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Not all tidings are of great joy by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe December 23, 2009 Print Send RSS ShareThis As far back as the 5th century, the Monastery of Abu Fana in Upper Egypt was renowned, in the words of one travel guide, for its "exceptional splendor and prestige." In the 21st century, that grandeur is gone and the monastery has become instead a symbol of the abuse and degradation to which Egypt's ancient Coptic Christian community is regularly subjected. In a room badly damaged during an attack on the monastery in Abu Fana, a Coptic monk wears a...

AS IF the recession hasn’t been rough enough on those near the bottom of the economic food chain, fresh bad news is on the way. Beginning July 24, the federal government will be making it more difficult for employers to hire low-skilled and unskilled American workers. Thanks to an ill-advised law enacted with bipartisan support in 2007, the cost of providing an entry-level job to individuals with few skills or minimal experience will be going up by more than 10 percent. Those who cannot find a job paying at least $7.25 an hour will not be permitted to work. Welcome...

LEGISLATION pending before Congress would dramatically expand the federal hate-crimes law, and a number of critics are concerned that the bill goes too far. Perhaps the real problem is that it doesn't go far enough. Under current law, crimes motivated by bias against a victim's race, color, religion, or national origin can be prosecuted by the federal government, so long as the victim had been engaged in a "federally-protected activity" - attending a public school, for example, or being in a place of public accommodation or entertainment. The proposed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed the House last...

A PROMINENT supporter of Barack Obama told a Washington audience last week that "the Republican Party is in deep trouble" and "getting smaller and smaller" because its views are not in sync with those of mainstream Americans. Republicans would do better without the "nastiness" of Rush Limbaugh or the "very polarizing" Sarah Palin, the speaker said, and they should realize that their philosophy of lower taxes and limited government has put them out of step with their fellow citizens. "Americans do want to pay taxes for services," he told his audience. "Americans are looking for more government in their life,...

JUDICIAL dispassion - the ability to decide cases without being influenced by personal feelings or political preferences - is indispensable to the rule of law. So indispensable, in fact, that the one-sentence judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice contains no fewer than three expressions of it: "I . . . do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . under the Constitution and laws...

'I SURE HOPE you'll be out of a job soon," e-mails a friend, alluding to The Boston Globe's current excruciations. He really is a friend - he has shown me and my family much warmth and kindness over the years - and should I find myself without a job, I'm sure he would want to help in any way he could. But such is his antipathy to the Globe that he regards my potential unemployment as a price well worth paying for what he calls the "greater good" of the newspaper's demise. My friend is a conservative, and he is...

ANTI-SEMITISM is an ancient derangement, the oldest of hatreds, so it is strange that it lacks a more meaningful name. The misnomer "anti-Semitism" - a term coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr, who wanted a scientific-sounding euphemism for Judenhass, or Jew-hatred - is particularly inane, since hostility to Jews has never had anything to do with Semites or being Semitic. Perhaps there is no good name for a virus as mutable as anti-Semitism. "The Jews have been objects of hatred in pagan, religious, and secular societies," write Joseph Telushkin and Dennis Prager in "Why the Jews?," their...

PETER SINGER has written a new book. The prominent Australian philosopher, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, argues in "The Life You Can Save" that residents of the affluent West have it within their power to eradicate extreme Third World poverty and its attendant suffering. By donating money to charity instead of spending it on things we don't really need, he writes, everyone can save lives - and when you fail to do so, he suggests, "you are leaving a child to die, a child you could have saved." Singer told the Wall Street Journal last week that he...

SOMETHING to ponder during Black History Month: In the long night that followed Reconstruction, what was the engine that drove Jim Crow? Did segregationist laws codify existing social practice, or was it the laws themselves that segregated the South? Many people might intuitively assume that Southern racism had led to entrenched public segregation long before Southern legislatures made it mandatory. Not so. Separate facilities for blacks and whites were not routine in the South until the early 20th century. Racism there surely was, but as C. Vann Woodward observed in "The Strange Career of Jim Crow," the idea of separating...

Choosing octuplets By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The backlash against against Nadya Suleman, the 33-year-old single mother of six who gave birth to octuplets on January 26th, has been fierce. The reactions have ranged from reproach to ridicule to anger. On newspaper editorial pages, radio talk shows, and internet comment boards, Suleman has been derided as a mental case or a mercenary or worse. There has been no outpouring of gifts from corporate America — nothing like the lifetime supply of Pampers that Procter & Gamble provided when the McCaughey septuplets were...

Money for nothing won't grow the economy By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Commenting on my recent column about the bloated "stimulus" package making its way through Congress, one reader insisted that what matters most right now is getting money into people's hands. "In the face of rapidly rising unemployment and idle productive capacity, any kind of federal spending will have a stimulus in the short run," he wrote. "Digging holes and filling them in would help to create jobs and consumer demand because those wielding the shovels would earn a paycheck that...

Jewish World Review Jan. 29, 2009 / 4 Shevat 5769 An over-optimistic stimulus plan By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Ronald Reagan loved to tell the story of the unfailingly cheerful little boy who wakes up on Christmas morning to find, instead of presents, an immense pile of manure. Undaunted, he grabs a shovel and starts digging. "With all this manure," he says excitedly, "there must be a pony in here someplace!" Is there a pony somewhere in the $825 billion "stimulus" plan that Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives hope to...

Roe and Doe, 36 years on By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A NEW antiabortion TV ad appeared last week, just in time for the inauguration of a president whose support for abortion rights is unqualified. The ad shows the ultrasound image of a fetus in the womb. As the camera slowly moves in, a message gradually appears onscreen:

IN NOMINATING John Holdren to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy - the position known informally as White House science adviser - President-elect Barack Obama has enlisted an undisputed Big Name among academic environmentalists. Holdren is a physicist, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and author or coauthor of many papers and books.

Unemployment is at its highest level in 15 years. Housing prices won't stop falling. The stock market has suffered its most punishing collapse since 1931, and shareholders have lost $7 trillion in wealth. Millions of workers have lost their jobs; millions more are worried about losing theirs. IRAs and 401k accounts have been decimated, and companies are halting their contributions to retirement plans. Retail sales are dragging, the credit markets have seized up, and worse is expected in 2009. The government has gone to unprecedented lengths to improve the economy, yet the economy keeps getting worse. The federal budget deficit...

ISRAEL'S 2006 war against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist army based in Lebanon, was a disaster - an ill-planned operation that did more damage to Israel's military reputation than to Hezbollah's resolve and influence. Now, as it fights Hamas in Gaza, Israel seems determined not to repeat the mistakes of two years ago

Better than a bailout By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | During last week's battle over a federal rescue for Detroit's automakers - after a deal had passed the House but before it collapsed in the Senate - the Gallup Organization summarized its latest findings: "Bailouts Aren't Increasing Consumer Confidence." To put it mildly. More than 60 percent of Americans now rate the economy "poor"; a whopping 82 percent expect economic conditions to get even worse. "Americans seem to be suffering from so-called 'bailout fatigue,' " Gallup observed, "opposing not only the auto bailout,...

PRIDE IS THE first of the deadly sins, and it sometimes seems to be the first prerequisite of a career in public life. Not surprising, really. It takes a certain degree of hubris to think yourself qualified to govern others - and not just to think it privately, but to spend great quantities of money, time, and energy proclaiming it publicly to anyone who will listen. To remain modest and unpretentious while urging voters to elevate you to high office and entrust you with power is a challenge not many elected officials meet. It's a rare politician who is motivated...

Jewish World Review Dec. 10, 2008 / 13 Kislev 5769 Skepticism on climate change By Jeff Jacoby Jeff Jacoby Printer Friendly Version Email this article http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | THE MAIL brings an invitation to register for the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, which convenes on March 8 in New York City. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, the conference will host an international lineup of climate scientists and researchers who will focus on four broad areas: climatology, paleoclimatology, the impact of climate change, and climate-change politics and economics. But if last year's gathering is any indication, the...

THE PRESIDENT of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, has denounced the policies of a certain Middle Eastern nation. They are "so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era," he said, "that the world must unite against them, demanding an "end to this massive abuse of human rights" and isolating the offending nation as it once isolated South Africa: with a punishing "campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions." Of which country was he speaking?