“Boston Globe” on The Daily Caller

In the golf section at Play It Again Sports in Dedham, behind rows of slightly worn soccer cleats and bins of brand-new baseballs, Finbar Ford of Walpole admired a used, $30 left-handed wedge. (more)

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote. (more)

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote. (more)

NEW YORK — After college, most people do their best to avoid having to pull any more all-nighters. But for some, even after graduation, the wee hours are the most productive. (more)

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography, including an undisclosed number who used their government computers to obtain the illegal material, according to investigative reports. (more)

How could the Obamas relax on the New England coast, they fume, when the nation is fighting two wars, oil blobs are washing ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, and unemployment remains a stubbornly high 9.5 percent? The Republican National Committee last week launched a snarky website cataloging the president’s recreational activities, including his Maine trip, under the heading: “Play Golf or Save the Gulf?’’ (more)

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney has raised nearly $3.5 million for his political action committee in the first half of the year, a sum that dwarfs that of other possible 2012 Republican presidential candidates and establishes the former Massachusetts governor as a potent political force. (more)

The Boston Globe reports today that facts don’t matter in political debates. Studies show that, once people form an opinion, they go to great lengths to avoid having to revise it. If anything, objective showings that they are wrong cause people to dig in and develop a stronger belief in the idea they initially got wrong. “The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says a researcher. (more)

While you’re watching Team USA soundly whomp England (hopefully) on day 2 of the World Cup tomorrow, ponder this: could soccer, the obsession of every country in the world other than the slightly backwards and somewhat confused USA, possibly be a bad thing? (more)

Does the NBA really want the discussion at the Finals to focus on the officials? With a curious choice of referees for Game 4, it certainly seems so. (more)

When I started on the education beat in the late 1950s in New York—having been an alumnus of the high expectations and discipline of the public Boston Latin School—whose other alumni included Samuel Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson—I used to take careful notes of the annual city-wide school test scores. I paid particular attention to a Brooklyn elementary school in a low-income neighborhood with many “disadvantaged” students, as black youngsters were called then. (more)

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on S.J.Res.26, a resolution to block EPA from usurping powers never delegated to it by Congress. Failure means allowing EPA to go forward, apparently in flagrant violation of our constitutional traditions simply because too many in Congress desire, but can’t bear to take responsibility for, more of the Obama agenda. (more)

Tomorrow morning, Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the next iteration of his company’s hot-selling iPhone at a gathering of Apple software developers in San Jose. (more)

MEDFORD — It was a crisp Saturday last fall. Tufts University’s football team had just beaten Bowdoin College in a nail-biter. Proud from the homecoming victory, Tufts president Lawrence Bacow walked toward his house with the president of Bowdoin, showing off the hilltop campus along the way. (more)

John R. Buonomo, the former registrar of probate for Middlesex County, may be a convicted thief serving time behind bars at a house of correction, but he can still count on his pension check arriving on time every month. (more)

BOSTON, MA. – Nine cities and towns have forced the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to pay property taxes on closed churches, schools, convents, and parish halls, contending that the buildings no longer qualify as tax-exempt because the archdiocese is not using them. (more)

More than 200 emergency medical technicians and paramedics in Massachusetts and New Hampshire have been practicing without legitimate certification, having paid certificate mills for fake credentials without taking any medical training, an investigation by Massachusetts public health officials has found. (more)

Americans are learning that ObamaCare will pile on insurmountable debt and cause government to encroach on every area of our lives. ObamaCare is, as Yuval Levin said, an “unmitigated disaster—for our health care system, for our fiscal future, and for any notion of limited government.” And the more we learn about the specific provisions, the more we discover that the bill does not reflect our values—faith, family and freedom—nor does it strengthen those principles that are the foundation of a great nation. (more)

Americans consistently have said controlling health costs is their number one priority for reform. But Washington didn’t listen, and President Obama and congressional Democrats muscled through a 2,700-page bill that will actually cause health costs to soar even higher. (more)

1.) Coming soon to a walk-in clinic near you: Nancy Pelosi — “Imprecise” and “confusing” language in the health care bill may bring an end to congressional participation in the federal employees health care program, writes the New York Times. Apparently, there is an “assumption” in the health care bill “that lawmakers should join many of their constituents in getting coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.” Oh lawdy, won’t that suck! Such analysis comes courtesy of the Congressional Research Service, which exists for exactly one reason–to make people feel dumb about the life choice they just made. Writes the Times, “If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?” HAHA, of course not! (more)