The New Republic

The 24-hour news cycle yielded one of its better sitcom interludes last week when Rand Paul went to Howard University, the historically black college, to tell its student body why it needed the Republican Party. The libertarian junior senator from Kentucky, at one point, asked for a show-of-hands from those who knew that most of the African Americans who founded the NAACP more than 100 years ago were Republican. READ MORE >>

When the Boston Red Sox snapped the “Curse of the Bambino” by winning the World Series in 2004, their first since 1918, I remarked to a friend that the worst thing about it would be the inevitable New Yorker essay by Roger Angell, a longtime, vocal Red Sox fan. READ MORE >>

Spring comes late to Boston. Most years, the day of the Marathon is one of the first when the air feels soft and world is green. After the long New England winter, it's something of a holy day—roads and businesses shut down, and people rediscover their city. It’s not just that Bostonians love their hometown and their sports. They also love their history: The Marathon has a rich tradition as a leveler of class and a vehicle for activism. Its 117 years tell the story of one of America’s oldest cities. READ MORE >>

The U.S. security establishment has, since September 11, 2001, gotten pretty good at making sporting events safe. About $2 billion per year goes into security at competitions, and the number rises to $6 billion in years with gigantic productions like an Olympics and a World Cup. READ MORE >>

On Tuesday night the Chicago White Sox, of the American League, were down three runs in the top of the ninth inning when closer Rafael Soriano, of the National League's Washington Nationals, gave up a two-run homer with two outs, bringing the tying run to the plate. That batter flew out, ending the game. READ MORE >>

All parents outsource something. Even the most attached of parents, neurotically determined to be their children's omnipresent everything, outsource their children's education, unless they home-school. Although I know way too many parents who think getting a babysitter for one night a month is an unacceptable loss of control, they usually relent, eventually (or divorce). One friend of mine, who does not enjoy the water, lets his parents take his daughter to the pool one afternoon a week, where she is learning to swim with Grandma and Grandpa. READ MORE >>

When you picked your bracket for this month’s NCAA basketball tournament, you picked it with an eye to win—after all, you had $5 riding on it in the office pool, part of the estimated $12 billion that goes into March Madness betting each year. So you probably did your research and went mostly with the favorites, like Duke and Indiana. In other words, you picked chalk. “There Will Be Chalk,” predicted Basketball Prospectus when last year’s bracket was set. (It was right: Top-ranked Kentucky won.) READ MORE >>

We all crowded against the right-side windows as our tour bus crept up on the Amish. There were three of them—brothers by the color and cut of their hair—and they sat in descending order on the driving bench of a horse-drawn cart. As they rolled on, some rusty contraption plucked cornstalks out of the ground and fanned them on the cart’s bed. READ MORE >>

Tiger Woods is back, sort of. A couple of weeks ago, he was invited to play golf with Barack Obama, and the occasion had the feel of an official pardon, a suggestion that Tiger had sufficiently rehabbed himself, on and off the course, that he could again be welcome in presidential company. Lately, his game has also shown signs of twitching to life. READ MORE >>

Two years ago, at the fifth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the backdrop in the main panel room featured a single image, repeated like wallpaper: Kobe Bryant putting up a fadeaway shot as the Houston Rockets' Shane Battier conspicuously sticks his hand in his face. To the roughly 1500 attendees, it was a loaded image—a picture backed by a thousand words. READ MORE >>