ArcaMax

Remember how President Donald Trump said this country could not absorb any more immigrants, legal or illegal?

"Our country is full," he declared during a visit to the border, among other occasions, a year ago. "Can't take you anymore ... so turn around."

That was then. Imagine my surprise when The Washington Post reported last week that Trump'...Read more

President Donald Trump could hardly contain his glee.

"WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!" he tweeted in all caps to his millions of followers early Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire presidential primary.

The tweet leaked audio from 2015 in which Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor and current Democratic rival for Trump's job, strongly...Read more

If I may revive a wonderful word from the days of President George W. Bush, don't "misunderestimate" President Donald Trump.

That thought came to mind last week as I watched teleprompter Trump deliver this year's State of the Union address, followed the next day by Twitter Trump and rally Trump.

Like the tireless salesman and spinmeister that ...Read more

First of all, thank you for reading.

I know you have a lot of choices to chew up your time, so I appreciate you spending some of it with me.

I'm being extra nice because I've been reading the much-talked-about book "Why We're Polarized," by journalist Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox, host of a popular podcast and passionately devoted analyst of...Read more

As the presidential race heats up, along with President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, so does the media bashing -- and, like the rest of American politics these days, polls show the public to be more divided than ever regarding whom to bash.

A leading example is the goofy feud between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NPR that most ...Read more

Judging by his early polling, Michael Bloomberg is giving election-buying a good name, as long as the money is filtered through the cleansing medium of television ad buys.

As you may know by now, especially if you have seen his ads, the billionaire media mogul and former New York mayor is running for president by sitting out the first four ...Read more

Every so often a book comes along that shakes up the national gabfest in a way that makes all of us talk about an old problem with a new urgency.

Jane Jacobs' 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" sparked a movement to preserve urban neighborhood diversity against developers' bulldozers.

Michael Harrington's 1962 "The Other ...Read more

Until recently, Illinois state Rep. Jonathan Carroll, a Democrat, says he has avoided talking much in public about his childhood experiences with isolation punishment.

But he was moved to blog about it after the chilling revelations in a recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois of the disciplinary policy called "...Read more

Now that Cory Booker has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, it must come as a relief to some of his critics that white people still have an opportunity to be president.

I'm referring, with my sarcastic tongue firmly in cheek, to the critics who thought the New Jersey senator was being a bit too candid when he complained a few days...Read more

Yes, like numerous other people across the civilized world, I was oddly surprised but not really shocked to hear that Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and his American-born wife, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, have decided to pretty much call it quits on the royalty thing.

Many other observers were far more upset. Suddenly Brexit, the ...Read more

Can a political party be too inclusive? Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently thinks so.

In a lengthy New York magazine profile this week, the New York congresswoman responded with a groan when asked what role she might play as a member of Congress if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president.

"Oh God," she said of the...Read more

Remember when presidential candidate Donald Trump told a mostly white rally crowd in Michigan in 2016 that "at the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95% of the African American vote"?

How's that working out? Alas, he has a lot of ground to make up.

Yet, he hardly could have sounded more determined at the November "Black ...Read more

Here we go again. While the U.S. House was voting for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled against Obamacare's individual mandate requirement that nearly everyone must have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Yes, that raises the possibility once again that the entire ...Read more

He was the last of the firsts.

That's probably how Richard Gordon Hatcher, one of the nation's first black elected big-city mayors, most often will be remembered.

Hatcher died Friday night at age 86 in Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago. He was elected mayor of Gary at age 34 on ...Read more

Could President Donald Trump be charged under his own executive order?

I had to ask myself that after he signed an executive order to crack down on anti-Semitism on college campuses, only a few days after insulting his audience in a weekend speech to a national Jewish organization in Florida.

What else can you say about a guy who pats you on ...Read more

Remember when candidate Donald Trump sought black votes by asking somewhat sarcastically, "What do you have to lose?" One answer now comes from President Trump's chosen attorney general: How about your police protection?

At a Justice Department awards ceremony to honor outstanding police officers Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr called on...Read more

A lot has changed in the 50 years since the predawn Chicago police raid that left two Illinois Black Panther Party leaders dead and four other members wounded.

For one, I'm a lot older now. Illinois chairman Fred Hampton, who was 21, and member Mark Clark, 22, were about the same age as I was then and were robbed of that opportunity.

I used to...Read more

Joe Biden and I share a problem that's not always easy to talk about. In fact, that's the problem. We stutter. That makes a lot of things hard to talk about.

Now that the 77-year-old former vice president is running for president, many people understandably are asking whether his notorious gaffes, bloopers and stumbles are related to his age.

...Read more

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a woman of uncommon intelligence. But like all of us mortals, she sometimes makes mistakes.

Take, for example, the Massachusetts Democrat's embarrassing retreat on "Medicare for All." Please.

After weeks of being pressured to show some details as to how she would expand Medicare to cover all Americans and not just ...Read more

Having followed Deval Patrick's storybook rise from childhood poverty on Chicago's South Side to become the second black governor in U.S. history, I have a nagging question about his announcement that he's running for president: Why now?

He apparently wants to rescue the party from itself, although polls indicate most Democrats may not feel in ...Read more