Have you stopped using your hands? Do your fingers struggle to sign your name? Is chopping an onion with a knife hard work? Must you call someone to fix a cabinet door off the hinges? Is it agony to sew on a button? For many, computers and laziness have sapped our manual skills. This is […]
Froma Harrop
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Froma Harrop: What lurks in a child’s online world?
What is the most shocking takeaway from the story of the two 12-year-olds who repeatedly stabbed their friend — nearly to death — on the imagined orders of a fantasy character? Is it the preteens’ apparent disconnect from the truth of what they were doing? One of the assailants childishly described her actions to police […]
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Froma Harrop: Massachusetts, not VA, as Obamacare’s future
Obamacare foes have portrayed the VA hospital scandal as a dystopian glimpse into the future of the Affordable Care Act. The temptation is understandable if one regards health care policy as just another battlefield for partisan strife. Not that the troubles at the Department of Veterans Affairs don’t offer tough lessons for the other side. […]
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Froma Harrop: The housing bust and the American psyche
Real estate mania lives on at the HGTV cable channel, where house shoppers still holler for granite on their kitchen islands and his-and-her sinks in their en suite bathrooms. But in the non-TV reality of middle-class America, the bloom is definitely off the real estate rose. The rose isn’t dead, mind you. Surveys show an […]
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Froma Harrop: Fight heroin with marijuana
A plague of heroin addiction is upon us. Another plague. Heroin was the crisis that prompted Richard Nixon to launch the war on drugs in 1971. Time marched on. Cocaine and then crack cocaine and then methamphetamine overtook heroin as the drugs of the moment. Now heroin is back — and badder than ever. The […]
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Froma Harrop: Fox News and GOP are not in the same business
The curtain has dropped on the tale of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher famous for refusing to pay grazing fees for use of public land. He became a hero to anti-government zealots who oddly failed to see this second helping of taxpayer largesse (the modest fees he didn’t pay already reflected a government subsidy) as […]
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Froma Harrop: College rapes a matter for police
If a 19-year-old high-school dropout raped by her ex-boyfriend wants justice, she calls the police. The same should apply to a 19-year-old college freshman similarly attacked by another student. But it doesn’t apply nearly enough. Colleges have let themselves become arbiters of violent crime. They have no business being in that business. Furthermore, they got […]
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Froma Harrop: Americans tire of solving world’s problems
Americans want a smaller role in global affairs than the stage-hogging part we command today. Nearly half say the U.S. should be less active minding the world’s business, and only 19 percent say more so, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests. Who can blame them? Our roads are shabby, the rail system Third […]
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Froma Harrop: We could do worse than Jeb Bush
As the 2016 presidential campaign starts to gather steam, prominent Republican names are rushing to the fore. One is that of Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, son of former President George H.W. Bush and brother of former President George W. Bush. The thinking is that as painful memories of W’s administration fade (to recap, […]
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Froma Harrop: Lessons not learned in Boston bombing
Airport gift shops throughout New England are piling “Boston Strong” T-shirts in vivid colors. “Boston Strong” became a rallying cry of solidarity after the terrorist bombing last year at the Boston Marathon. As the anniversary of the attack — and the next race on April 21 — approaches, emotional coverage of the event and aftermath […]