ArcaMax

Many of today's consumer loans are legal but abusive. Payday lenders and used car sellers often steer customers into costly contracts they barely understand. Low-income borrowers with jobs, and therefore, dependable cash flow to siphon off, are favored targets.

Sure, there's a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum allegedly said. But now ...Read more

Just last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot and killed a man in Houston who had lived in the country for 35 years; he was a father to three sons and a business owner. ICE didn't even allege that he posed a danger at the time or had committed crimes in the past. This wasn't a lone occurrence: Senior White House official Tom Homan ...Read more

The New York City Public School system is 62% Black and Hispanic. At its eight most prestigious competitive high schools, 80% of the students are Asian or White. Wait -- what's considered the most selective of the city's schools, Stuyvesant High, 777 students were offered slots. Of those, how many (or should I say how few) went to Blacks? Take...Read more

Right-wing Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, former Senate majority leader and key senior legislator, went missing for weeks. No one -- including President Donald Trump and the governor of his home state -- knew whether he was sick, wallowing in depression like a recently MIA congressman from New Jersey, on a wild incognito adventure,...Read more

The first thing Mariel Gardner mentioned was the sound.

Cicadas and katydids buzzed while butterflies and bees drifted among bright yellow blooms in Louisville's Chickasaw Park.

Gardner smiled. "This is what I wanted to hear," she said.

A new aptly named Butterfly and Bee Pollinator Meadow honors Muhammad Ali, but Gardner hopes it also ...Read more

Writers are weird people, and we start out as weird kids.

I was a weird kid. Worse yet, my family moved quite a bit, so I was often the weird new kid.

Our last long jump of a move was from Baltimore to a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Before that, we'd banged from town to town in Massachusetts.

And I was a weird new kid, and I was 12 and ...Read more

For some reason, many Americans seem convinced they have to tour Europe this summer -- despite the heat, oppressive crowds and high prices all descending on the continent. And if anyone needs a fourth reason, it's to recognize the growing resentment among many Europeans as the tourist hordes turn their town centers into trinket malls, eroding ...Read more

Representative Ro Khanna was touring the West Bank in Israel when, he says, a group of armed Israeli settlers detained his group. A terrifying incident, it would seem. A publicity stunt, Khanna's critics were quick to point out. IDF forces said they arrived at the scene and disbanded the settlers. Khanna said, "The IDF is lying," and that four...Read more

Madison, Wisconsin -- This is my hometown, where it's consoling to be in a sane state in high summer.

Since Maine Democrats fell for the oysterman hook, line and sinker, they deserve what they get in November. Choosing Graham Platner's rocky record over a seasoned woman governor, Janet Mills -- who could have defeated Sen. Susan Collins in a ...Read more

What a show, huh? Big-name corporations went all out this July 4th with a patriotic ad blitz professing their devotion to America's democracy.

But it amounted to a Firecracker of Hypocrisy, for many of these showboat patriots have been backroom funders of the President Donald Trump regime's repression of our people's democratic rights.

Also,...Read more

"I cannot tell a lie," young George Washington supposedly told his father when asked if he'd cut down a cherry tree. That there was no tree and George never said those words hasn't impeded the myth that holds otherwise, popularized by one of Washington's early biographers. Ever since, Americans have opted to think that their first president was ...Read more

On Feb. 22, 2022, two days before Vladimir Putin sent his tanks rumbling toward Ukraine's capital, Donald Trump said of the Russian leader: "This is genius. ... Here's a guy who's very savvy."

Eight days later, Lindsey Graham offered a starkly different sentiment: "The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out."

The ...Read more

In a heartbreaking loss for transgender youth and their families, the Supreme Court upheld two laws in Idaho and West Virginia barring transgender women and girls from competing on athletic teams for women and girls. The Court ruled that state laws banning transgender women and girls from athletic teams do not violate either Title IX or the ...Read more

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had a new word to describe our adversary's leaders: "scum."

"They are sick people. They're led by sick people, and they're vicious, violent people," he said, adding, "As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them."

So, what are we supposed to do?

What we did was hit him with two of the worst ...Read more

Under the dictatorship of the Shah, Iran was a close U.S. ally. There are tantalizing indications that American policymakers are looking to recreate that Cold War-era partnership and kick Israel to the curb.

This seems crazy.

Just a few months ago, the Trump administration and Israel went to war together against Iran, assassinated its supreme ...Read more