John Kerry claims he ran the Boston Marathon in the 70's or 80's, but ESPN seems to be unable to confirm he's run the Marathon, ever.

Now, I make fun of a lot of left-wing bloggers for being self-styled "internet detectives," thinking they can become the next Woodward and Bernstein by doing a little Yahoo-searching and then adding some daft left-wing conspiracy-theorizing.

But there are certain things that "internet detectives" can prove or disprove. Like, I don't know, determining whether a man called by Dan Rather an "unimpeachable source" really was so or whether he was in fact a rabidly-partisan Texas Democrat and all around crank with a five year history of making ridiculous allegations against Bush as well as likening him to Adolf Hitler

Another thing googling and yahooing could possibly prove is whether John Kerry ever actually ran the Boston Marathon, as he claims. Or even if he was physically present in Boston on Marathon day.

I don't know if anyone's up for this, but RL sent me the dats of all Boston Marathons through the 70's and 80's. He's already determined that Kerry was in Washington DC for the 1971 date. One down, nineteen to go.

Kerry's people won't say which Marathon it was he supposedly ran, because, of course, they don't want to help disprove a lie. But we could, possibly, eliminate all or most dates.

If you feel like doing this, pick a date, google, and then post your evidence that Kerry was either out of town or has his schedule well-accounted for that day.

If you don't feel like doing this, well, that's fine too.

April 20, 1970
April 19, 1971 Washington, DC at Dewey Canyon III
April 17, 1972 -- David: Moves back to his house from DC (no cite)
April 17, 1973
April 15, 1974
April 21, 1975
April 19, 1975
April 19, 1976
April 18, 1977
April 17, 1978
April 16, 1979

April 21, 1980
April 20, 1981
April 19, 1982
April 18, 1983
April 16, 1984
April 15, 1985
April 21, 1986 -- David: chairs Senate Subcommittee on Iran-Contra
April 20, 1987
April 18, 1988
April 17, 1989 -- David: Concludes investigations on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations

Will this prove anything? I don't know. I sort of suspect that Kerry can offer some date upon which he jogged in Boston sometime around the Boston Marathon, and of course the liberal legacy media will tell us that's close enough.

Still, if we can eliminate all dates upon which he simply could not have "run the Boston Marathon," we could then focus Lexis/Nexis searches on those dates remaining where maybe he possibly could have, and see if any Boston media mentions Kerry running on those dates.