He’s never missed a game, he never spells it wrong

• It’s almost exactly eight miles from our driveway to our youngest daughter’s dormitory at college (which makes for a convenient laundry run). In the course of those eight miles, I pass a historical marker for the site of the Women’s Rights Convention of 1852, Bayard Rustin’s childhood home, and the statue of Frederick Douglass pictured here. Pretty cool.

• Today is February 13. Johnnie Kamahi Warren was unarmed when killed by police on February 13, 2012. Sgt. Manuel Loggins Jr. was unarmed when killed by police on February 7, 2012. Federico Pereira was unarmed when killed by police on February 5, 1991.

• The Hilton heirs continue their campaign to convince America that a larger estate tax is a wise and necessary policy.

• “Americans Are Fleeing Religion and Republicans Are to Blame,” writes Lisa Wade at Pacific Standard. “Sociologists Michael Hout and Claude Fischer … argue that the retreat from religious affiliation is, essentially, a retreat from the political right.”

There was a wave of discussion of this following the 2008 elections, and an even bigger wave of such discussion following the 2012 election. Both of those waves dissipated quickly without any lasting effect. Prediction: If Republicans don’t win back the White House in 2016, you’ll see another big wave of such talk. Prediction No. 2: That discussion, also, will whimper out without any lasting effect.

• RIP Dean Smith. Ari Kohen links us to this story: “You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.”

Dean Smith received an honorary doctorate from Eastern University the same day I got my bachelors degrees there. I don’t recall anything specific about his commencement address except a general sense that if he’d delivered it in a locker room at half time we’d have kicked butt in the second half.

• “Karen Baber and Brian Fuller make a good team. On the fly in a courthouse, they sorted things out and put together a stronger argument than their state’s Supreme Court Justice.”

• Here’s a different take on one of my favorite songs. This is Buddy Greene covering Mark Heard’s “Rise from the Ruins.”

It’s a fine Southern Gospel arrangement, with a few accidental (I think) alterations to the lyrics that make Heard’s this-worldly theology fit slightly better with the other-worldly ideology of Southern Gospel music. Heard’s message — “rock this boat,” don’t become “chauffeurs for the powers that be” — seems to elude the audience just as much as the beat they’re enthusiastically trying to slap and snap along to, but Buddy Greene and his buddy Jethro on the piano are pretty good here.

For comparison’s sake, here’s the original album version by Mark Heard. And here’s Joan Baez’s take on the song.