Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Terry had no choice but to win the NBA title. Before the season started, he had himself tattooed with an image of the championship trophy. After the Mavericks won the championship Sunday, he said, "When you do something crazy like that, you have to back it up."

Good morning.

John McCormack is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" serenades long-shot Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as he makes his way to the stage in the Turf Valley Resort's ballroom. He offers perfunctory thanks to the cheering crowd, but the 300 Howard County, Maryland, Republicans continue to applaud, and applaud, and applaud. "Awwww shucky ducky!"says Cain. "That's an old saying from back down home, folks. You all just don't know how welcome you make me feel."

A recent Internet fad called planking has people posting photos of themselves lying face down in unusual places. Now an Australian comedian has started "cone-ing." Alki Stevens has videotaped himself ordering ice cream cones at drive-thru windows. Instead of grabbing the cone, he grabs the top of the treat.

Raising student achievement through new teaching methods is one of Kentucky's ongoing goals.  It’s been on the minds of education activists with the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence. Sarah Buhayar is the program manager of the Measures of Effective Teaching, which sponsored by the Gates Foundation.  Buhayar, who's been working with the Prichard Committee, says much of their research focuses on student evaluation of teachers.

Penelope Fitzgerald's nine novels are thin enough that if you were so inclined, you could take her entire literary output down from the shelf with a single stretched hand. You'd be holding an eclectic bunch. There's the murder mystery set in a museum of ancient artifacts. There's the one about an 18th century German poet and his love for a not-very-bright-15-year-old. And then there's the one I find myself going back to again and again, the one that taught me that it's possible to get sadness and humor into the same book and even the same sentence: At Freddie's.

It's been revealed that a widely-read Syrian blog, "Gay Girl In Damascus" was in fact written by an American male grad student living in Scotland. The blogger's accounts were watched even more closely in recent months as the Syrian government cracked down on the popular uprising that's spread throughout the country.

The state of Kansas just did away with its arts agency, the first state in the country to do so. The arts community is up in arms about this, but there are some good arguments for government getting out of arts funding. Other states are heading in the same direction as Kansas.

Over the weekend, Syrian troops regained control of a town near the border with Turkey. There was heavy fighting reported, and a mass grave was discovered.

Steve Inskeep talks to terrorism and insurgency expert Bruce Hoffman about the death of Fazel Abdullah Mohammed, al-Qaida's leader in East Africa. They'll discuss the wider implications of his death and the other set-backs to al-Qaida in recent months.