(The) United States (of whatever)

Re a post by Amando de Miguel in his interesting, if fairly Pleistocene, language column for Libertad Digital, I’ve compiled a little table of hits over time from Mark Davies’ corpus for several Spanish versions of the Great Satan (no hits in there for el Gran Satanás unfortunately). I’ve omitted USA = América because I’m…

Coroner plays St James’ Infirmary

Following the news about a Galician politician-trombonist, here’s a Louisianan trumpet-playing coroner: The first time Dr. Minyard ran, in 1969, he lost to the incumbent. But four years later, he and a slate of other candidates viewed as reformers – including Harry Connick Sr., the “Singing D.A.” – were swept into office. Another of those…