Jeff Jacoby

Question 1 on the Massachusetts ballot would abolish the state income tax. If enacted it will eliminate as much as $9 billion in government revenue and force a radical downsizing of the state's budget and operations. That is exactly the purpose for which its authors...

As a patriot and a man of honor, Jimmy Carter should refuse the Nobel Peace Prize. Such an act of integrity would win him more respect and admiration from his countrymen than anything he has done since he left the White House in 1981. The Nobel Peace Prize committee...

If I were a Hispanic American, I would feel humiliated every time an automated telephone-answering system prompted me to press 1 for English, or 2 for Spanish. I would wince every time an ATM machine invited me to conduct my transaction en Espanol. It would mortify me...

A year later, it is striking how quickly the moral clarity that followed the attacks was beset by moral confusion. Not everywhere, of course. This time around, The New York Times did not mark Sept. 11 with a celebration of terrorism -- as opposed to Sept. 11, 2001,...

If sucking up to the House of Saud were an Olympic event, George W. Bush would be a contender for the gold. He was at his fawning best last month, when he hosted the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan, for lunch in Crawford, Texas. The ambassador, who showed...

Q: I sure hope Amtrak will get all the money it needs to keep operating, don't you? I can't believe there are people who would be willing to let the nation's rail system grind to a halt. A: And I can't believe that David Gunn, Amtrak's president, had the gall to...

There are times, George Orwell is reputed to have said, when the first duty of an intelligent man is to restate the obvious. President Bush did his duty this week when he cut through the murk of the past nine years -- the years of the Middle East "peace process" -- to...

Put me down as an agnostic on the proposed Department of Homeland Security. Most of official and unofficial Washington is for it, but that is hardly a recommendation. I realize that ensuring the security of the homeland is critical, especially when we are at war with...

The next time you see a picture of Yasser Arafat, take a look at his keffiyeh, the black-and-white headdress he never appears without. He wears it in an unusual style, carefully folded so that it comes to a peak at the top, drapes down over his left shoulder, then...

If George W. Bush learned only one thing from his father's presidency, it was that high marks in the opinion polls are no guarantee of future triumph in the other kind of poll. During the Gulf War in early 1991, the first President Bush's approval ratings soared to...

Don't bother telling the plaintiffs who sued earlier this year to collect reparations for slavery from three US corporations that they don't have a legal leg to stand on. They already know it. After all, you don't need a law degree to recognize that FleetBoston, CSX,...

Fidel Castro loathes anyone who champions freedom and democracy, but for Vladimiro Roca, who was freed this week after nearly five years in prison, he harbors a particular hatred. Roca is a scion of Cuba's communist elite. His father was Blas Roca, a founding father...

You cannot make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian war without first making sense of 1993. That year found Israel in reasonably good shape. Its economy was the most powerful in the Middle East. Its military power was respected and feared throughout the region. Its...