Andrew's Balloon Boy, Trig

Andrew Sullivan has never admitted that he erred in lending early credibility to the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign: The fabricated story that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter, Bristol, and countless others in Alaska government and private life, had entered into a massive conspiracy to trick the public into thinking that she rather than Bristol was Trig Palin's mother.

Even six-year-old Piper Palin would have had to have been in on the coverup, subject to such ruthless family discipline that Sarah could let her go on national TV without risking that she'd tell what she knew about Trig's real mommy and when she knew it.

Here's how the balloon boy, same age as Trig, went on TV and blew the buttons off a real hoax:

[The Fort Collins, Colorado sheriff] said the "a-ha moment" came when the 6-year-old boy, Falcon Heene, said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he thought "we did this for a show."