ArcaMax

WASHINGTON -- Ineffable. The state and soul of the nation is just that. The National Cathedral bell tolls for thee and me.

But all I have are words. Let me try to explain the sharp sense of loss we carry these days. The fear is real, that the worst of us are stealing America's meaning from the rest of us.

At once, we're suffering four crises: ...Read more

Now comes Justice Samuel Alito, the Princeton man and Eastern elitist who never met a woman he liked, save colleague Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court. He's a "justice" sitting in judgment on us.

Known for his sharp and sour edge, Alito authored a 98-page "draft" opinion that takes away human rights, a rarity in American history.

...Read more

Mother's Day may also be Mothers Day.

My mother calls me every morning from Santa Monica, sounding like a lark, ever since the pandemic. A professor into her 80s, she has a subversive streak and went places all over the world, once to a civil war with a United Nations peacekeeping team. She sees her three daughters as a bit "unadventurous."

No...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Hon. Orrin Hatch, a staunchly conservative Republican senator from Utah, is no longer with us. He died in Salt Lake City at 88. Hatch's seven terms in the Senate are a record, and it's fair to say time changed him into a better man.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican Leader, is the perfect foil for Hatch. At 57, the vapid ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Dear April, national poetry month, are you the cruelest month? The first line of "The Waste Land" says so, and poet T.S. Eliot wrote it 100 years ago, 1922.

So, 2022, let's look at you.

Spring snow after joyful opening days at baseball parks celebrating Dodger great Jackie Robinson isn't a good sign. Gardens are thrown off the ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The vortex of our vexed record on race came out with the cherry blossoms.

These three things: the Senate vote on a historic Supreme Court nominee; an anti-lynching law passed at last; and marking the cruel April day Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

President Joe Biden's nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown ...Read more

Hollywood. Washington. Ukraine.

Violence is breaking out all over, in places we thought we'd never see it: on the Academy Awards stage, in the Capitol and a war in Europe.

Are these ugly events somehow connected?

Let's take the Academy scene first. Will Smith struck Chris Rock across the face. The scene seemed out of a movie. In an earlier ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- What do you know for women's history month? March is going fast. Quick, when did women win the vote?

"A Week in the Life of Speaker Pelosi" is my picture for the gallery.

The House speaker, a San Francisco Democrat, is a vivid historical figure who marches (excuse pun) onward every day, with the 222 House Democrats staying in ...Read more

The goose is getting fat.

We wait for his date on the dinner table after the plague, when the war is over. If it's over. This goose caused ravages in his riotous reign.

The goose's days as boss in barnyard politics are numbered. In back of his feathery head, he knows it. His pal, a vulture named Vladimir, is raining war, breaking a fragile ...Read more

OVERHEARD in MOSCOW -- If I am in the Russian president's head -- and I am indeed the one mighty Vladimir Putin -- then I'm fighting mad that Ukraine is running away from home, from Mother Russia. I'm even more mad that Ukraine is fighting hard, fighting well against my army.

Tanks stopped in their tracks! That is not according to special ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- FROM THE HOUSE LIVE

"The high honor ... of presenting to you, the President of the United States!" -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Showtime. The State of the Union rituals quell doubts the nation can long endure. There's no love lost across the aisle in the House of Representatives chamber, nor in the evenly divided Senate...Read more

Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day made me feel sugar-sweet and bitter-blue after reviewing my heart's history. The only cure for what ailed me was to pick the presidents that are my best valentines.

It's come to this in the pandemic, a famine for femmes fatales. So little flirting, no backward glances on Zoom meetings. The only valentine I ...Read more