ArcaMax

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

All this agonizing over what may happen if President Donald Trump tries to steal the election is highly annoying. It normalizes the idea that pure aggression can so easily steamroll the democratic process.

Here are healthier assumptions for those who value a fair election:

If Trump loses, he leaves the White House on Jan. 20, 2021. If, heaven ...Read more

Someday, you may be going back to your office, factory, store or wherever you worked. Know this: Your dog will be OK. He or she will be OK even if you've just spent six months tied wrists to paws, in locked-down intimacy.

Dogs are social animals, it's true, but they do adjust to changes in routine. Humans who love their animals but also have ...Read more

Many of us lit candles and prayed that Sweden's approach to the coronavirus would succeed. As the rest of Europe locked down, Sweden stayed mostly open. Its plan was to keep vulnerable people separate while letting the virus infect the others, thus creating herd immunity -- a large proportion of people no longer able to spread the disease. ...Read more

The Kenosha, Wisconsin, police department immediately took the officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times off the streets, as city, state and federal officials investigate what happened. They also made a speedy arrest of the 17-year-old who is charged with shooting two demonstrators dead.

Wedged between an incident of possible brutality against a...Read more

A federal health panel now recommends that men consume no more than one alcoholic drink a day. For 30 years, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee set the limit at two drinks a day. (Women have long been urged to limit consumption to one drink a day.)

Other studies found that drinking under the previous two-beverage standard was actually ...Read more

Trump supporters have been sending me short messages asking, "How is your 401(k) doing?" They are making three assumptions.

1. That the stocks in my retirement account are doing well.

2. That I'm happy about it.

3. And that I have President Donald Trump to thank for my good fortune.

Assumptions one and two are correct. Three is not. The ...Read more

The Democratic National Convention gave former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, four minutes to offer his endorsement of Joe Biden. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left-wing media star, got only a minute and a half. The Democrats knew what they were doing.

Kasich made the case for Republicans and independents who regret their 2016 vote for ...Read more

With Americans pained by both civic violence and cases of police brutality, the times call for leaders who support law and order and justice. Joe Biden has found such a person in choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate.

But getting there was not half the fun. It was not fun at all. As often happens in Democratic campaigning, the process ...Read more

By the time you read this, President Donald Trump's latest economic stimulus plan may be largely forgotten. But it has revived an unpleasant idea that the right fringe has been peddling for years: killing Social Security and Medicare.

We speak of an executive order that would cut payroll taxes. Payroll taxes fund virtually all of Social ...Read more

Europe took dramatic steps to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Its shutdowns were so tight that the eurozone economy has fallen into a recession even deeper than ours.

But guess what. Despite occasional spikes, Europe has beaten the virus down to size. With a public reassured that it could return to the beaches, bars and restaurants in ...Read more

So Trader Joe's won't cave into a 17-year-old's demand that it scrub its shelves of products named in such a way as to suggest cultural origins outside the 50 U.S. states. Briones Bedell, a white high schooler from the San Francisco Bay area, gave it a try. She ran a petition to, in her mind, protect Asians, Latinos and Arabs from such product ...Read more

A friend and I shared the same consumer frustration -- and guilt over having it. We each wanted a bike rack for our cars but could not obtain our first choices.

"I wanted to order a 1UP bike rack," my pal, who used to manufacture sports equipment, said. "Sold out and won't take orders until August 29th."

Apparently, there's a shortage of bikes...Read more

It would take quite a spectacle to upstage America's humiliating failure to contain the coronavirus. It's not every day that the Bahamas labels U.S. tourists as carriers of disease to be kept out.

President Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to sink as cases and death tolls rise. The only thing that could possibly save him is political ...Read more

It was a bittersweet evening in Manhattan. Parisian-level charm had descended on what used to be traffic-snarled streets of the fancy Upper East Side. Planters holding dramatic greenery set off outdoor dining areas spilling into former parking spaces. Waiters happily greeted the sort of stylish patron no one had seen for a while.

Sadly, though,...Read more

Will there be a vaccine against coronavirus? Eventually, we pray. But in this age of unreason, undue attention is already being paid to those who may refuse protection against this often-fatal disease.

We hear paranoid talk of shadowy government figures coming to your home to "force-vax you." Never mind that. When a credible vaccine finally ...Read more

When I was a wee business reporter, I covered manufacturing in southern New England. Costume jewelry, a major industry then, has largely decamped to cheap-labor countries.

But I recall the vast differences in the quality of these mostly low-skilled jobs. At the top were great employers, offering decent wages and clean working spaces. From there...Read more

A job making cars can be a good job. It should matter not to the autoworker whether his product runs on fossil fuels or electric battery. A national leadership looking out for the workers' future would embrace the future, which is clean-powered transportation.

America does not have that leadership. President Donald Trump has pushed the false ...Read more

Dear never-Trump Republicans: Would you adopt me? I'm a centrist with left-leaning tendencies. I get along with cats, dogs and most libertarians. But I'm best off in a political home without small children.

Most of all, I dearly want President Donald Trump gone. You -- knowing how he got elected in the first place -- are best equipped to defeat...Read more