply have too much access to bad information.  The information explosion of the past couple of decades has come about in different ways.  The most deleterious has been the internet, a true information superhighway with a seemingly infinite number of unrestricted on-ramps. Cable TV has played a role, of course.  Without it, the only sources of information for most people would be newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV, and conversation with other people.  With it, we have a flood of sources of information, some of it of dubious quality and veracity.  But nothing equals the impact of the internet.  Anyone with a computer and a means of connecting it has access to “news” and opinion from an uncountable number of sources, including millions of blogs. It’s easy to see the problem — most of that “news” and opinion is of very low quality, if quality is to be defined as well-reasoned and fact-based information.