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Break the Iowa/New Hampshire duopoly

December 6, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

THE 2018 MIDTERM elections are barely a month past. The current presidential term isn't even half over. But the Iowa/New Hampshire drumroll has already begun. It will be well over a year before any votes are cast in the first caucus and primary states, yet even this far out, presidential hopefuls are traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire, maneuvering for attention, and raising money. The 2020 campaign is the last thing that should be on the mind of any well-adjusted voter or journalist, but here come the headlines anyway:

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We gather together to give Thanksgiving its meaning

November 20, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

IF THANKSGIVING were just about Pilgrims, the Mayflower, and exhortations to gratitude, it would never have become the most cherished American holiday after Christmas. Our calendars are replete with National This Day and National That Week, most of which never merit a moment's thought. Even some of our official American holidays mean little more to us than taking the day off and seeing ads for cars. Does anyone get emotional when Presidents Day comes around? Or travel hundreds of miles to be with family on Columbus Day?

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The kosher-industrial complex
When there's a need, a free market will answer it

November 18, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

IN THE 1960s and 1970s, when my four siblings and I were kids, we weren't allowed to eat Oreo or Pepperidge Farm cookies. Tootsie Rolls were off-limits, too. So were Bazooka bubble gum and Jelly Bellies. And though we often heard the commercial jingle proclaiming "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee," that was a claim the Jacoby youngsters could never verify empirically.

Our parents weren't opposed to sweets. But we grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home where kashrut — the kosher dietary laws — were observed. And none of those yummy treats was kosher.

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Three cheers for congressional gridlock

November 14, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

DONALD TRUMP and his liberal media critics rarely see eye to eye. But as they headed into last week's midterm elections, the president and much of the press were in apparent agreement on what it will mean to have a Congress divided between a Republican Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives.

"This is really an election between greatness and gridlock," Trump told a rally in Fort Myers, Fla. Unlike some presidential pronouncements, this wasn't an off-the-cuff remark. Trump warned repeatedly in the campaign's last weeks that returning Democrats to a majority in the House "would plunge our country into gridlock."

Journalists said the same thing.

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Three reasons to vote No on Question 3

November 4, 2018  •  The Boston Globe

QUESTION 3 on the Nov. 6 ballot in Massachusetts asks voters whether they want to retain or repeal a 2016 state law that makes it illegal to discriminate against transgender people in places of public accommodation. That law specifies that any place with separate facilities for males and females, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, must allow access to individuals on the basis of their "gender identity," regardless of their biological sex.

The measure doesn't appear to be very contentious. If a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released on Monday is correct, 68 percent of Massachusetts voters intend to vote Yes on Question 3, to keep the law on the books.

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