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These candidates can’t take a joke: Inside the baffling humorlessness of presidential politics

This undated photo provided by the vkontakte website shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (AP)

The death penalty’s destructive morality exposed: “We must overcome the impulse for vengeance”

“Sleep with your grandmother”: What passed for contraception advice for a teenage girl in the ’60s

(Reuters/Carlo Allegri)

“Too small a change”: How St. Patrick’s Day became a political lightning rod

(Dodge)

“I can hardly stand the excitement”: How Presidents’ Day became Shopping Weekend

(AP/Seth Wenig/Bridget Besaw Gorman)

America’s conspiracy mania: Why Ebola and 9/11 truthers reflect a tortured history

(<a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-320989p1.html'>360b</a>, <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-368149p1.html'>AR Pictures</a> via <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/'>Shutterstock</a>/Salon)

Welcome to Coca-Cola Town, USA: America’s scary corporate naming problem

Participants carry a large U.S. flag at a Fourth of July Parade in Los Angeles, California, July 4, 2013. (Reuters/Jonathan Alcorn)

I hate the Fourth of July

Bowe Bergdahl, Rand Paul (AP/U.S. Army/Timothy D. Easley)

GOP flunks Bergdahl lesson: How it revealed total ignorance about prisoner swaps

This undated photo provided by the vkontakte website shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (AP)

Don’t execute Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Why present-day politics shouldn’t dictate criminal penalties

(<a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-1362328p1.html'>Serlena Bessonova</a> via <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/'>Shutterstock</a>)

Children are sexual creatures

(Reuters/Goran Tomasevic/<a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-950590p1.html'>Uros Zunic</a> via <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/'>Shutterstock</a>/Salon)

What’s not being taught about the Iraq war

(KamiGami)

I was a screenwriting guru groupie