ArcaMax

Sir Walter Scott's famous line about what a tangled web it is that we weave when first we practice to deceive was written in 1808, but the poet might as well have prophesied former President Donald Trump's ill-fated one-night stand with Stormy Daniels when he wrote it.

The "affair," let's call it, was suffused with dishonesty at every stage, ...Read more

Former Vice President Mike Pence made news last Saturday by saying something that shouldn't have been news at all, but rather self-evident pablum right out of the mouth of Captain Obvious. Twenty-six months after an insurrectionist mob attempting a putsch stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beating the daylights out of police and seeking to ...Read more

In October 1942, 20-year-old Jacob Henry (Hank) Goldman, the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, walked into a Navy recruiting center in Philadelphia, hoping to enlist. It was 10 months since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Goldman was attending the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School at the time, studying to become an ...Read more

President Joe Biden's dramatic train trip through a war zone to stand with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kiev inspired most of the world, but not everyone. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin hacks, who ardently wish not to join the thousands of Russians thrown into jail for opposing the former KGB agent's corrupt autocracy, did not applaud ...Read more

When Dominion Voting Systems filed its $1.6 billion (that's with a "b") lawsuit against Fox News Network two years ago, it alleged that Fox had intentionally and recklessly defamed it by publishing and republishing false claims that Dominion had rigged the 2020 presidential election, manipulated vote counts and paid kickbacks to government ...Read more

Winston Churchill's proposition that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried" has picked up support in recent years, courtesy of two of the world's foremost democracies. The United States and Israel, which have much in common generally, have each given democracy skeptics plenty of cause for ...Read more

During his last interview before his death three years ago, U.S. congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis was asked whether he ever grew so discouraged by the persistent enormity of racial injustice in America that he felt his efforts "weren't working." Lewis, who as a civil rights activist had been falsely imprisoned and savagely beaten, ...Read more

It was nearly 50 years ago that Edward Markey, then the lowliest of Massachusetts state legislators, challenged the legislative old guard by pushing through judicial reform measures that ended a gravy train for ethically suspect politicos and their allies. Displeased at Markey in the extreme, the legislative leadership retaliated against him ...Read more

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