MANY YEARS ago I became friends with an Egyptian man who, I was surprised to learn, strongly supported Israel. He had grown up in the 1950s and '60s, a time when the Jewish state was relentlessly demonized as an enemy in Egypt's schools and media. Yet in the early 1980s, he began to doubt the venomous portrait of Israel he had always been exposed to.

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IN NOVEMBER 2021, voters in St. Paul, Minn., approved a strict new rent control measure that imposed a 3 percent annual ceiling on allowable rent hikes. Opponents warned that the new law would prove to be a disaster.

It did.

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FOURTEEN DEMOCRATIC members members of Congress have introduced legislation to lower the voting age in the United States from 18 to 16. Their bill would repeal the 26th Amendment, which in 1971 established 18 as the minimum voting age nationwide, and replace it with a new 28th Amendment making 16-year-olds eligible to participate in all elections. Four of the measure's 14 sponsors are from Massachusetts: Representatives Seth Moulton, Ayanna Pressley, Lori Trahan, and James McGovern. The others are from New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Oregon.

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EVER SINCE it transpired that President Biden, like his predecessor, had improperly retained classified government documents, both men's claques have been busily explaining why the other guy's transgression is worse.

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THE MASSACHUSETTS Teachers Association, the largest teachers union in the state, has unveiled its top priorities for the next two years. Those priorities do not include holding instructors to more rigorous standards or ensuring that students do better on exams. They do, however, include making it lawful for public employees to go on strike — something that has been flatly illegal in Massachusetts for the past century.

"This outright ban on public employee strikes is unjust," declares the state's largest teachers union. It "unfairly restricts the ability of public employees to take collective action in support of themselves and the communities they serve."

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