ArcaMax

Cryptocurrencies were born out of the libertarian dream of a financial system free from government regulation. Bitcoin's promoters peddle its ability to let us make transactions without dealing with regulated banks, which, they say, we are not supposed to trust.

What crypto players since stripped of their "investments" saw were some operators ...Read more

By removing the Iowa caucuses as the first stop in picking a presidential candidate, would Democrats be giving up on Iowa? Not at all. The opposite could happen.

It's true that the Iowa caucuses crowned Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, two times each, and the state followed in the general elections. But Iowa went for Republican Donald ...Read more

Good-bye, Dr. Fauci. You did your job while under attack from the worst sort of people.

You devoted more than 50 years to public health. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, you led us through HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and, every year, seasonal flu.

You say your "proudest moment" ...Read more

Hakeem Jeffries seems poised to replace Nancy Pelosi as leader of the House Democrats. A Black political moderate, the Brooklyn congressman is often likened to Barack Obama. Even-tempered, he is known to "play" with most of the children in Washington. And at 52, he represents generational change from the 82-year-old Pelosi.

Who among Democrats ...Read more

Is it really news that Karen Bass will become the first female mayor of Los Angeles? In an era where women have already run Chicago, Phoenix, Fort Worth, Charlotte, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Boston, the gender of the new Los Angeles mayor should not have dominated the headlines, as it did in numerous media.

This obsession ...Read more

A year ago, he was still a dreaded presence, a destroyer of American institutions forcing chaos on a frightened nation. After the public voted to remove him from the White House, he maintained relevance by controlling a violent mob stupid and criminal enough to trash the Capitol, threaten to hang the vice president and kill police officers.

...Read more

Why did Democrats beat expectations that they'd get swamped on Election Day? Was it Republican attacks on abortion rights? Was it a misreading of how much the public blamed Democrats for inflation? And what about the role played by fear of crime and the perceived chaos at the border?

It could have been any or all of those things, but only ...Read more

It was always surprising to hear voices on the fringe left downplay the COVID-era spike in crime. Still more amazing, though, were the grown-ups in the Democratic Party who seemed to be giving them a sympathetic listen.

Kathy Hochul should have been able to easily put away Lee Zeldin in the New York governor's race. Zeldin was not one of those ...Read more

It takes a certain inconsistency to argue, as Elon Musk has, that activists are "trying to destroy free speech in America" by pressuring companies to pause advertising on Twitter, the social media platform he just overpaid for. A "free speech absolutist," as Musk describes himself, would surely understand that activists saying their piece to ...Read more

Russia has many reasons to regret its savage war on Ukraine, but a very lasting one will be how it supercharged Europe's plans to end its dependence on that country's oil and gas. Europe was already well into a campaign to replace fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, mainly to slow climate change. The invasion and weaponization of Russian ...Read more

Drag queens are men who perform dressed up as women. Once an underground art form, drag shows have gone mainstream. Today they are widely regarded as innocent fun: The wildly popular "RuPaul's Drag Race" is in its 14th season.

So accepted has this kind of entertainment become that some public libraries are holding drag queen story times. These ...Read more

Tourism in Salem is wild with 100,000 visitors descending on this historic Massachusetts town on any given day. Traffic is gridlocked, and there are virtually no parking spaces left. The mayor told visitors to go to satellite parking lots and take shuttle buses downtown. Then the satellite lots got maxed out.

Salem is famous for the 1692 witch ...Read more

A gallon of regular gasoline that cost over $5 in June now goes for about $3.80. So let's all thank Joe Biden for the lower gas prices.

Little to do with Biden, you say? You may be right. But if you blamed him for higher prices back then, why not give him credit now?

The answer may be that Republicans have done a pretty good job making the ...Read more

As Russian forces continue their retreat on the battlefield in Ukraine, Moscow has turned to attacking stationary civilian targets that don't shoot back. It's pathetic. And Russia's failure to intimidate Ukraine through wanton destruction can be seen in the flow of the two peoples.

Ukrainians who left are flooding back into their country, while...Read more

We can well understand Joe Kent's grief over the death of his wife. Shannon was a Navy cryptologic technician who tragically died in a suicide bombing in Syria.

But as a candidate for a House seat in Washington state, Kent is using his loss as some strange kind of cover for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In doing so, the ...Read more

A day without Elon Musk is an OK day. Not that I don't like him. He's a business genius, after all, who launched the electric-vehicle future. He helped preserve online access in a battered Ukraine by sending over 12,000 Starlink terminals that work with orbiting satellites. Ukraine thanked him for that.

Ukraine was less enthusiastic about Musk'...Read more

"I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy and believe that those who purchased flood insurance should have their claims paid," then-Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis said upon voting against a $9.7 billion aid package for Sandy's victims in 2013. But, he went on, letting the program increase federal debt by that amount without spending cuts ...Read more

Suppose you're a woman who's suffered miscarriages or has cancer and very much wants a baby. But your state's near ban on abortion lets government bureaucrats or even total strangers go after doctors who might perform one to save your life or ability to have another child.

The abortion law in Texas has added so many layers of anxiety to ...Read more

No, polio is not a threat to the vast majority of Americans. That's because the vast majority has received a very effective polio vaccine. And that's also why public officials should stop turning a concern centered on a few under-vaxxed communities into everyone's problem.

But Gov. Kathy Hochul did just that when she declared a "polio state of ...Read more

We regularly encounter stories of Americans struggling to stay financially afloat, buffeted by the day's economic challenges. So many focus on a woman who is identified a quarter of the way in as a "single mother." She's often portrayed facing impossible demands of holding a paying job while caring for the young ones.

Almost none of these ...Read more