ArcaMax

Just days after Donald Trump tried to defang the abortion issue, it came roaring back in the form of an Arizona law, passed before women could vote, banning all abortions. Far from resolving the issue, the Supreme Court's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade has thrust abortion -- and the courts -- in the thick of what the White House termed the "...Read more

I didn't question the incoming Biden administration when they rolled back the Trump era's stricter border control policies in 2021. There's nothing unusual about reversing a previous president's approach, especially when he belongs to the other party and the policy in question is roundly criticized.

You didn't have to be a proponent of open ...Read more

The Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop saved me from making a huge mistake last week. I emailed my editor before I left and told her that I didn't think I'd have time to continue writing this weekly column. I told her I was too busy. I have a full-time job for our local newspaper, where I write and edit columns for the Kentucky community.

I ...Read more

Bald eagles. Big, feisty, fighting creatures. Lousy fathers sometimes.

They're like your cousin Richie, is what they are. This is why you hope Richie isn't showing up for your aunt's wake. He'll show up drunk and want to fight your cousin Nelson.

Richie has kids in your town, and the two nearest towns, the ones close enough to be easily ...Read more

Getting rid of Roe v. Wade was sold as a sensible and mollifying approach to the abortion controversy. It would let each state ban or codify a right to abortion in accordance with local culture.

This assumed that the end of a constitutional right to abortion was the victory after which "pro-life" conservatives could go home. Not so. Anti-...Read more

"I'm very pro-choice," Donald Trump said in 1999, when he first flirted with the idea of running for president. "Just very briefly, I'm pro-life," he announced at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011. In 2016, campaigning for the support of anti-abortion leaders, he promised to appoint judges who would overrule Roe v. Wade -- ...Read more

I left the house at high noon.

Outdoors, Washington dressed in light spring green with splashes of pink cherry trees. The sun shone, no cloud cover. We earthlings had our eyes on the sky, from Texas to Maine. A solar eclipse was landing.

That was the path of "totality," a harmonic convergence of the sun and moon.

Totality -- a word meaning ...Read more

"Somebody better investigate soon."

That's a lyric in Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," a 1962 song deploring the relentless murdering of Black people and civil rights activists in the Deep South. The line mocks the refusal of racist officials to punish the white murderers, instead cynically covering up atrocities by promising do-nothing "...Read more

MSNBC's talk show "Morning Joe" is catnip for political junkies, especially those who detest Donald Trump. Hundreds of thousands of us, our body clocks by now conditioned to wake in time to grab coffee and hop on the treadmill just before 6 a.m., start each weekday with predictable, comfortable left-of-center patter from the show's regulars.

...Read more

Barack Obama got it right. He refused to be held captive to his party's left wing. He adopted a strenuous policy of border enforcement, even as some Latino activists threatened to withhold their support for him. He had tense relations with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, but when anti-Israel protesters interrupted a Biden fundraiser over ...Read more

Since the Supreme Court struck down longstanding affirmative action admissions policies this past summer in SFFA v. Harvard/UNC, institutions from a variety of sectors have grappled with how to stay true to their commitments to equal opportunity in light of the court's ruling. But this year, the Supreme Court did something noteworthy: It ...Read more

Every country needs a coherent foreign policy. And it's impossible to overstate the importance of the United States' military and diplomatic posture.

The U.S. has the world's second-largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, exclusive, comprehensive command over the oceans, perfect strategic geography, nearly a thousand military bases ...Read more

When I wrote a few weeks ago about Donald Trump predicting a "bloodbath," my readers -- most of them in civil and respectful tones -- were quick to correct me. It was only the auto industry he was referring to, they said. They tried to defend him. They needn't have bothered. Trump has, since that time, adopted the idea of a "bloodbath" as a ...Read more

With every day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs his peculiar presidential campaign, he offers a display of delusional narcissism and feckless duplicity. Aside from drawing attention to himself, Kennedy seems to be trying to ensure the reelection of Donald Trump, provoking the suspicion that he shares Trump's toxic politics despite his own ...Read more

Sitting in courtrooms isn't an art. It is the process of hibernation, being asleep enough not to hear everything but awake enough to hear anything important. It is the light semisleep of a man whose pregnant wife is two weeks overdue and sleeping next to him.

Reporters know the day's action in a trial is likely to hinge on one evidentiary ...Read more