ArcaMax

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, California, comes from central casting as a fraternity president. Trim looks, blue blazers, back slaps to the bros and affable, but vain and vapid.

Fraternity parties are known for violent destruction the morning after they run wild. Picture such a scene, writ large ...Read more

Children of the '60s were very different from children in the '60s.

Flower children of the '60s on campus were changing the world with long hair and free spirits. They were the populous, rebellious Baby Boomers, born in post-World War II security and prosperity. The sun shone brightly on this huge wave, and they got all the attention.

As for...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Anxiety mounted here as President Joe Biden met with four congressional leaders Tuesday to discuss the financial crisis coming home to hit Americans. No resolution is in sight.

The global economy is also at stake, facing an emergency if the national debt limit isn't raised by Congress for the president's signing. Much depends on...Read more

Washington -- After the parched seven-year famine of former President Donald Trump and the pandemic, the city let its hair down -- or put it up -- and donned black tie and party frocks for an evening of mirth.

President Joe Biden starred in a deft speech onstage at the ballroom of the White House Correspondents' Dinner, serious and self-...Read more

Absence in the Senate makes no heart grow fonder, given a delicate balance of power, 51-49, with Democrats holding a knife edge. Consider "DiFi," Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic elder on her sickbed.

She's been gone for going on 60 votes. Every chamber vote must be in person: no exceptions, not even for COVID-19.

The California senator's ...Read more

"When she was in the room, you knew she was in the room," my mother, professor Judith Stiehm observed of Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general. They were friends and my mother wrote Reno's biography after she died in 2016 at age 78.

The book, "Janet Reno: A Life," is a new portrait of a major figure in the 1990s.

Reno...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Mark the moment in time, the day the jam of justice broke for former President Donald Trump at last in court, where he was arraigned for criminal charges.

Who says April is the cruelest month?

That word "criminal" -- cherish it, while others rage and weep, like South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who gleefully ...Read more

"Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning

And the first thing that I heard

Was a song outside my window"

And the songstress that wrote the words, Joni Mitchell.

Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus are blazing talents; nobody can take that away. And Madonna. Hard not to love her spirit, performance art and clever lyrics charting her life, which set up ...Read more

The ace Gov. Rick DeSantis brings to the 2024 Republican table is simple: he won't be indicted any day now.

An angry young man, 44, next to angry old Donald Trump, DeSantis is no treat. He's learned his lessons well about hard Right, mean-spirited politics -- from Trump himself.

The word "woke" is his front line of attack, tampering with ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden is bound to run for reelection, and so he should. The real question, rumbling below ground, is whether he should keep Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Is Harris really ready to be understudy for the world's center stage? Given Biden's advanced age of 80, the jury is out.

Biden seems to share ...Read more

"Votes for Women!" was a showdown between Alice Paul, 28, versus Woodrow Wilson, 56, which opened with a colorful Washington parade on March 3, 1913, with thousands of women from all over the nation.

Here came the young guard of suffrage, modern and out on the streets for all to witness. Susan B. Anthony was gone, but Paul worked at her desk, ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- "Slava Ukraini" is heard in the halls and streets here, especially when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a ringing speech to Congress before Christmas. That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's crowning act before she gave up the gavel.

President Joe Biden loves trains so much he took one across Ukraine -- for 10 hours -- to meet ...Read more