Latest Articles

'Six Californias' instead of one?

March 9, 2014  •  The Boston Globe

"I love Germany so much that I am glad there are two of them," the French novelist and Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac commented acerbically during the Cold War. Investor Tim Draper loves California so much that he thinks there should be six of them.

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Obama's fantasy Middle East

March 5, 2014  •  The Boston Globe

IN BARACK OBAMA'S Middle East, the explanation for the persistent lack of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is clear: It's Bibi Netanyahu's fault. Things would be so much easier if only the Israeli prime minister would bite the bullet.

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The value in preaching to the unconverted

March 2, 2014  •  The Boston Globe

MY LATE colleague David Nyhan, a gifted Boston Globe journalist for more than three decades, told me two things on the day my first column appeared on this page.

"Your readers will find you and you'll find your readers," he promised me. "And no matter what you write, it almost always looks better in print."

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Where is our shame?

February 26, 2014  •  The Boston Globe

CLIVE CROOK, who for many years was a senior editor at The Economist, wrote the other day that he used to think his finest moment at the magazine was in June 2000, when he approved what became one of the most memorable covers in the publication's history — a photo of North Korea's ruler Kim Jong Il, "looking wonderfully absurd" as he waved stiffly to an audience. The headline above the picture: "Greetings, earthlings."

Now, having read the new UN report on the Kim regime's institutionalized barbarity, Crook feels a "pang of shame" at the thought of that cover. North Korea jokes no longer seem so funny.

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The man who didn't want to be president

February 16, 2014  •  The Boston Globe

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