ArcaMax

Facing History and Ourselves has a mission statement that seems not just sensible but indisputable. "To build a more just and equitable future," it posits, "we must face our history in all its complexity."

President Gerald Ford first recognized February as Black History Month, urging Americans to "honor the too-often-neglected accomplishments ...Read more

With all the outstanding questions about who packed up then-Vice President Joe Biden's files in the Obama administration's final days, who unpacked them and why documents with classified markings were unlawfully removed in the process, one fact is pretty well-established. Biden's testy response to a reporter's question about how such documents...Read more

The slow-motion train wreck that was last week's selection of a Republican speaker of the House almost certainly drove America's regard for Congress to new lows, assuming that's possible. Televised internecine warfare within the GOP featured battling among the crazies, the phonies and the insurrectionists, once again recalling Henry Kissinger'...Read more

By the time former President Donald Trump scooted out of Washington on Jan. 20, 2021, The Washington Post had counted a mere 30,573 false or misleading claims by The Great Swamp Drainer during his time in office. Even that was an undercount, because the Post decided early on that it would only count one falsehood per topic for each speech, ...Read more

Jim Brett has a lot of admirers, and a lot of them think about him this time of year. The longtime president and CEO of the New England Council, a powerhouse consortium of civic institutions and businesses representing the region in Washington, might otherwise be best known for modeling non-partisanship in a time of vitriol. The former ...Read more

Humpty Dumpty is the world's most famous egg, immortalized for sitting on a wall before suffering a very great fall. "All the king's horses and all the king's men," goes the legendary nursery rhyme, "couldn't put Humpty together again."

Former President Donald Trump is looking a lot like Humpty Dumpty these days, as the criminal ...Read more

In commemoration of last week's anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of World War II veterans came to the White House for a visit, invited there by the president of the United States. On walkers or in wheelchairs, a remnant of the Greatest Generation felt at ease bantering with their Commander-in-Chief, who clearly needed ...Read more

When the cookie crumbles it really crumbles, and since his somnolescent announcement that he sought to reclaim the presidency other than by an insurrection, former President Donald Trump has looked like one crumbling cookie. Just before Thanksgiving Trump hosted antisemite extraordinaire Kanye West, now Ye, for dinner. Wouldn't you know it? ...Read more

Neither the savage attacks on Israelis over the past two weeks nor the sadistic celebrations of them in Palestinian quarters was anything new. For Israelis, the killings of their innocents took on a dreadful familiarity long ago, and the same is true of the scenes of Palestinians rejoicing in those deaths by honking horns and handing out candy...Read more

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger came up with a good line about the Iran-Iraq War, the vicious conflict of attrition between Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. "Pity," Kissinger quipped, "both sides can't lose."

Democrats elated by Republicans' poor showing in the 2022 midterms are taking similar pleasure ...Read more

The first thing they teach you at Kamikaze School is: If you're going to blow yourself up, at least get the other guy. There are a whole bunch of election deniers and fraud-peddlers running for office this election cycle who appear to have missed the first day of class. Either that or they confused "kamikaze" with "hara-kiri," the ritual self-...Read more

Legend has it that in 1944, bowing to traditional protocol at 10 Downing Street, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill circulated a draft of one of his speeches to civil servants in his office for their review. One bureaucrat took the perfunctory procedure somewhat overly seriously, returning the draft with a correction. The prime minister,...Read more

Though they spent much of the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, hiding in undisclosed locations and running for cover, most congressional Republicans have spent the past 22 months treating former President Donald Trump's attempted coup d'etat and his bloody insurrection at the Capitol as a nothingburger, too much ado about pretty much zero. "Watching...Read more