ArcaMax

If you don’t tell a lie, my father used to say, you won’t have to worry about which version of your story you told last.

Right, I agreed, but, with an attitude like that, ol’ Dad was well advised to avoid going into politics.

That advice came to mind amid the unfolding saga of an unfortunate altercation at Arlington National Cemetery on ...Read more

In case you somehow haven’t noticed, manhood is on the ballot.

Even before President Joe Biden stepped aside to let Vice President Kamala Harris step up to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee, insiders from both parties were calling this the “boys vs. girls election.”

And even before the Republican National Convention opened in ...Read more

Perhaps the most memorable moment of this year’s Democratic convention came the night before Kamala Harris officially accepted the party’s nomination for president.

It was no simple matter for anyone to follow a lineup of such stars as Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder and Barack and Michelle Obama, just to name a few.

But countless eyes and TV...Read more

As one who sympathized and empathized with President Joe Biden, I was relieved when he decided to step aside for a younger generation of presidential contenders.

Seeing the unmitigated joy — and relief — that seemed to erupt nationwide, suddenly I, too, decided to take a symbolic step toward semiretirement just in time for this year’s ...Read more

As the Harris-Walz team soars (polls are already showing Kamala taking the lead), Trump is cracking up.

His ego can’t take it. He is freaking out that his opponent — a Black woman — has more energy and momentum behind her than he has.

Last Thursday, after 10 days of Kamala in the limelight, Trump was so desperate for attention that he ...Read more

While the saying may be true that candidates for vice president usually don’t make much of a difference in the ultimate success of presidential candidates, they do give us plenty to argue about.

That’s particularly true of the current contenders.

Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to barely have gotten the name of her chosen running mate,...Read more

The Indian-American duo of Usha Vance and Kamala Harris will challenge stereotypes. Welcome to the new, improved 2024 presidential campaign.

No matter how this plays out, a woman of Indian-American descent will be moving her influence into the White House.

She’ll either be the President of the United States Kamala Harris, or the wife of the ...Read more

For the first time in years, I’ve been walking around with a smile on my face. Maybe you have, too.

The positive energy unleashed by Kamala Harris over the last two weeks is in such stark contrast to the negative energy unleashed by Trump for the last nine years that it feels as if America has had a new beginning.

Complete strangers come up ...Read more

Joe Biden didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from white MAGA men to America’s future.

Consider that women now compose remarkably almost 60% of college undergraduates. And that ...Read more

As much as we know by now about Donald Trump’s creative approach to facts, even the man whom late-night host Jimmy Kimmel calls “Rant-a-Claus” can go a fib too far.

Trump seemed to hit his credibility limit last week when he took to Truth Social, his social media platform, to deny any knowledge whatsoever of Project 2025, a collection of ...Read more

“Black jobs”?

It’s a simple phrase, but what does it mean?

More specifically, what did it mean when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insisted in his debate with President Joe Biden that migrants crossing the southern border are taking “Black jobs”?

Trump’s comments in a debate viewed by many, including me, as a ...Read more

When does political protest seem to become an end in itself?

Climate firebrand Greta Thunberg, 21, seems to raise that question when looking at photos of her arrest last month outside the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden.

Wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh scarf and shouting, “Shame on you,” in a show of solidarity with the pro-...Read more

I never thought I would be writing a column to urge Joe Biden to step aside.

But his painfully poor performance in his debate with Donald Trump last week forced me to face a very uncomfortable truth. His debate showing was a capital-D disaster.

The horrible truth: Biden needs to bow out.

I don’t say that easily because, as someone who’s ...Read more

News of Donald Sutherland’s death at age 88 took me back to a day in 1971 when he was protesting the Vietnam War onstage with Jane Fonda and I was one of about 1,000 off-duty soldiers in their audience.

I hoped, in the spirit of John Lennon’s anthem, to give peace a chance.

We were outside Fort Lewis, Washington, now known as Joint Base ...Read more

Don’t get nervous, young folks, but talk about a national service mandate has been bubbling up again in Washington.

Such talk has been particularly vigorous among key advisers to Donald Trump as he begins what he hopes will be his transition back to the White House. Of course, talk of mandated national service is one step away from that ...Read more

’Tis the season for Donald Trump to audition potential running mates while the rest of us speculate on who the lucky winner will be.

The trial by political fire was on full display last week as the entire Democratic Party establishment seemed to rise up and pile on Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, whom multiple news outlets have put on Trump’...Read more

As American politics have become more polarized in the era of former President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, we also hear it sound more paranoid.

The dueling scandals of Trump’s hush-money trial in New York, where he was found guilty on all 34 felony counts, and the beginning of Hunter Biden’s trial on three felony gun charges in Delaware...Read more

As if suspicions, partisan and otherwise, have not dealt enough blows to our criminal justice system in recent years, along comes Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s flag flap.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, who has continuously called for tighter ethics legislation regarding the high court, decried ...Read more

Graduation speeches are like life and Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get.

I’m so accustomed to headline-making controversies touched off by commencement speakers whose views tilt to the left that the Harrison Butker dustup caught me by surprise.

Until now, the public has known Butker, 28, as simply ...Read more

One of the roles we old folks fall into is to wish we could painlessly and conveniently give young people the useful wisdom life has taught us so they won’t have to learn it the hard way.

Such are the thoughts that come to me as I witness the spread of militantly anti-Zionist protests across campuses similar to anti-war protests in the ...Read more