ArcaMax

Sometimes justice delayed is still justice. That was the case this week for Judy Huth, who met once-beloved comedian Bill Cosby back in 1975 and was 16 years old when he sexually assaulted her while giving her a tour of the Playboy Mansion. A California jury found that Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Huth, and awarded ...Read more

Long before his "army" stormed the Capitol, the president and his team were guilty of inciting violence against state election officials. In the fourth day of testimony, the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots heard in-person and taped testimony from those who were called, cajoled and threatened by the president of the United States...Read more

In the polls at least, the Supreme Court is no longer the respected institution that it once was. Consider these numbers from the Marquette University Law School poll. In September 2020, the week before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, 66% of all Americans approved of the Court. In the latest poll, taken after the leak of the draft opinion ...Read more

It's a textbook case. Fraud starts with a lie or, if you prefer the dictionary definition, an "intentional perversion of the truth," which is intended to and does induce others to rely on the lie and part with something of value, like money.

Two hundred fifty million dollars, to be exact, which is how much former President Donald Trump and ...Read more

In the years after Roe v. Wade, even the most ardent opponents of abortion supported an exception for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Even the Hyde Amendment, which singles out abortion as the only medically necessary service for which there is no Medicaid funding, includes an exception for rape and incest.

All that is changing, and ...Read more

The bluest state in the nation is bleeding red. In San Francisco, progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, scion of a famous liberal family, was soundly recalled. In Los Angeles, billionaire developer Rick Caruso (full disclosure, a friend from my University of Southern California days), who was a Republican until three years ago, led the ...Read more

For six years, Johnny Depp has walked around, mostly unemployed, with a new scarlet "A" for "abuser" tattooed to his forehead. There are at least two lessons to be learned from his humiliation.

The first is about us. Guilty until proven innocent he was, for six long years, and that is not Amber Heard's fault. She made the accusation, it is true...Read more

An unusual split on the Supreme Court this week put at least a temporary halt to enforcement of a conservative-backed state law prohibiting Big Tech from removing posts based on their views. A Court that most often splits on predictable lines split this time on unpredictable ones: Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts ...Read more

"Hoosiers won't be bullied by woke groups threatening girls' sports," the attorney general of Indiana warned, vowing to defend newly enacted legislation barring transgender girls from participating in school sports.

But according to Indiana's Republican governor, who vetoed the bill only to have his veto overridden this week, there is no such...Read more

The right to counsel in criminal cases is fundamental. Even schoolchildren can recite the famous warning: You have a right to be represented by counsel, and if you can't afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you.

But having a lawyer is not simply a formality, although sometimes -- with overburdened public defenders who meet ...Read more

Shh. It's bad enough that the economy is going to hell. Don't tell anyone, but COVID is coming back.

I've been spending too much time in doctors' offices, where they still wear masks, doing deferred maintenance, as it were. And everywhere I go -- from one -ologist to the next -- the message is the same.

Have you gotten your boosters? Plural,...Read more

The horrifying weekend of gun violence has moved hate and crime, separately and together, to the top of the political agenda. More people died in automobile accidents this weekend, but the impact of the shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Laguna Woods, California, cast a bigger pall on our national spirit.

Hate. For Blacks in Buffalo. For ...Read more

The House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced on Thursday that it has taken the unprecedented move of issuing subpoenas to five House members who have refused to speak voluntarily to their colleagues on the committee. The five distinguished gentlemen, as House members call each other, are led by Republican ...Read more

The right-wing takeover of the Republican Party, symbolized by the end of Roe v. Wade, offers the Democrats the rare opportunity so artfully exploited by President Emmanuel Macron in France: that is, the chance to occupy the middle of the political spectrum.

Ideologues may wring their hands, but the general rule in American politics is that ...Read more

Beware what you wish for, my Republican friends. After decades of campaigning against Roe, you are, finally, about to see what it means to be on the wrong side of abortion politics.

In the wake of Roe, most Democratic politicians were terrified of abortion voters because most of them -- especially the single-issue voters -- were anti-choice. ...Read more

I remember the world before Roe. I was young, but old enough. I saw girls "get in trouble," meaning they got pregnant and had to drop out of high school and give up their dreams. They were sent away, somewhere, and we never saw them again. That was the world without Roe.

In college, it was a little better. Abortion was legal in New York, as ...Read more

The photos coming out of Ukraine, coupled with eyewitness accounts, leave no room for doubt. Terrible things are being done. The bodies are not just those of soldiers. Civilian casualties are skyrocketing. This is not inevitable. This is murder.

Why?

Who is giving the orders?

Of course Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals are ...Read more

In announcing the deal to buy Twitter, Elon Musk said in a statement: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."

Which makes him -- subject, of course, to government oversight -- the king of the town square.

And it raises two ...Read more

The only former president of the United States to ever make a living teaching constitutional law came to Stanford University last Thursday to propose greater regulation of speech both by the government and by private companies.

"So much of the conversation around disinformation is focused on what people post. The bigger issue is what content ...Read more

If you're reading this on an airplane, or even in an Uber, you may or may not be wearing a mask. That's because a single federal judge sitting in Florida has declared invalid the national mask mandate applicable to all instruments of transportation as well as transportation hubs. We're talking planes, trains, automobiles (for hire), airports, ...Read more