ArcaMax

Like horses at the starting gate, the better conservative pundits are galloping off to the next thing, which is really an old thing: the culture wars. But what a nice change from having to negotiate between traditional conservative doctrine and Donald Trumpian mobs threatening them for frowning in the president's direction.

The culture war is a...Read more

The Democrats' most interesting conflict isn't moderates versus the left. It's the never-Trump Republicans versus the left.

The never-Trumpers, best embodied by The Lincoln Project, romped through the last campaign with verve and wit. They lasered in on crushing Donald Trump.

The Democratic left, by contrast, is deep into grievance. Yes, its ...Read more

It came as no surprise that Donald Trump's supporters would hold a protest in Washington, D.C., claiming their hero won an election that he lost badly. More curious were the foes of the president who bothered with a counterprotest after Joe Biden triumphed in, by some counting, a historic margin. Did they think there were two sides to the story?...Read more

Some of the sickest images to come out of our recent turmoil have featured Americans waving guns at other Americans -- not in self-defense but to provoke fear. The worst showed armed thugs threatening Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on the state capitol steps over her anti-COVID regulations. (This was separate from an alleged plot by a different ...Read more

When Pennsylvania was called, the world heard a quick boom, followed by the pffffffffft of a deflating presidency. Suddenly, the angry, paranoiac tweets that used to scare so many because, after all, Donald Trump was president, lost their menace.

The air was escaping even before Joe Biden was declared winner. Come Thursday evening, ABC, CBS and...Read more

As I write this, we don't know the winner of the 2020 presidential race. By the time you read it, we still may not know. There are votes to be counted.

What seems very apparent, though, is that Democrats did not enjoy the romp that they and some political prognosticators had expected. They were running against the much-disliked President Donald...Read more

Therapists counseling couples in trouble tend to follow this game plan: Before the combatants start hashing out the issues, they must acknowledge that their mates feel what they feel.

These words stick in my head as Americans face the stress of political schism -- each side seeing calamity in electoral loss. Besides steeling oneself for ...Read more

The "energy" of the Democratic Party is on the left. That's what the left kept telling us a year ago, before Joe Biden started vacuuming up large wins in the Democratic primaries. President Donald Trump has run with the notion, bellowing at rallies that the party has been "completely taken over by socialists, Marxists and far-left extremists."

...Read more

Joe Biden could have used more careful wording at that debate, but his talk of shifting the economy from fossil fuels to cleaner energy reflected a process well on its way. The transition started before Donald Trump took office and accelerated during his presidency.

Hoping to vacuum up some votes in oil- and gas-producing swing states, Trump ...Read more

Let us examine the Great Barrington Declaration with the respect it deserves, which is very little. The advocates, who include Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump's preferred pandemic expert, argue that all these shutdowns are causing economic and psychological havoc that's worse than the disease. Better to let the coronavirus infect the ...Read more

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern forced a shutdown so strict that no one was allowed to go fishing or golfing, easy pursuits for social distancing. But her super-tough "go hard, go early" policy has virtually stamped out the coronavirus in this country of 5 million.

Not only can New Zealanders again fish and golf but 30,000 of them ...Read more

The New Yorker magazine asked a typical New Yorker magazine question: "Should progressives trust" The Lincoln Project?

Founded by Republican operatives who detest Donald Trump, the Project is running a swashbuckling campaign to see the president defeated -- and humiliated. Brilliant, funny and viciously effective, their mission is to move ...Read more

After his girlfriend booted him out of her place, Adam Fox found refuge in a storage space under a vacuum shop. There, he reportedly lived with an emotional support dog and smoked pot.

Fox and six other men belonging to a militia group they call the Wolverine Watchmen were arrested for their alleged role in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. ...Read more

Guess what. The stock market seems to like Joe Biden. More precisely, investors seem to like that his lead in the polls is solid enough to lessen the prospect of President Donald Trump setting off an explosion of doubt, anxiety and possible violence if Biden wins narrowly.

"A Clear-Cut Biden Win Is Emerging as a Bull Case for Stocks," reads a ...Read more

It pleases me to report that I just visited Seattle's Capitol Hill looking for anarchists, looters and the like and came up empty-handed. Despite one piece of anti-police graffiti I would like to unsee, the area that had suffered some violent demonstrations had been seized by brunchgoers chatting over their eggs Benedict. People lined up outside...Read more

In their instant analyses of Donald Trump's performance in the presidential debate, the TV pundits summoned their stock phrases for disaster. It was a "s---show," Dana Bash said on CNN. Over at NBC, Chuck Todd called it a "train wreck of the making of one person." And CNN's Jake Tapper strung a bunch together, calling the debate "a hot mess ...Read more

Some are calling Donald Trump "the most pro-life president ever." He's definitely been anti-abortion. But he's hardly pro-life.

The "consistent life ethic" gets closer to the heart of what this means. Originating in the Catholic Church, it expands the pro-life concept to include opposition to capital punishment, humane treatment of immigrants ...Read more

Here's a policing story with a happy ending: Deputies in Deltona, Florida, recently stopped a black jogger who fit the description of a burglary suspect. The jogger, Joseph Griffin, is a former military police officer and currently a registered nurse. Griffin knew to be calm and cooperative.

The deputy asked Griffin to bear with him. He said he...Read more

America's big drug companies are refusing to let President Donald Trump use them as campaign props. That is right and proper.

First, nine of them pledged to not release a vaccine before one is deemed effective and safe. Having failed to manage or even acknowledge the COVID-19 crisis, Trump has turned to pushing the fantasy that an acceptable ...Read more

Hurricane Sally has just pummeled the Florida Panhandle and the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama. Though it landed as "only" a Category 2, what made it disastrous was its slow crawl, drowning Gulf of Mexico communities in Book of Genesis-type flooding. Hurricanes these days have slowed down, science says, as temperatures warm.

Science also ...Read more