Columnist.
Jen Flanagan is distressed. The state senator from Leominster, a 40-year-old Democrat, is worried that not enough young people are wasting their money on gambling. The Massachusetts State Lottery offers an abundance of games designed to separate players from their dollars — among them, Megabucks, Powerball, Keno, and Mass Cash, not to mention an endless supply of scratch tickets in denominations ranging from $1 to $30 — but millennials aren't playing as much as Flanagan thinks they should. "Young people have the lowest participation rates, and these continue to decline," she writes with concern. "Simply put, millennials don't play the lottery." Why? Because they can't do it online.
Elie Wiesel was Jewish to his core, and in the Jewish state he was revered as a hero — so much so that two Israeli prime ministers offered to nominate him to be the country's president. Yet Wiesel didn't make Israel his home. Though he was a frequent visitor and a passionate advocate, though he felt "attached to the destiny of Israel with all the fiber of his being," as he once put it, he never became an Israeli citizen. Why not? He himself didn't know, or so he said. But perhaps the explanation was as simple as this: He was in love with the United States.
Great Britain's vote last month to exit the European Union has been widely described as the country's most consequential decision in decades. But its significance is paltry compared to that of history's original "Leave" resolution, the 240th anniversary of which Americans commemorate this Fourth of July. The unanimous vote in the Second Continental Congress, which affirmed that "these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states ... absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown," was the most far-reaching political event of the 18th century. John Adams, writing from Philadelphia to his wife Abigail, called the vote not just "the greatest decision . . . which ever was debated in America," but possibly the greatest that ever "was or will be decided among men."
in Hawaii and California, the minimum age for buying cigarettes was raised recently to 21. Now Massachusetts lawmakers, addicted to the rush that comes from limiting other people's choices, are keen to jump on the bandwagon. A bill banning the sale of tobacco products to anyone younger than 21 — and, for good measure, making it a crime to sell cigarettes in drugstores — passed the state Senate by an overwhelming vote last month. The bill is now before a House committee; it could reach the full House for a vote in a matter of days. Soon after the Fourth of July, adults in Massachusetts who smoke or who do business with smokers can expect to have less freedom than they have right now. Happy Independence Day.
Federal civilian agencies are amassing guns and ammo
When a Washington Post column described Marco Rubio as being "a bit at sea in terms of his next step politically," the Florida senator was irritated. "Another genius line," he tweeted acerbically. "I have only said like 10000 times I will be a private citizen in January." That was on May 16 — two months after Rubio dropped out of the presidential race and long after he'd made it clear that whatever came of his White House bid, he had no interest in another Senate term.
Hearing aids are no one's idea of the best way to hear. They can feel awkward or uncomfortable, and make it hard to distinguish speech from background noise. Often they emit annoying beeps, or mysteriously stop working. They can't be worn when sleeping or swimming. They certainly aren't cheap, and they're all too easy to lose.
"Ali was many fine things, but a champion of civil rights wasn't among them."
Long before he died, Muhammad Ali had been extolled by many as the greatest boxer in history. Some called him the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Still others, like George W. Bush when he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, endorsed Ali's description of himself as "the greatest of all time." Ali's death Friday night sent the paeans and panegyrics to even more exalted heights. Fox Sports went so far as to proclaim Muhammad Ali nothing less than "the greatest athlete the world will ever see."
In some precincts, this is what passes for a joke about libertarians: "Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die." The humor there eludes me, but it must work for someone: That alleged witticism has garnered tens of thousands of Twitter "likes" and retweets.
One year ago this month, a Quinnipiac University poll of voters in three swing states highlighted a looming problem for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign: More than half the respondents in each state regarded her as dishonest. A nationwide CNN poll the same month yielded similar findings: Fifty-seven percent of voters said Clinton was not trustworthy.
Two researchers at the Bank of Italy have documented something remarkable about Florence, the gorgeous Tuscan capital where the Medicis ruled and the Renaissance was born: The city's wealthiest residents today are descended from its wealthiest families six centuries ago. As The Wall Street Journal reported this month, economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti looked at tax records compiled in Florence in 1427 alongside municipal tax data from 2011.
William Weld ran for governor of Massachusetts in 1990 on a platform of unabashed libertarian conservatism, and for one brief shining moment after taking office in January 1991, he actually seemed to mean it. In his inaugural address, he declared that the people of Massachusetts had "voted to disenthrall themselves from the failed dogmas of big government." He committed himself to making state government better by making it smaller, cheaper, and more humble: "Sometimes the most helpful thing to do," Weld said, "is to get out of the way."
China produces more than 820 million tons of steel per year, of which about 100 million tons are exported and sold at a discount overseas. Only about 3 percent of those exports go to the United States, but American steel producers bristle at the competition. So in keeping with the time-honored practice of the US steel industry — "the backbone of American manufacturing," as it proudly calls itself — domestic producers are rising to the challenge.
Even after seven decades, the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki generates controversy. President Obama's planned visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial next week is sure to revive once more the debate over Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs that destroyed the two Japanese cities, killing 200,000 people and forcing Japan's unconditional surrender.
In 2011, President Obama signed an executive order directing federal agencies to scrutinize their rulebooks with an eye to removing outdated regulations that were smothering the economy. "We are . . . making it our mission to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb," he explained at the time. The intention, said the president, was to get rid of "excessive, inconsistent, and redundant regulation" and to "reduce the burdens regulations may place on small businesses."
"[W]e've convinced ourselves that normal medical expenses shouldn't be treated normally."
She went to the doctor, the one at the downtown hospital she's been going to for years, for her annual physical in January. She showed her insurance card when she checked in, and confirmed that the details hadn't changed. The doctor gave her a clean bill of health, renewed her prescriptions, and updated her medical record. It was a routine visit, and she gave it little further thought. Until a bill arrived this week.
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has been bellyaching that the Republican Party's presidential nominating rules are unfair. "It's a rigged, disgusting, dirty system," the front-runner fumes. He argues that "whoever gets the most delegates should win," and not be bound by the "artificial" and "random" provision of an actual majority. And he lashes out at a "corrupt and crooked" system that empowers party officials and activists to choose those delegates in county and state caucuses. "That's not the way democracy is supposed to work," he complains.
