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Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 14, 2009 5 Comments
Critics, including me, of Obama’s economic plans have made the point that the unprecedented huge deficits necessary to pay for expanded health insurance coverage, college education guarantees, the present and future “stimulus” plans, infrastructure projects, budget expansion, financing and operational takeovers of the auto industry...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2009 3 Comments
I don’t think Jay Bybee (or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo or Stephen Bradbury) are criminals. At worst, they expressed legal opinions on interrogation of terrorism suspects which a court may someday declare to be wrong. Bybee’s being wrong, if indeed he was, contributed to...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2009 2 Comments
Did you hear the one about the person Sarah Palin picked for Attorney General of Alaska? He defended the right of the Ku Klux Klan to express its abhorrent speech. Over at Huffington Post, blogger Sam Stein is outraged, outraged I say: Sarah Palin’s choice...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 04, 2009 1 Comment
George Bisharat is a law professor at the University of California*, Hastings College of Law. His is the son of a Palestinian father who immigrated to the U.S. several years before the creation of Israel, and an American mother. I first learned of George Bisharat...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2009 9 Comments
I am pleased to introduce The Official Guide To Obama Kitsch. Kitsch is a word of Germanic origin which denotes something that is in poor taste, tacky, pretentious, cheap or trashy. In order to qualify, the product must (1) feature the name or likeness of...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 15, 2009 9 Comments
Just a little true anecdote on how the “rich” cutting back is hurting the “not rich.” My wife went to a hair salon last Friday. The salon is located on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island, near Brown University. This is the premier neighborhood...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 01, 2009 23 Comments
What is it with this President? Obama has an obsessive need to find enemies against whom to campaign. When Obama’s presidency is over, hopefully in four years (but likely eight years) there will be two sets of psychologists: Those who provide therapy to the American...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 28, 2009 0 Comments
The New York Times has run a story on the travails of my home state, Rhode Island. The Times pays homage to the good things about Rhode Island, which is a quirky state with beautiful landscapes and beaches, in which everyone seems to know everyone...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 27, 2009 4 Comments
Will it never stop? The deification of Obama, is what I’m talking about. Now it’s Obama’s marriage that is historic and a teaching lesson for the rest of us dim-witted wife-beaters. This, from a column in the Ithaca Journal written by Elizabeth Einstein (what else!):...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 25, 2009 0 Comments
An Obama spokesman has just announced that the likely “downpayment” on Obama’s plan to expand health insurance coverage over the next decade will exceed $1 trillion. That’s above and beyond what presently is paid through medicare and medicaid. The question is, what percentage of the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2009 9 Comments
Every now and then, someone writes something that says exactly what I wanted to say had I said it. An article by Yuval Levin in Commentary Magazine, titled “The Meaning of Sarah Palin” so well expresses my disgust at the treatment of Sarah Palin, that...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 04, 2009 0 Comments
The Guardian newspaper in Britain devotes endless articles and op-eds to criticising Israel. The paper is worth reading if only to keep up to date on what the anti-Israel left is thinking. Few if any columnists are more critical of Israel than Jonathan Freedland. Yet...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2008 1 Comment
William Felkner, a former student at the Rhode Island College [RIC] School of Social Work, has filed suit against the school claiming that he was the subject of discrimination based on his conservative views. Felkner claims that professors and administrators used the pretext that Felkner’s...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 11, 2008 3 Comments
December 10, 2008 was the “Day Without A Gay” boycott. This foolish boycott was a reaction to California Prop. 8, which enshrined in the California state constitution the traditional definition of marriage. The essence of the boycott, which was modeled on the failed May 1,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 08, 2008 1 Comment
The stimulus plan proposed by Barack Obama focuses on public infrastructure projects, which have a long history of cost overruns, corruption, and construction incompetence. Public infrastructure construction and maintenance is important, it’s just not an efficient use of funds if a quick economic stimulus is...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 30, 2008 0 Comments
It has been a while since I have agreed with Thomas Friedman, but Mr. Friedman has a good observation on the economic forces which may lead to the collapse of the Iranian regime: Under Ahmadinejad, Iran’s mullahs have gone on a domestic subsidy binge —...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 13, 2008 0 Comments
I was a student of Russian and Soviet history in college, and spent a considerable amount of time in the Soviet Union. While a student in Moscow, I became close friends with the Yakir family (more on them in a later post), a family steeped...
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