Politics

As I read Seth Gitell’s post on Barabar Walters’s interview with the Giulianis I fully expected him to praise Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino at some point, and he came through for me, as I knew he would. Here are excerpts of what Mr. Gitell has to say about the interview as it relates to the [...]

This morning Bostonians had the opportunity to listen to Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at Yale University, whose main contribution so far is his book “The Great Risk Shift”. The book’s full title is “The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement–And How You Can Fight Back.” It [...]

The New York Times has an article on Ms. Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden’s Minister of Integration and Gender Equality. I particularly like these quotes: “Practicing Muslims who live by the word of the Koran and the Koranic books — of course they limit their own opportunities,” she said. “A lot of people who live like me, [...]

Saddam Hussein was prosecuted for crimes he committed while trying to keep an artificial, multi-ethnic, and multi-sectarian state shackled to his people. Slobodan Milosevic was prosecuted for crimes he committed while trying to unshackle his people from an artificial, multi-ethnic, and multi-sectarian state.

This Mitt Romney fellow sounds like a great guy. I wonder why he was such an enormous disappointment as governor? (Link via Jay Fitzgerald)

The Boston Globe‘s editorial pot-shot at the late Milton Friedman is a real piece of work, as exemplified by this paragraph: Friedman could not understand why people criticized his speeches in Chile in 1975 that aligned him with the Pinochet dictatorship. He compared them to his talks in China, which should have been questioned as [...]

While I’m against gambling I am very much in favor of Massachusetts licensing a very, very big casino so that the state can hold on to a good chunk of the money that is now spent by Mass residents at tribal and commercial casinos in Connecticut, New Jersey, Nevada, New York and other states. The [...]

Conservative journalist Steve Sailer has tallied up the votes in the Congressional elections and finds a 3.3 million – 8 million vote gap between the Democrats and the Republicans. What hurt Republicans the most, according to Mr. Sailer, was the huge drop-off among white voters, who still make up close to 80% of voters. The [...]

Massachusetts Democrat gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick has, as expected, won a landslide victory. The soon to be governor ends a 16-year run of increasingly conservative but decreasingly effective Republican governors. He becomes the first African-American governor of Massachusetts. I’m not surprised that he won, especially considering the opponents, but what I absolutely cannot fathom is [...]

I’m not going to turn this blog into all Nyamko Sabuni all the time, but dadgum it, she’s good. So far Sweden’s new Integration and Equality Minister and member of the Liberal Party has proven to be, well, liberal, in the classic sense of the word. She’s completely unafraid of standing up for classic liberal [...]