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The dignosis is all part of the fun at the Clinical Pathologic Conference, which in past years has examined the deaths of Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander the Great, Ludwig van Beethoven, General George Custer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Claudius. Weblog is glad to be sitting in an office scanning newspaper Web sites (though I could have done without the images of Fournier's gangrene I turned up in an online search, thank you very much).

Flier mire
School officials at DuPont-Tyler Middle School in Hermitage, Tennessee, say they've made a mistake. A flier advertising a Christian club called First Priority was unconstitutional. Did it say "This school only believes in the Christian God of the Bible"? No. Did it say "Your child is not welcome here unless he or she has been washed in the blood of the Lamb"? No. The Tennessean explains: "The flier has big type that proclaims, 'The Day That Changed Dupont-Tyler!' and displays the school's name in two other places." Horrors! "I'm trying to be fair," parent Mary Chapman told the paper, "but I still have a problem with it because it had the school name on it. It sounds like an endorsement." Coming up, fliers that say, "Please come to our club. We can't tell you where it meets, but maybe some other kid will tell you where—but don't ask on school grounds during regular school hours, please. That's unconstitutional."

History:

• Bigotry's new low | In its January 21 issue, The New Republic has sunk into the swamp of bigotry as low as it could go. It gave 25 pages to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen so that he could offer Catholics a theological interpretation of what their faith entails, and hint broadly that the Church deserves destruction as an ally of the anti-Christ and enemy of humankind. (Michael Novak, New Republic Online)
  
  
• 130 years on, sacred artifact is back with rightful owners | Tabot returned to Ethiopia (The Scotsman)
  
  
• Also: Scottish church gives back looted carving (The Times)
  
  
• Also: Ethiopian artifact returning home (BBC)
  
  

Education:

• Black ministers start schools to fill in gaps | At wits' end over the slow pace of school reform and the widening gap in educational achievement between cities and suburbs, African-American parents in major urban areas are turning to what has long been the institutional cornerstone of inner-city communities - the churches - as their last, best hope for change (The Christian Science Monitor)
  
  
• Contrary OCC professor back | Students seem oblivious to bait (Los Angeles Times)
  
  

Church and state:

• Texas officials' pre-meeting prayers draw complaints | One resident claims county commissioners are being insensitive, intolerant of other religions during invocations. (Associated Press)
  
  
• Religious groups expect compromise on day care | Yielding to religious objections, a Florida lawmaker is backing off her drive to place church-run child-care centers under state regulation, lobbyists for religious groups say (The Orlando Sentinel)
  
  

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January (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46