ArcaMax

Trump's decision to back out of his planned public execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter is sad for America. Not because it wouldn't have been a gruesome spectacle that eroded whatever is left of the country's international standing -- it would have. Not because Nidal Hasan won't still be killed on Dec. 3 -- he will.

"Many very good and ...Read more

I thought the University of Louisville had listened.

Two years ago, the university hosted public meetings about the prospect of developing Stansbury Park, a historic Olmsted-designed park at the edge of campus. The community pushed back, and the idea seemed to disappear.

Then, in August, U of L President Gerry Bradley listed Stansbury Park ...Read more

Please note: This column was written before the cancellation of the livestream. But they're bound to try it again.

"'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-on-Parade.

"'I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant said."

Rudyard Kipling, the racist poet of the British Empire and the writer of the made-into-...Read more

About three weeks before Republicans expect an electoral beating, Donald Trump had to get rid of Kimberly Guilfoyle, his ambassador to Greece. He simply had to.

Trump's money-grabbing corruption was wearing thin even on devoted fans, but the president knew how to wrap his mob-like patter in foggy euphemisms and double meanings.

Guilfoyle was...Read more

It was Katie Zacharia's first day as White House Press Secretary and it may be the only time I'll defend her. Not for just reading a prepared eight-minute homage to her perfect King, or only taking three questions (from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail), but from the question raised by the Daily Mail's senior political correspondent, ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Something told me to get me over to East Potomac Park before Donald Trump destroyed it.

Sure enough, I did, on a rainy Sunday morning, for a rally to protect the waterfront parkland from his axe. On the next weekend, he cut down 430 trees -- for a fancy golf course, of course. He sneakily started on a Saturday morning on the ...Read more

Years ago, a Texas lawmaker got caught using his official position to enrich himself by taking money from special interests, in exchange for voting their way. The culprit did not deem this as corrupt, but just the normal ethic of an enterprising business transaction: "I seen my chances," he explained, "and I took 'em."

This is the Clarence ...Read more

America has been disgraced by the Oval Office's current occupant in ways so numerous as to bring sands on the seashore to mind, but warranting special recognition is his relentless effort to sell Ukraine down the river. Since it invaded Crimea in 2014 and then with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has killed or wounded over ...Read more

We've seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lifting weights in snug Levis, sweat pouring down his naked muscled chest. Last February, the secretary of health and human services was "giving body" in the "Rock Out Workout" video. A jeans-clad Kennedy flexes alongside Kid Rock in black shorts, then strips off his shirt and joins Rock in a grotto-like pool. ...Read more

The cattle rancher industry, Republicans in battleground states and United Nations human rights experts have little in common. But like millions of Americans, they've all expressed concern that the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign has gone too far.

The ACLU's latest report, "76 Ways Mass Deportation Is Breaking Our Democracy,"...Read more

The one thing you can't make when you get old is old friends.

Pam Fleischaker was one of my oldest friends. We met more than 40 years ago as two young political activists. She commuted from Oklahoma City to help run the Democratic Platform Committee for Geraldine Ferraro. She was a charter member of the "A Team," a band of feminists ...Read more

Once again, the debate over capital punishment is raging, driven by the staggering incompetence of Tennessee's would-be prison executioners, who have repeatedly failed to kill Christa Pike for a murder she committed 30 years ago, and by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's shocking announcement that the military plans to livestream the firing-...Read more

It seems like everyone wants to be a social media influencer these days. Researcher Matthew Simoneau surveyed middle and high school students from 2021 to 2024 and more than 60% of them said they wanted to be social media influencers. People think fame and fortune will make them happy. But it's not viral significance that we need. What we ...Read more

Politics, restaurant menus and porn are the quickest ways to learn that someone likes things you find disgusting.

Good examples of that are Donald Trump, escargot and gang rape, three things that disgust me, but are keenly desired by some people. Just knowing that will make you look around for a long time before you sit next to a stranger on ...Read more

In the bad old crime days of New York City, I spent a Christmas Eve waiting outside an emergency room. Our foursome had been violently robbed in a subway station, and I was eager for the doctor's report on one member who'd suffered a concussion fighting off a mugger.

Because someone got hurt, city detectives took the case seriously. They ...Read more

At a campaign rally this week in Nebraska, President Donald Trump made what can most generously be described as a tasteless joke. In his flailing effort to justify a war that most Americans oppose, and that Trump himself has been unable to explain, he exaggerated the threat Iran poses, at California's expense.

"They can take out a city, let '...Read more