Jeff Jacoby :: Writings

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12/28/11--06:00: The gift of giving (chan 3148421)

OF ALL THE RITUALS that mark this season, none is more misguided than the complaints about how crass and mercenary the holidays have become. The laments begin early in November, when Santa starts showing up in TV commercials. They surge during the...


12/31/11--06:00: Not-Mitt (n.) (chan 3148421)

[Boston Globe opinion writers were asked to comment on a notable term from the political and cultural whirlwinds of 2011. My brief thoughts on "not-Mitt" appear below. To read my colleagues' thoughts on "Pippa," "occupy," "frack," "tiger mother," and...


01/01/12--06:00: The Supreme Court's judgment isn't absolute (chan 3148421)

NEWT GINGRICH'S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS may be heading for the exits -- opinion polls suggest that the former House speaker's hour has come and gone -- but his critique of judicial supremacy deserves to be taken seriously no matter what happens in Iowa or...


01/04/12--06:00: Pull the parachute (chan 3148421)

A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, just two days before being shot by a deranged assailant in her district, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords introduced legislation to cut congressional salaries by 5 percent, from $174,000 to $165,300. Needless to say, the...


01/07/12--06:00: A 'referendum' on Romney (chan 3148421)

SALEM, N.H. -- Mitt Romney has been thought for months to have the New Hampshire primary in the bag. But one vote he didn't have locked up until Wednesday was that of Steve Rowe, a Vietnam-era veteran who spent much of the 1970s aboard the USS Saratoga,...


01/11/12--06:00: In New Hampshire, 'acceptable' is pronounced 'winner' (chan 3148421)

FOR ANYONE gauging the Republican presidential contest, this week's most significant poll results weren't the ones tabulated in New Hampshire last night. They were the ones released by Gallup yesterday morning. To say such a thing is heresy, I realize,...


01/18/12--06:00: Burning with despair (chan 3148421)

NEAR THE KIRTI MONASTERY in a Tibetan area of China's Sichuan province, 21-year-old Lobsang Jamyang publicly set himself on fire last Saturday. It was the fourth time this month that a Tibetan protesting Chinese repression had resorted to self-immolation...


01/22/12--06:00: Tom Menino, cable guy? (chan 3148421)

CABLE TV SERVICE can be purchased in Boston for as little as 55 cents a day, a burden the city's top politician regards as so unjust that he is demanding the legal power to override it. Mayor Thomas Menino spends a lot of time seething over cable fees....


01/25/12--06:00: Shut up, they explained (chan 3148421)

FOR SHEER ANTIDEMOCRATIC GALL, it is hard to top the so-called "People's Pledge" signed on Monday by US Senator Scott Brown and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. The agreement is designed to keep third-party advertising from playing a role in...


01/29/12--06:00: Why should the state license drivers? (chan 3148421)

WITH MY DRIVER'S LICENSE expiring in February, I made a trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles last week to renew it. To my astonishment, I was in and out of the RMV branch at the Watertown Mall in just 15 minutes. From past experience, I had expected...


02/01/12--06:00: 'Right-to-work' means freedom and choice (chan 3148421)

SOON -- PERHAPS AS EARLY AS TODAY -- Gov. Mitch Daniels will sign legislation making Indiana the nation's 23rd right-to-work state. Labor unions angrily oppose the change, but their opposition has no legitimate or principled basis. State right-to-work...


02/05/12--06:00: Is a long primary fight good for the GOP? (chan 3148421)

"46 STATES TO GO." That was the sign on Newt Gingrich's podium in an Orlando ballroom last Tuesday, when the former House speaker faced supporters after losing the Florida primary and defiantly conceded nothing. "We are going to contest every place, and...


02/08/12--06:00: Ganging up on Ginsburg (chan 3148421)

DURING A VISIT to Cairo last week, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked whether she would advise Egyptians drafting a constitution for the post-Mubarak era to look to other countries' basic charters as a model. Certainly, she said --...


02/12/12--06:00: A second look at 'The Third Jihad' (chan 3148421)

DID THE New York City Police Department use "terrible judgment," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, when it showed a documentary about Islamist extremists -- The Third Jihad -- to more than 1,400 officers undergoing counterterrorism training? You might...


02/15/12--06:00: Quakers, conscience, and contraception (chan 3148421)

MUCH WAS MADE of the president's supposed compromise on requiring religious institutions to pay for their employees' contraceptives and sterilization drugs. "The new policy," a White House fact sheet declared, "fully accommodates important concerns...