ArcaMax

Whatever happened to pride?

I ask because reports regularly surface about Donald Trump berating or insulting someone, often an aide, who just takes it. A recent example comes from Michael Wolff's new book "Siege," in which Paul Manafort, once Trump's campaign chairman but now domiciled in stir, was vulgarly upbraided by the president: "You're ...Read more

On one day last week, Joe Biden reaffirmed his support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the federal funding of most abortions. A day later, Biden reversed himself, giving as a reason the recent spate of draconian anti-abortion laws enacted in several states. Surely, however, Biden was pushed by Democratic Party activists. At this rate, he...Read more

The late Richard Holbrooke was a liar. He was often disingenuous, betraying his friends as well as his lovers, flattering political gargoyles -- Jesse Helms, for instance -- and went everywhere protected by a posse of his own formidable ego. He could be thoroughly dislikable, but he failed in that regard with me. I liked him. He was a friend.

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If you are a Democrat -- or anyone -- opposed to Donald Trump, you can look back at the 2018 midterms for optimism. Democrats flipped 43 congressional seats, some in districts that had voted for Trump, and exit polls suggested that suburban women and those with more than a high school education had had quite enough of the bumptious bigot in the...Read more

Donald Trump serves up a daily smorgasbord of offenses. He lies with almost every breath. He promulgates policy by inane tweet. He hires on a whim, fires out of pique and runs through the federal government spreading chaos and confusion as a fairy might spread pixie dust. He is his own Mount Rushmore of incompetence and vile behavior. He is the ...Read more

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, famous these days for being infamous, is being taken to task for what she said last week about the Holocaust. Two leading Republicans quickly pounced, feeling so strongly about Tlaib's remarks that, in the name of all things Israel, they mangled what she had actually said and used the Holocaust to score cheap political points...Read more

EDITORS: Please note the quoted language in the 6th graf.

I am a stranger in my own land. I read the newspapers in puzzlement. Who are these people mentioned as Democratic presidential candidates? Oh, sure, I know Biden and Sanders and Booker and Harris and some of the others, but the other day I came across the name of John Delaney or Seth ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Democratic Party would be wise to get inside Mitch McConnell's head. It is a dark place, to be sure, full of furious resentments, but it is amazingly disciplined and organized so that nothing matters but certain cherished goals. One of them is to make President Trump think he's in charge of the Republican agenda. The other is ...Read more

The Yankees have cut Kate Smith. She was once an immensely popular singer who premiered "God Bless America" on her radio show in 1938. The song quickly became iconic and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it became a staple of the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately for Smith's legacy, she also recorded two racist ditties ...Read more

President Trump has summoned Joseph Welch from the grave. Welch, a Boston lawyer so patrician he was almost a cliché, stood up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954 when the demagogic Wisconsin Republican smeared Welch's associate, Fred Fisher, as a communist sympathizer. When McCarthy persisted, Welch earned his way into every Bartlett's by saying, ...Read more

The hottest ticket in New York at the moment is "The Lehman Trilogy." Its limited run is sold out, but tickets are available from brokers. They can go for $1,900 a seat, which, I know, is astronomical. But, take it from me, it's well worth almost any price -- mine was a gift. It is an astounding play with only one fault: It fails to mention that...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Pete Buttigieg, conversational in Norwegian, Spanish, French, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Dari and, of course, English, would rather his face speak for him. It is a young face, a pleasant face, and one that explains why he is running for president. "My face is my message," he said recently on "Morning Joe."

That face, and certainly ...Read more

My nightmare was not that Donald Trump would be exonerated by special counsel Robert Mueller, but that instead he'd be accused of colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election. That would set the Democrats on the meandering path to impeachment and, by so doing, vindicate the Trumpian fantasy that the deep state was mounting a...Read more

The joke among people my age is that every dinner party starts with an organ recital: Who's lost a gall bladder, got a new kidney, or maybe just replaced a knee? What's the pain of the day and who sleeps through the night? Charles de Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck, so the question for America is whether it should consider the age of likely ...Read more

Joe Biden is mulling a race for the White House. Beto O'Rourke is also mulling one, and maybe mulling as well why he initially said he wouldn't run. New York Mayor Bill De Blasio is for some reason also mulling a presidential run, and so was Stacy Abrams, who was apparently on some sort of mulling binge -- governor of Georgia, senator from that ...Read more

The Bible said it. Aesop said it. Every one of my elementary school teachers said it: You will be judged by the company you keep. In Donald Trump's case, that company not only includes Michael Cohen and the others who have been indicted or convicted for breaking the occasional law, but even bigger fish: Vladimir Putin of Russia, Mohammed bin ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- I don't quite know what a handbasket is, but the Democratic Party is heading in one to electoral hell with its talk of socialism and reparations. Given a Republican incumbent who has never exceeded 50 percent in Gallup's approval ratings poll and who won the presidency thanks to a dysfunctional electoral college, the party is ...Read more

There will be no Mount Rushmore for Donald Trump. But, if there's a presidential library, it should contain a Hall of Tweets, a Hall of Lies, a Hall of Insults and, with the "Marines' Hymn" softly playing, a Hall of Montezuma, with a section of his border wall. Finally, there should be a Hall of Consequences, the grandest in the place. No ...Read more