Copyright 2013 Jeff Jacoby Thu, 23 May 2013 17:40:02 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Jeff Jacoby :: Writings http://www.jeffjacoby.com jacoby@globe.com (Jeff Jacoby) webmaster@pundicity.com en-us http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13333/at-harvard-the-right-not-to-be-offended-trumps Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 EST JASON RICHWINE'S views on ethnicity and IQ may be controversial, but he has done nothing to embarrass Harvard University. The same cannot be said for the more than 1,200 Harvard students and 23 campus groups smearing Richwine's work as "racist" and... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13269/secure-the-border-that-what-the-us-has-done Sun, 12 May 2013 09:00:00 EST IN THE CLAMOR over immigration, the demand for more border security has been unrelenting. Immigration restrictionists have dug in their heels, insisting that stronger border controls must come before any other change. The Senate's bipartisan Gang of... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13258/dzokhar-tsarnaev-and-the-death-penalty Wed, 8 May 2013 09:00:00 EST ACCORDING TO a Washington Post-ABC poll released last week, 70 percent of Americans want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put to death if he is convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing. Support for execution was higher among some respondents (conservatives, the... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13244/can-gabriel-gomez-crack-the-code Sun, 5 May 2013 09:00:00 EST IT'S THE HOLY GRAIL that Massachusetts Republicans have been seeking for years: the blueprint for getting candidates with an "R" after their names get elected to statewide office. There were those who thought Scott Brown had solved the riddle after his... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13202/there-nothing-fair-about-the-marketplace-fairness Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST IF TRUTH-IN-LABELING rules applied to Congress, the proposed law giving states the power to collect sales tax from out-of-state online retailers would be named the Marketplace Unfairness Act. Sponsored by Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, and... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13190/on-north-korea-kerry-muddles-the-message Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST IF KIM JONG UN thinks he can shake down Washington by threatening nuclear apocalypse, President Obama says, the belligerent North Korean dictator has another think coming. "Since I came into office, the one thing I was clear about was: We're not going... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13180/things-will-be-the-same-again Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST SCARCELY HAD the terrible news from Copley Square broken when the somber prediction began to be heard everywhere: Boston will never be the same. The Marathon will never be the same. Patriots Day will never be the same. After such a gory and public... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13171/king-letter-and-the-law Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST IN HIS "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written behind bars 50 years ago this week, Martin Luther King invokes God 15 times and mentions the words "Christ" or "Christian" 21 times. But he refers to "law" 41 times – more than both of them combined – and... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13160/the-essence-of-thatcherism Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST AMERICA UNDER Jimmy Carter was unhappy and in decline, its economy crippled with stagflation, its diplomats held hostage in Tehran, and its befuddled president clueless before a seemingly unstoppable Soviet empire. "Malaise" became a catchword, and to... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13146/boston-taxicab-mess-and-the-oligopoly-behind-it Sun, 7 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST SO THE MAYOR OF BOSTON, channeling his inner Captain Renault, is shocked – shocked! – to find that Boston's taxi industry is a rigged and pitiless racket. Why, until he read about it in the Boston Globe, Tom Menino never had a clue that in the city he... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13092/lynch-vote-showed-backbone Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN LYNCH, the South Boston Democrat now running to succeed John Kerry in the Senate, voted against ObamaCare on the make-or-break House vote in March 2010. He was the sole member of the Massachusetts delegation to oppose the bill,... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13071/on-balance-was-the-iraq-war-worth-it Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST TEN YEARS AGO this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The preceding months had been filled with vehement protests against the impending war, expressed in editorials, in... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13056/supreme-yes-but-infallible Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST THE ARCHBISHOP of Buenos Aires became the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church when he pronounced the word "accepto" – Latin for "I accept" – in the Sistine Chapel last week. From that moment, according to Catholic theology, Pope Francis had... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13049/useful-idiots-then-and-now Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST ON THE 60th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death last week, the Associated Press reported that admirers of the Soviet dictator, one of history's bloodiest tyrants, were flocking to the Kremlin to venerate him as a great leader despite his ghastly record... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/13033/education-liberation Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EST THE BOSTON School Committee will vote this week on a plan to overhaul its broken system for assigning students to schools, a complicated lottery-based maze that for years has been a source of frustration, waste, and despair. Only a masochist could love...