Jeff Jacoby became an op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe in February 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its famously liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987.A Cleveland native, Jacoby graduated with honors from George Washington University in 1979 and from Boston University Law School in 1983. He practiced law for a short time at the firm of Baker & Hostetler, but returned to Boston to become deputy manager of Ray Shamie's 1984 campaign for the U.S. Senate. From 1985 to 1987, Jacoby was an assistant to Dr. John Silber, who at the time was president of Boston University.In addition to his print work, Jacoby has been a political commentator for WBUR-FM, Boston's National Public Radio affiliate. For several years he hosted "Talk of New England," a weekly television program, and has often appeared as a panelist on WCVB-TV's "Five on Five." He is an overseer of the Huntington Theatre Company, the largest resident theatre in Boston, and is on the board of The Concord Review, a quarterly journal of essays on history by secondary students worldwide. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2012 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Wed, 16 May 2012 15:54:00 GMT Wed, 16 May 2012 15:54:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a complex piece of legislation that banned... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/05/16/health_care_no_the_state_doesnt_know_best 05471e8e-0351-41e6-835d-f8066b5d277c Wed, 16 May 2012 15:54:00 GMT IN DECEMBER 1862, from his military headquarters in Mississippi, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued a directive expelling "Jews as a class" from the immense war zone known as the Department of the Tennessee. General... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/05/14/when_general_grant_expelled_the_jews fd833203-12a2-47ee-b54e-8807145c5df6 Mon, 14 May 2012 04:01:00 GMT SHIN DONG-HYUK grew up in North Korea's Camp 14, one of the monstrous slave-labor prison complexes in which the world's most tyrannical regime has crushed hundreds of thousands of its citizens, working them to death in... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/05/09/the_ghastly_hellhole_of_camp_14 90e61561-4ed0-41fc-9b39-6b11c5a23af9 Wed, 09 May 2012 14:46:00 GMT There is nothing new under the sun, including politicians who seek to win votes by milking the gap between rich and poor. Today it's Barack Obama, demanding a "Buffett rule" and decrying the harm caused when "the gap... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/05/06/the_defining_issue_of_our_time_hardly 2ddbc194-8559-4965-815a-780575f521a2 Sun, 06 May 2012 14:59:00 GMT THERE IS A PASSAGE in Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's acclaimed series of historical sea novels, in which Stephen Maturin casually refers to the wealth of James Dillon, one of his... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/05/03/what_browns_and_warrens_tax_returns_really_show 452d1dfc-4c3d-4531-839b-628b74da3037 Thu, 03 May 2012 04:01:00 GMT If insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different outcome, then the federal government's strategy for keeping higher education affordable is crazier than Norman Bates. For decades,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/29/the_governments_college_money_pit 94495459-edc4-4acd-a711-bbbc2a30f2be Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:27:00 GMT US REPRESENTATIVE JIM MCGOVERN, a Worcester Democrat, generated some unwanted controversy two years ago when he publicly declared: "The Constitution is wrong." The context was a discussion of campaign finance during... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/25/jim_mcgoverns_war_on_the_constitution f2abc3ef-4a8a-4c63-a7f9-d98c2e22a020 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:36:00 GMT "I SAW MANY SIGNS in this campaign," said Richard Nixon the day after he was elected president in 1968. "But the one that touched me the most was one that I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/22/obama_is_a_unifier_hardly 2a0b516b-22a8-47e0-bb96-746637211aae Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:55:00 GMT HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common -- one memorializes the millions of European Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany;... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/18/victims_who_persecute bccd352b-59dd-4fed-9d56-9ae1791a44be Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:43:00 GMT Now that the 2012 Masters Tournament is over, the hounds of political correctness have stopped baying at Augusta National Golf Club over its membership policies. The gender-grievance industry is moving on, looking for a... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/11/freedom_of_association_even_for_augusta_national 103b78f8-0238-4ca9-ad6f-ad4c39f4aff1 Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:33:00 GMT Each year in the United States, an estimated 6.1 billion hours are spent complying with the federal tax code. I'm pretty sure at least half of those hours are spent by me. With less than two weeks remaining before... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/04/04/an_uncivil_income_tax_system 60e6e6ba-5117-4347-98ef-b2cf31b7735b Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:48:00 GMT Second of two parts (Read Part 1) "The oldest president in US history and the youngest members of the nation's electorate have forged one of the strongest bonds in American politics." So wrote the Philadelphia... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/28/with_sunny_authenticity_reagan_wooed_the_young 415c1b92-d891-455d-82a8-44640e92e5c3 Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:45:00 GMT "I don't mean to be flip with this," said Mitt Romney during a Q-and-A with students at the University of Chicago last week. "But I don't see how a young American can vote for a Democrat."... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/26/romney_republicans_and_the_young 0e888ab6-511e-42f0-af47-324be190f559 Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:01:00 GMT THE COLORADO SUPREME COURT put some noses out of joint when it ruled unanimously this month that the University of Colorado's campus gun ban violated a 2003 state law that entitles residents with permits to carry... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/21/a_safer_society_with_guns 601cfe7a-ce53-4ca5-8ef0-c84a8039334c Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:01:00 GMT They say all things must end, but the wrangling over Mitt Romney's support for an individual health-insurance mandate persists without letup. It has been nearly six years since Romney, with much fanfare,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/18/on_health_insurance_mandate_romney_plays_both_sides a29775af-5a43-4562-8289-6716cc82a1f4 Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:40:00 GMT IN A NEW JERSEY COURTROOM on Monday, the defense rested in the trial of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers freshman accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with an older man. The roommate,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/14/on_trial_at_rutgers_hate_crime_or_thought_crime 63661636-01d0-438d-bcdb-a485d33d8059 Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:38:00 GMT HAVE YOU ever met a sharecropper? If you've been in a taxi in Boston - or any major US city - the answer is almost surely yes. Like tenant farmers in the post-Civil War South, the typical modern cabbie pays dearly... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/11/taxi_medallions_shackle_cabbies 6b38d3a8-4f63-4df3-9fe9-06b1ba6e97cf Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:26:00 GMT Many Americans disdain Rush Limbaugh, some of them high-placed and influential. The author of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot is now a US senator from Minnesota. The incumbent president of the United States... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/07/apologize_like_you_mean_it_rush f931fb42-7803-4f40-bbdb-5ab8a4a18e82 Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:31:00 GMT Commentators, not all of them Democrats, have been having a field day since GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum charged Barack Obama with snobbery for pushing the idea that everyone needs a college... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/03/05/santorums_snub_was_no_gaffe dd79a966-fa70-4d4a-b840-496cfe2888a1 Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:21:00 GMT IN A COLUMN many years ago, I described how I once attempted to chart a family tree. Most of my father's family had been killed in Auschwitz and my efforts to trace their genealogy left me, I wrote, with a family tree... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/29/outraged_by_mormon_proxy_baptism_not_this_jew c7c05a1d-f639-487d-b985-e8586fa6ac4b Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:14:00 GMT Much was made of the president's supposed compromise on requiring religious institutions to pay for their employees' contraceptives and sterilization drugs. "The new policy," a White House fact sheet declared, "fully... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/15/quakers_conscience_and_contraception 650d4816-e511-448e-aeda-50dc54ac3d02 Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:42:00 GMT Did the New York City Police Department use "terrible judgment," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, when it showed a documentary about Islamist extremists -- The Third Jihad -- to more than 1,400 officers undergoing... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/13/a_second_look_at_the_third_jihad 829f9175-5c76-4277-a01a-77aa2941858a Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:32:00 GMT During a visit to Cairo last week, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked whether she would advise Egyptians drafting a constitution for the post-Mubarak era to look to other countries' basic charters as... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/08/ganging_up_on_ginsburg 9fca6bb8-806c-4b37-a80a-2a43f5f6e056 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:27:00 GMT "46 STATES TO GO." That was the sign on Newt Gingrich's podium in an Orlando ballroom last Tuesday, when the former House speaker faced supporters after losing the Florida primary and defiantly conceded... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/06/is_a_long_primary_fight_good_for_the_gop 87b59888-7a92-485c-a4fd-fa08ef53159a Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:02:00 GMT SOON -- PERHAPS AS EARLY AS TODAY -- Gov. Mitch Daniels will sign legislation making Indiana the nation's 23rd right-to-work state. Labor unions angrily oppose the change, but their opposition has no legitimate or... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/02/01/righttowork_means_freedom_and_choice 01e1c4ca-870f-41e6-827e-977cfd5c3a31 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:30:00 GMT WITH MY DRIVER'S LICENSE expiring in February, I made a trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles last week to renew it. To my astonishment, I was in and out of the RMV branch at the Watertown Mall in just 15 minutes.... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/29/why_should_the_state_license_drivers a0f5c7f3-1b04-4a9e-bf4c-e8132f422988 Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:37:00 GMT FOR SHEER ANTIDEMOCRATIC GALL, it is hard to top the so-called "People's Pledge" signed on Monday by US Senator Scott Brown and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. The agreement is designed to keep third-party... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/25/shut_up_they_explained ff8b3ca4-46ff-4db0-9ddc-c33207c1e651 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:38:00 GMT Cable TV service can be purchased in Boston for as little as 55 cents a day, a burden the city's top politician regards as so unjust that he is demanding the legal power to override it. Mayor Thomas Menino... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/23/tom_menino_cable_guy 093d27c0-f234-4453-877e-10842703697f Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT Near The Kirti Monastary in a Tibetan area of China's Sichuan province, 21-year-old Lobsang Jamyang publicly set himself on fire last Saturday. It was the fourth time this month that a Tibetan protesting Chinese... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/18/burning_with_despair 06524410-af68-4652-abb5-6e2933971d3c Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:59:00 GMT Any time is the right time to read Martin Luther King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail." But it pulses with special relevance during Black History Month. We have fallen into the custom of treating this period as... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/16/a_lesson_from_birmingham_jail bef30018-8987-41b9-bde8-19b68c8ddf8f Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:36:00 GMT For anyone gauging the Republican presidential contest, this week's most significant poll results weren't the ones tabulated in New Hampshire last night. They were the ones released by Gallup yesterday morning. To... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/11/in_new_hampshire_acceptable_is_pronounced_winner 4cbef186-f7c0-4650-b74a-5da8e3836517 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:33:00 GMT Mitt Romney has been thought for months to have the New Hampshire primary in the bag. But one vote he didn't have locked up until Wednesday was that of Steve Rowe, a Vietnam-era veteran who spent much of the 1970s aboar http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/09/a_referendum_on_romney 707089de-15f9-4dc8-99fa-64ca4d4e84d0 Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:24:00 GMT A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, just two days before being shot by a deranged assailant in her district, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords introduced legislation to cut congressional salaries by 5 percent, from $174,000... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/04/pull_the_parachute fdb49e4f-d9ed-4b3c-9baa-4191e190e528 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:15:00 GMT Newt Gingrich's presidential ambitions may be heading for the exits -- opinion polls suggest that the former House speaker's hour has come and gone -- but his critique of judicial supremacy deserves to taken seriously... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2012/01/02/the_supreme_courts_judgment_isnt_absolute 146c7764-4f3d-487f-8f63-49a088de2bde Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:53:00 GMT Of all the rituals that mark this season, none is more misguided than the complaints about how crass and mercenary the holidays have become. The laments begin early in November, when Santa starts showing up in TV... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/29/the_gift_of_giving 91609733-04e2-4060-8920-f31f1dc0ba37 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:01:00 GMT You don't need me to tell you that the chattering class is appalled by the partisan gridlock and political bickering that keeps Washington from dealing efficiently with the nation's problems. Last week Gallup measured... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/28/dysfunctional_government_is_a_feature_not_a_bug e46f6bf1-cf38-42f0-970d-f054597d2073 Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:39:00 GMT Second of two parts (Read Part 1) IF RACIAL PREFERENCES in higher education were good for racial minorities in higher education, we surely would have seen the definitive evidence of it by now. Instead, a widening... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/23/the_affirmativeaction_myth f9d0d281-66a3-46a9-b260-447a3b7151e2 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:42:00 GMT WHEN THE SUPREME COURT, in the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, narrowly upheld the use of racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, it emphasized that such preferences were barely tolerable under... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/19/an_end_point_for_racebased_admissions ad3f5eca-a0f8-496b-a52d-2e2bba58ead0 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:08:00 GMT IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY at the US Postal Service: time once again for the familiar laments about how the agency's financial losses are surging, how demand for its services is plummeting, and how officials have no choice but... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/11/email_isnt_killing_the_post_office 7f0e9fe1-cb4b-4e64-807e-a83be1dfad6c Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:59:00 GMT IN THE FIRST ROUND of Egypt's parliamentary elections, the hardline Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party won 36.6 percent of the vote -- a plurality -- and the even harder-line Salafist party,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/07/for_arab_christians_a_wintry_spring 2430ff28-6a97-41b3-b568-323e65858495 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:09:00 GMT BARNEY FRANK may be the only member of Congress who has ever made headlines for not acting like a jerk. When the longtime Massachusetts representative found himself last year facing -- for the first time in decades --... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/12/05/franks_sneering_insults_wont_be_missed 3837a09a-654a-4d40-87ce-82748119baae Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:53:00 GMT Mary Archer's death in 1981 was horrific. Gary Haugen, her daughter's former boyfriend, broke into her home in Portland, Ore., where he raped the 39-year-old, then beat her to a lifeless pulp using his fists,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/30/in_oregon,_a_profile_in_incoherence 754e19ca-ea85-48a9-9d0f-795dcddaeec9 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:08:00 GMT With our music teacher, Mrs. Feigenbaum, at the piano playing the melody - the Toreador's Song from the opera "Carmen" - and the lyrics handed out to us on mimeographed pages, my 4th-grade classmates and I practiced one... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/24/making_americans 1bc2aaa4-04f6-4e25-9d94-0e2dd40e9712 Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:01:00 GMT THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT reported last week that the national debt had surpassed $15 trillion, clocking in at precisely $15,033,607,255,920.32 as of the close of business Tuesday. Since President Obama's inauguration in... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/21/memo_to_washington_kick_the_spending_habit ee419d8f-81cf-413a-97b6-d652966a1753 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:12:00 GMT Are you glum about the nation's prospects? If so, you've got lots of company. According to a recent poll for The Hill, a Washington-based daily, 69 percent of American voters say the US is declining, and... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/16/is_america_past_its_prime e1304143-4a2e-497a-aa8a-edb065002726 Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:14:00 GMT THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION announced last year that harsh new labels, large and graphic, would soon have to cover half of the front and back of all cigarette packages and at least 20 percent of the space in all... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/13/a_deep_breath_for_free_speech 805a8497-c7d0-4272-a9e9-4243c2adb287 Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:35:00 GMT RON PAUL, the Texas congressman and isolationist would-be president, is against using tough economic sanctions or military force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. How then, he was... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/09/a_nuclear_iran_would_be_the_gravest_threat dac0fff9-88b9-42ec-801b-dfc0372651aa Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:44:00 GMT Here's one for the Guinness World Records people: Two New York City taxi medallions were sold last month for $1 million apiece. That's the highest price ever paid for the right to operate a car as a taxicab... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/07/medallion_madness 4b1ce39b-9716-4ace-9377-fc61764875bf Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:58:00 GMT At the Occupy Phoenix demonstrations, fliers encourage protesters to violently resist police officers, asserting that "you will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop." At Zuccotti Park in... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/11/02/occupiers,_tea_partiers,_and_the_tenth_commandment 3f111e7a-3a49-49d7-aedb-ca88f9340b7b Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:14:00 GMT President Obama tells reporters that all US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. BY NEW YEAR'S DAY, the US military presence in Iraq will be history. President... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JeffJacoby/2011/10/31/losing_the_peace_in_iraq f55f9722-5fdf-4cf8-84a3-6901a256b117 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:18:00 GMT