A little news from Boston: sports talk radio here is still spitting blood over the booing of the American national anthem at a hockey playoff game in Montreal a couple of days ago. Anent which, one caller phoned in and reported in high dudgeon that the lyrics, as posted on the scoreboard at an earlier Montreal Canadiens game, had a question mark after "home of the brave".

But the scandal goes further. If you visit the Library of Congress web site, and read the first verse in Francis Scott Key's own handwriting -- all that's usually performed at sports games -- you will find that it ends in a question mark. And for no better reason than that the verse itself ends in a question.

Why, oh why, does the Library of Congress hate America?