ArcaMax

The latest effort by anti-abortion activists to limit access to abortion, notwithstanding Roe v. Wade, takes the form of "reason bans," in which a woman's right to an abortion depends on the reason she wants it. This week, the North Carolina legislature advanced a bill that set forth the prohibited reasons and would penalize any doctor who ...Read more

In January, Simon & Schuster canceled its agreement to publish a book, presumably a memoir-cum-political pandemic, by Sen. Josh Hawley. Last week, in response to internal protests, Simon & Schuster refused to cancel plans for a book by former Vice President Mike Pence.

It drew a line. In this case, it was a line between a rogue senator who ...Read more

I spent the 1984 presidential campaign in the seat behind former Vice President Walter Mondale. From nomination to landslide defeat, I was there, right behind him, giving weather reports to the rest of the plane.

Winning campaigns are great. You show up and you're a genius. Everybody is flying high. Sure, there is always backbiting, but ...Read more

This week, liberal Democrats, led by Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts unveiled their proposal to increase the size of the Supreme Court by four justices. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected it out of hand. "I have no plans to bring it to the floor," Pelosi said of the legislation, ...Read more

If you or someone you love has just opened their email this week to find that they were rejected by their first choice for college, I got that rejection, too.

My first choice was Harvard, which was called Radcliffe in those days. I did everything I could: getting straight A's while working almost full time as a waitress and being the ...Read more

The Reopening of America -- or even of one town or state -- is hardly a seamless operation.

The stages make less and less sense. Everything is open, even if everything isn't really supposed to be open for more than a month.

Restaurants and shops, big stores and small, salons and barber shops -- almost everything but schools and office ...Read more

Former President Donald Trump wished a happy Easter to all including "Radical Left CRAZIES."

"Happy Easter to ALL, including the Radical Left CRAZIES who rigged our Presidential Election, and want to destroy our Country!" he said, well after the Capitol was stormed by his supporters, resulting in the death of a Capitol Police officer and four...Read more

President Biden made public his first slate of nominees for current vacancies on the federal courts. It was the most diverse set of nominees any president has ever sent to the Senate. It was easy to miss the story -- even I almost did -- between the pandemic and the vaccine; worries about family, money and the rest. But it matters, and it will...Read more

If you're looking for a vaccine, I can offer one piece of practical advice: Go red. If you live in a blue state, look for the red counties. Or get in your car and drive.

Six hours to Amarillo, my friend's son says. Amarillo was his grandfather's hometown. Other than that, he has absolutely no connection. But Texas is Texas. Better than ...Read more

Two stories I've been thinking about make clear that Republicans have problems Donald Trump's departure has not begun to solve. The problems are not with the Democrats. They are with science.

The first was the finding in the latest NPR/"PBS NewsHour"/Marist poll that some 49% of Republican men and 47% of Trump supporters say they will not ...Read more

Two stories I've been thinking about make clear that Republicans have problems Donald Trump's departure has not begun to solve. The problems are not with the Democrats. They are with science.

The first was the finding in the latest NPR/"PBS NewsHour"/Marist poll that some 49% of Republican men and 47% of Trump supporters say they will not ...Read more

He has been in office for just two months. In that time, he has gotten a $1.9 trillion bill through Congress, a bill that will put $1,400 in the hands of many Trump voters. He has restored our relationship with Europe. We are once again signers of the Paris Agreement. He has strengthened our relationship with the democracies in Southeast Asia ...Read more

In his haunting book "The Plot Against America," Phillip Roth imagines a world in which the isolationist hero and explorer Charles Lindbergh, not Franklin Roosevelt, had won the 1940 presidential election.

It might have happened, after all. Everything would be different now, and yet chillingly real.

That is how I feel sometimes about what ...Read more

COVID? What COVID?

California is substantially open. Many are living as if COVID-19 were gone. That's a big "if." We are not close to vaccinating everybody, because of limits on both supply and demand. So why are we living as if it were already gone?

Los Angeles, which, only weeks ago, was the world's COVID hot spot, is open. Masks are still...Read more

My dearest friend has grandchildren. We are giving her daughter a day off, which is to say, a day to work nonstop at only one job.

School starts at 9 a.m.: fourth grade at the dining room table, first grade upstairs with me.

I'm a pro. I took on 140 testosterone-fueled first-year law students when I was literally three years older than them....Read more

In driving down Main Street in Santa Monica on Saturday night, you might think the pandemic is over everywhere, with people drinking and laughing, lines for drinks ... Honest to God, they're partying. There aren't a lot of masks -- it's hard to drink a cold one with a mask.

Just one problem: The pandemic isn't over yet. Some people have yet ...Read more

"Yay for science," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said quietly as famed photographer Annie Leibovitz got the shot, no pun intended.

Hooray, indeed. Science worked. Science -- that is, people -- managed to do in one year what usually takes 10 to 15 years.

There is science. And there is ...Read more

I don't mean that we are going to punish a grandmother who has reason not to trust government.

I do mean that we have to figure out how to change her mind.

In California, Blacks and Hispanics are dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates than whites or Asians.

There are no City of Los Angeles or Los Angeles County vaccination sites anywhere ...Read more

It's stunning to watch powerful men get caught.

Everybody always says, "Why did they do it?" but that's usually the easy part. In one way or another, it all comes back to making themselves look better, richer, smarter, more successful and more sexual than anyone else.

My question is why they think they can get away with it.

A couple of ...Read more

It is a brisk morning, but this is LA, so that means we are in sweaters and puffers. We stand six feet apart.

I cannot believe I am here, cannot believe that a year spent inside, in fear, in anger, in grief, is nearing an end.

Science is saving us, pure and simple.

I am here by chance, because my daughter saw a notice on Twitter that a ...Read more