ArcaMax

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

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who for the moment represents a New York congressional district -- tomorrow the world! -- opposes Amazon's plan to locate one of its two satellite campuses in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City. Amazon promises more than 25,000 jobs. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her intention to stop what she calls the "creeping ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- I have a question for those Republicans who, along with Democrats, demand the resignation of Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam for the abhorrent photo that appeared on his page in his medical school yearbook: If bigotry is repugnant, why not demand the resignation of Vice President Mike Pence for his ugly views on ...Read more

In an era of identity politics, I should identify with Howard Schultz and his possible race for the presidency. We are both Brooklyn born, Jewish, the first males in our families to graduate from college, and we both like a good cup of coffee in the morning. But Schultz, if you will forgive my metaphor, is not my cup of tea. He'd effectively ...Read more

When and how did it become acceptable to be an anti-Semite? When did it become OK to socialize with and even praise a Jew hater? I am referring, of course, to Louis Farrakhan, who spouts the most vile things about Jews yet retains the admiration of many on the left, including, notably, leaders of the Women's March. They have now separated ...Read more

After the communists under Mao Zedong won their revolution, Republicans in Washington raised the cry, "Who lost China?" Now, all these years later, Republicans are asking the same question about Syria. Their answer is Barack Obama. My answer is both Obama and President Trump share the blame, with this difference: Before Trump had a chance to ...Read more

What this country needs is not a border wall, but about 1 million yellow vests. It needs federal workers who will not work without pay. What this country needs, in short, is a bit of the spirit that animated French workers and brought them out in the streets, wearing the yellow safety vests found in most French cars. I'd say strike up "La ...Read more

I drove past the White House the other day. It'd been a while and the place seemed smaller, somewhat tawdry, almost haunted. I imagined bats winging in and out of it, spider webs in the corners and the president upstairs in the family quarters, talking back to the TV, railing against Pelosi, the Fed, Mueller, Macron, May, Mattis, Sessions, ...Read more