The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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Patriots' Day Follow-up (Boston Marathon)

2:05:52? You've got to be kidding me! 2:08:41 is only good for fourth place?

That's amazing. Two American men run sub 2:10 marathons, and that gets them fourth and fifth? Tough, tough race.

Let me say congratulations to Robert Cheruiyot the Younger for absolutely smashing the Boston course record set by his namesake, Robert Cheruiyout  the Slightly Older. That's an amazing achievement, and a great day for Boston and for sport. Congratulations are also in order for women's champ Teyba Erkesso, in her first Boston ever. Well done!

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Defending the Constitution (from the Birthers)

Today, as everybody who's ever lived in Boston knows, is Patriots' Day, the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. That means that it's a holiday in Massachusetts and Maine, and it means that today is Boston Marathon day. (Go, Meb and Ryan! Go!) My beloved Red Sox are playing a morning game in Fenway, and all is right with my world.

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Why the Catholic Church Will Not Save Itself

Every month, every week, the Catholic Church's scandal seems to deepen. Andrew Sullivan wants the Pope to resign. Christopher Hitchens wants the Pope arrested. Peggy Noonan has a brilliant column detailing the Catholic hierarchy's inability to grasp the problem and calling for "new blood" in the leadership. These are all reasonable desires. But none of that will happen.

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Flat Worlds, Flat Earths, and Flyover States

Julian Sanchez has a very smart argument about epistemic closure among conservatives, and folks around the blogosphere have been linking to it.

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Role Models Don't Golf

The public shaming of Tiger Woods is apparently never going to end. Too many people are drunk on the feeling of moral authority they get by scolding him.

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Who Can't Get a Gun in This Country?

Norman Leboon, who has threatened to kill Congressman Eric Cantor, has been found unfit to stand trial for psychiatric reasons. This is not a big surprise; last year Leboon was arrested for threatening to have the Archangel Gabriel kill his roommate.

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Why Play with Fire? Four Explanations

In my last post, I was worrying aloud about politicians who just couldn't seem to get it together to denounce violence and generally encourage the lunatic fringe to chill out. The intervening days, with the arrests of the "Hutaree army" and of the lunatic who threatened Eric Cantor on YouTube, make the question even more pressing.

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Death Threats Aren't Politics as Usual

Apparently, there are some Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits who feel that the worst thing about death threats and vandalism is that the politicians being threatened might gain public sympathy. Digby and Billmon both have brilliant analyses of the victim-blaming rhetoric being used here.

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Didn't ESPN Know That Tiger Woods Was Cheating?

After a televised statement, and then a very brief exclusive televised interview, Tiger Woods plans to give another press conference at the beginning of the Master's. All of these press availabilities are on the same subject: his admitted infidelities to his wife. And after each one to date, the media, especially the sports media, has the same verdict: Tiger hasn't said enough. He needs to be more "open." He needs to answer every question that crosses sportswriters' and sportscasters' minds. But the sports media have absolutely no right to ask for more.

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The Media Changes Its Story (Not for the Last Time)

I was watching cable news during part of the run-up to the House vote on health care reform (because I was at the gym, which is where I tend to watch cable news). And the most shocking but entirely unsurprising thing happened. Wolf Blitzer was suddenly pushing back on Republican talking points, which had seemed so reasonable to him for the last year and a half. In fact, when Democratic guests wouldn't push hard enough against the conservative talking points, the Blitzinator would call the Republican out himself.

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https://jamesjmarino.wordpress.com/
Biography

Doctor Cleveland is a transparent pseudonym for Shakespeare scholar Jim Marino, who blogs about politics, education, literature, and the arts. His personal obsessions include live theater, Red Sox baseball, and powerful black coffee. He teaches college, somewhere along America's glorious North Coast. He has also been known to write about Shakespeare and early modern theater.

While he blogs about the general academic life, he does not discuss his current institution, its students, or its employees on the blog. Nor does he use any university resources to blog. Opinions expressed on the blog are not those of his employer, and do not reflect the content of his classes.

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