Dan Flaherty is the editor of the political site Blue Dog Reaganite, as well as The Sports Notebook series of sports weblogs. His college football notebook debuted just before the 2009 season. Baseball is planned for release in time for 2010 spring training and pro football and college basketball are likely to follow sometime after that.

Blue Dog Reaganite is the confessions of someone who calls himself a "pre-1968 Democrat" at heart, but has been displaced by the Left's takeover of the party. Dan maintains an alliance with populist conservatives in the hopes for re-taking the country from secular liberalism and libertarianism. The site specifically honors the great "Rascal King" of Irish Boston, James Michael Curley, along with Ronald Reagan, a man Flaherty believes should be on Mount Rushmore.

He grew up in Wisconsin, just outside Milwaukee, and pulls for the Badgers in college football and basketball. The latter was not always the case--his first college hoops memories are of going to Marquette games, and he later attended Indiana University for three years and was a devout fan of Bob Knight. But IU's unceremonious and slanderous dismissal of the General (as well as Dan's own personal failure to graduate from Bloomington) have eliminated any residual loyalty to the crimson-and-cream, though he still maintains that the basketball fans of the state of Indiana are the premier sports fans of any kind in the country. In looking for a college basketball home, returning to Marquette was not an option, after the Warriors caved in to political correctness and re-named their team. As the years went by and he attended more UW football games, including the 2006 Capital One Bowl, which he covered from the press box, his desire for an end to the schism in his basketball and football life gradually increased, and eventually he came out of the closet as a full-fledged Badger fan in all sports.

One of his special passions is a deep interest in the city of Boston, a passion that bore fruit in the novel Fulcrum, a tale of Irish Catholic life in the Old Towne during the immediate postwar period. In sports, that meant he grabbed on to the Red Sox. It was an interest that started slowly in the aftermath of the 1986 World Series, gained steam gradually and resulted in his eventual arrival in Red Sox Nation prior to the 1997 season. His Boston interests extend to the Celtics and Bruins, in addition to a belief that Cheers was the greatest TV show ever produced. Full disclosure laws require him to inform readers that as a teenager he did root for the Mets in the '86 Series and in his youthful ignorance had the audacity to hate the Bird-era Celtics. He understands and accepts that the city of Boston may require him to do the Polar Bear routine in the Charles River on New Year's Day to cleanse his soul of past sins.

The Madison-to-Boston corridor defines his sports life, but there is one exception, thanks to a fluke of history. During the late 1970s, his father rooted for the George Allen-era Redskins. As a young boy, Dan grafted on to the 'Skins and hung on to them well after his dad moved on. He recalls vividly December of 1979, when Washington blew leads of 17-0 and 34-21 in the finale at Dallas and lost homefield advantage, the division and the playoffs all in one fell swoop. It was the most costly regular season in the modern age of the NFL, and the devastated nine-year old sobbed inconsolably as the family decorated the Christmas tree that fateful night.

Dan lives just outside of Baltimore, with his wife Celeste and their dog Moses, where he enjoys watching movies with her, taking walks and getting a good seat in Section 332, upper box behind home plate, at Camden Yards.