ArcaMax

Virginia's new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, raced into office bearing two culture war baubles. One was a ban on teaching critical race theory. The other was a prohibition on mask mandates in public schools.

Each came in the form of an executive order. Neither costs anything. And both are of little consequence.

In terms of politics, ...Read more

Remote work "will hold women back," says CNBC. Home-based employees may be deprived career advancement available to colleagues in the company office. And women, usually tasked with child care, are more likely to choose -- or feel forced -- to work from home. That's why some are calling remote work "the Zoom glass ceiling."

But is this a ...Read more

From the moment many of us leave the womb, images of our infant selves get posted on Facebook and other social media. Once out and about, they become part of our permanent digital footprint, often soon to be joined by photos at every stage of life -- crawling, first steps, puppy hugging, first day of kindergarten and so on.

This accumulated ...Read more

It was with dry eyes that Australians waved goodbye to Novak Djokovic, the tennis superstar their country sent packing because he wasn't vaccinated against COVID-19. Their laws require that foreigners entering the country be vaccinated. The Serbian, there to defend his Australian Open title, apparently assumed he'd fly past the rules governing ...Read more

Nearly everything Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted about Elon Musk was wrong. Scratch the word "nearly." Everything was wrong.

Last month, the senator from Massachusetts tweeted, "Let's change the rigged tax code so the Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else."

Some background: The founder of ...Read more

She was only in her 30s when COVID-19 put her in the hospital for three nights. The woman, whom I know well, eventually tested negative, but then "long COVID" took over. Formerly healthy, she now suffers a disabling inflammatory disease. She may need a year to completely recover -- and some don't recover.

Need I add that she was unvaccinated? ...Read more

She entered the headlines as the super-confident entrepreneur who founded a wildly successful tech company at 19. She recruited generals and secretaries of state to her board. Her fresh face and long blonde hair made the covers of Forbes, Fortune and Inc. as the business world marveled at her invention that could allegedly do blood tests with ...Read more

Ever notice how many landmark sitcoms feature four female friends? The generations change. The original "Sex and the City" was mostly Generation X, and "Girls" were millennials. Their trailblazer was "Golden Girls," about older women sharing a midcentury home in Miami. But the stories all center on single women (never married, divorced or ...Read more

The year 2022 should be too early to get into heated speculation about the Democrats' 2024 candidate for president. But since it's already begun, now would be a good time to resist arguments for making Vice President Kamala Harris the nominee.

First off, the current president, Joe Biden, has not ruled out seeking reelection. Though up in years,...Read more

If Joe Biden takes office, there'll be a "depression the likes of which you've never seen," Donald Trump warned a month before he lost the 2020 presidential election. It didn't happen.

You know that, right?

Also, your 401(k) surely did not "go to hell," as the previous guy predicted. On the contrary, stocks in the S&P 500 are up 26% as the ...Read more

The screaming headlines about New York City closing down again in response to the highly infectious new COVID-19 variant are premature. Sure, some things are dialing back, witness the cancellation of the Radio City Rockettes' "Christmas Spectacular." The reality is that the surrounding streets are clogged with celebrants viewing the store ...Read more

Four long years ago, America went into convulsions over revelations that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexually preyed on women pursuing careers in show business. Thus was launched the #MeToo era in which women openly spoke of sexual violence at the hands of rich, powerful men.

Numerous cases have since come to the fore, many seemingly of...Read more

There's a lot not to like about running as a Republican in New England. Where do we start?

Let's start with Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Though Massachusetts is one of the most Democratic states in the country, Baker remains very popular among the voters. His approval ratings rarely strayed below 60%, even in the ...Read more

After the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, then-Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, evaded calls for banning weapons of war. But he had other ideas. The "more realistic discussion," Rogers said, is "how do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?"

Tightening the gun laws would seem a lot easier ...Read more

For nearly 50 years, the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling has protected a woman's right to an abortion. It also protected many politicians' careers. Lawmakers who opposed abortion knew that as long as abortion remained available, pro-choice voters wouldn't care much about their positions on the matter.

That would be especially true of ...Read more

Cruel as this may sound, I'm having a hard time cringing at the internet trolls now going after noisy right-wingers who propagandized against the coronavirus vaccine and then succumbed to the deadly disease.

One was Nick Bledsoe, a car mechanic in Opelika, Alabama. Bledsoe achieved minor celebrity opposing public efforts to contain COVID-19. He...Read more

Amazing to read that over 4 million Americans quit their jobs in September -- part of a mass labor pullout being called the Great Resignation. The social and economic chaos unleashed by COVID-19 has apparently jumbled pre-pandemic assumptions.

Many of the job leavers have used the downtime time to re-imagine what they want out of life and are ...Read more

Economists tell us that the current high rate of inflation is not forever. And it's not all bad, certainly not for workers whose rising wages play a part in the climbing prices. How seriously Americans are taking it may be reflected in this Wall Street Journal headline: "Retail Sales Rose by 1.7% in October Despite High Inflation."

Anyhow, the ...Read more

Political freeloaders. They are to the left of us. They are to the right. These are politicians who grandstand, who vote against their constituents' interests, knowing that their tougher colleagues will do the hard work.

Start with the right. Start with Marsha Blackburn, the U.S. senator from Tennessee. She idiotically called the infrastructure...Read more

No serious economist believed that former President Donald Trump's 2017 tax law would pay for itself. On the contrary, that buffet of tax cuts will explode deficits by almost $2 trillion over 11 years, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

Though the benefits went overwhelmingly to the highest-income Americans, red-state ...Read more