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

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This is not going to be easy

By Barth on Sun, 04/05/2009 - 3:45pm |
When President Harding died in San Fransisco while on his Voyage of Understanding in 1922 (White House spin being what is was even then, even if it was not called that yet) the national outpouring of grief caused people to...
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Changes Nobody Should Have Believed In

By Barth on Sat, 03/28/2009 - 2:31pm |
This may be the first lesson we learn: The most elemental obligation of a parent, beyond feeding and clothing a child, is to teach and, when she or he gets older, send them to be taught by others. There is...
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My midweek correction and another one long overdue

By Barth on Wed, 03/25/2009 - 10:45pm |
Post under this name usually appear only on the weekend, since I am barely able to eat breakfast during the week, much less dispense gibberish. Last weekend, trying to put the issue of the week in some perspective, and to...
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Trying to Focus

By Barth on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 2:51pm |
It's always the same thing. A cascade of bad news includes one item which seems to allow for howls of outrage or other displays of heightened morality which a) blots out all the other bad news, b) diverts attention to...
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Right and Wrong

By Barth on Sat, 03/14/2009 - 4:21pm |
This never happened: A President, a Democrat, whose daughter has been kidnapped, possibly by Arab terrorists, decided to step aside temporarily so that government policy was not directed by a distraught father. Since there was no Vice President at the...
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Defender of the Faith, Redux

By Barth on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 12:11am |
On the occasion of our new president determining that his religious beliefs permit stem cell research---I hesitate to thank God for that---it seems appropriate to republish, with slight editing to take out references which may not have much meaning today,...
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Making the most of what is happening

By Barth on Sat, 03/07/2009 - 5:32pm |
. Obligations elsewhere require that this week's post be somewhat edited versions of observations sent hither and yon during the week concerning how bad things are, how they got that way and what happens next.The best thing to come from...
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March 4

By Barth on Wed, 03/04/2009 - 6:00pm |
After New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution on June 21, 1788, making it effective under its terms, the Congress operating under the Articles of Confederation set March 4, 1789 as the date on which the Constitution...
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We Were There

By Barth on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 2:25pm |
As with most born in the decade after World War II to parents who understood what the New Deal and the GI Bill meant for their lives, the era of a forward thinking government started to end on that bleak...
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Hope

By Barth on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 2:52pm |
This is the last weekend of the winter, at least the way I see it. It is the last weekend that will pass without a Red Sox game to occupy some of the time, and to accompany me while battling...

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