ArcaMax

This week, Jews around the world will celebrate Rosh Hashana, the New Year, the high holidays.

It is a very strange time to be Jewish in America.

The first president with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren, the first Jewish "zayde" (grandpa) in the White House, has taught a new generation the lasting power of anti-Semitism. As the ...Read more

When my kids were growing up, I couldn't bear to see them cry. I always did anything I could to make it better.

I keep thinking of that as I see the pictures of the "Dreamers" and their mothers.

How can we punish these children? What are these mothers to do?

How cruel can you get?

I get as angry as the next person when I hear stories of ...Read more

Poor Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs banker who was standing next to Donald Trump at Trump Tower for that awful press conference in which Trump defended his statement blaming "both sides" for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The president's top economic adviser, who is Jewish, reportedly told associates that he was "disgusted" by the ...Read more

It's pretty basic stuff.

Getting along with people you agree with -- or, in this era of yes-persons, people who always agree with you -- is remarkably easy.

Getting along with anyone you might venture to disagree with in an online forum or comments section, not to mention a television scream-a-thon, is so utterly impossible and beyond reason...Read more

It was bad enough when someone handed Melania Trump one of Michelle Obama's speeches to give -- again. Bad staff work, extraordinarily bad.

But who was in charge of telling her what to wear to a disaster? Or rather, who was in charge of telling her that this was just not a moment for high heels?

Who thinks "stilettos" for a hurricane?...Read more

Speaking truth to power: Nothing is more difficult, especially in politics.

In business, after all, people have contracts and stock options, and if nothing else, at least they can find similar jobs at other companies.

But there's no such thing in government. There's one treasury secretary, one head of the National Economic Council. There's no ...Read more

I could not make this up. Who would want to? Having behaved like a normal president might on Monday, condemning racism by the Klan and white nationalists, Donald Trump could not restrain himself.

In an angry exchange with reporters on Tuesday, he refused to acknowledge the gross insensitivity of his remarks Saturday and in fact returned to ...Read more

The thing about free speech is how often it's just plain wrong -- wrongheaded, factually wrong, deceitful, even. That's always been true.

And there have always been two schools of thought about what you do about it. One is that you pronounce yourself, or like-minded others, to be the ruler of the universe, and you only allow people to say, ...Read more

He lost his job before he even started, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent any time working in Washington. Which, of course, the president's choice for communications director had not.

The story of Anthony Scaramucci should be a cautionary tale for the Trump presidency, but there is no indication that Donald Trump has any ...Read more

"Will he be impeached for this?" people ask me every day. All that changes is what "this" is: It might be Donald Trump Jr.'s "love" for the Russians; or Jared Kushner's four meetings; or their failure to disclose such meetings; or Donald Trump's threatening to fire the attorney general and replace him with a recess appointment; or worst of all...Read more

One thing you can say for this president: You know what he is thinking, even at 6:12 a.m. on a Tuesday. He is not thinking about health care for his supporters, many of whom would lose all access if he had his way. He is not thinking about the threat of terrorism. He is not thinking about you.

He is thinking about the one and only subject he ...Read more

"It's Bobby," President-elect John F. Kennedy supposedly whispered, announcing that he had chosen his brother as his attorney general.

A brother or sister is what every president wants. The attorney general is the only Cabinet member who can effectively take the president's job away.

So of course the president is upset with his attorney ...Read more

So it doesn't matter, you see, according to @realdonaldtrump (aka the president of the United States), that his son, son-in-law and campaign manager were looking for Russian help to turn the election, specifically for trash the Kremlin might contribute about Hillary Clinton; it doesn't matter that Vladimir Putin himself might have been in the ...Read more

If his love letters with the Russians weren't bad enough, Donald Trump Jr.'s sarcastic non-apology makes clear just how much he deserves what he is about to get.

Trump Jr. tweeted: "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent..."

No, Junior, you're not the first person to take such a ...Read more

Donald Trump has new words for an old song: "California, here I don't come."

The president has made it to Eastern Europe, but he hasn't made it to Hollywood.

Something tells me he'd rather sit down with Vladmir Putin than with California's extremely popular governor, Jerry Brown.

Which is too bad, since Gov. Brown is the kind of ...Read more

Sen. Susan Collins is right. After President Donald Trump's vulgar tweet Thursday morning that TV and radio host Mika Brzezinski ("low I.Q. crazy Mika," according to Trump) was "bleeding badly from a face lift" while staying at Mar-a-Lago, the Republican Senator from Maine said, "This has to stop. We don't have to get along, but we must show ...Read more

They went into a room to write a health care bill. Didn't need any women. For diversity they had Ted Cruz, still famous at Harvard for only allowing Ivy League grads into his law school study group. A man of the people. Didn't need to hear from the public. What do we know about health care anyhow?

Those 13 have been talking about little else ...Read more

The message of the Republican health care bill is clear. You have nothing to worry about -- as long as you can be sure that you will always be well. And you must be employed by a company large enough and successful enough to provide health insurance, just in case somebody in the family trips and falls, or needs their appendix out, or worse.

...Read more