ArcaMax

Donald Trump has been trying for years to play his Willie Horton card, to divide the country along lines of race as a means of reaffirming his base.

You can hardly give him credit for creativity, strategically speaking. It's not so different from the way former President Richard Nixon played "law and order," the way former Sen. Jesse Helms ...Read more

The weather was glorious in Southern California the past week, as it was in much of the nation. The beaches and Boardwalk were so crowded, full of families who had clearly come from other parts of the city to escape the confines of crowded apartments. No, it wasn't the usual crowd of druggies and bikers and meth heads but families old and young ...Read more

He is 73 years old. At his checkup last year, he weighed 243 pounds. Obese -- that's the medical definition.

And he has been reported to be taking drugs to control his cholesterol and prevent a heart attack. Obesity and heart problems are among the "high-risk" indicators for serious COVID-19 illness.

But who cares? Those rules just apply to us...Read more

Or, to be fair, you may not die; you may just be the type who kills other people.

Sound like government playing God? Making life and death decisions? Just what conservative orthodoxy has insisted for years government must never do? Yes.

Reports agree that President Donald Trump, for some time now, has been gaming to try to reopen the economy. ...Read more

Three months ago, it was difficult to find an honest Democrat who privately believed that President Donald Trump would lose reelection. The economy seemed to be, quite simply, too strong to convince a majority of Americans in some of Trump's red states that they'd be better off with a Democratic president.

Three months ago, it was difficult to ...Read more

"When you're a mother, you'll understand."

How many times did my mother say that? And how many times did I think, "No, I won't, because I'll be a better mother"?

I tried to be a perfect mother. And I failed. For that, I have apologized with all my heart to my children. Because I am, after all, just a flawed, imperfect person struggling to do ...Read more

Announcement: Spring prom has been canceled. Instead, Cruella DeVos invites you to harass or rape your would-be date off campus. Just make sure you follow her regulations when doing so.

A new and complex set of regulations was released in the middle of a pandemic that has posed a crushing burden on colleges and universities? According to ...Read more

Who are these idiots -- excuse me, neighbors -- frolicking on the beach on a warm April day, when frolicking on the beach can cost someone (more than just one someone) their life? But what is a death compared with a life without frolicking on the beach?

You can't just blame the beach frolickers. They're not the only ones who can't wait to get ...Read more

I live in Los Angeles County, where new coronavirus cases are showing up as fast as anywhere in the country. We're on lockdown. We were the first state to be told to stay in place. Until this week, we were actually able to take some comfort in that, because we lagged so far behind New York in cases and in deaths.

California isn't competing with...Read more

What about them? They have started dying. It would be surprising if they didn't. What hasn't happened -- but will -- is the numbers becoming concentrated. We'll see television anchors not only in skid row but also on streets full of well-protected neighbors who will not react well to being told that the sidewalk actually belongs to the person ...Read more

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, much of the time in the shadow of his better-known New York counterpart, Andrew Cuomo, has shown himself to be a future president. If the primary were held today. ... But it isn't.

And thanks to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's well-meaning but ultimately dated pledge to tokenism (not a ...Read more

My first non-waitressing job was counting candy bars in the basement of a Sears/Roebuck warehouse in Boston. Within weeks, having demonstrated my great prowess, I moved on to Twinkies, Ring Dings and my absolutely favorites, Coffee Cakes.

The job was not without its challenges, the biggest of them keeping a running total of how much the stock ...Read more

When I was a kid, my mother and sister used to castigate me for being too emotional (I cried), not tough enough. "Susie just can't handle hard things," the two of them would smugly agree.

As it turned out, Susie didn't have any choice.

No one has questioned whether I'm tough enough since I walked out of an alley after having been raped and ...Read more

It's "federalism time" again in Washington. No, don't get your "Federalist Paper No. 10" (my favorite) out yet. Federalism time rarely involves a serious debate about the balance of power between the federal government and the states, although that is technically what American federalism is about. It's about politics, pure and simple. It's about...Read more

The novel coronavirus has made clear who in this country actually runs things.

It should be, and occasionally is, the president.

But in this instance, President Donald Trump has mostly been a cheerleader, often cheering for the wrong side -- the side that thought the virus was just a hoax, that there's nothing to worry about here, and that it ...Read more

What if?

The novel coronavirus' fatality rate is highest in men over 70. All three men left in this presidential race are over 70. I am certainly not the only one who has thought about this.

Parties, not states or the federal government, control the nominating process. I know the Democratic rules; for better and for worse, I wrote some of them...Read more

I'm old enough to know that anger is sure to harm only one person: the one who is angry. I know because I've done it. So I have learned as best I can to put my anger in a black box, not in my poor stomach.

The black box isn't working anymore. This pandemic has me worried sick for my loved ones (although, for some reason, I'm not worried about ...Read more

HIPAA was a great law for its time. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects the privacy of your personal medical records. You don't have to tell anyone about underlying diseases. That's your business, not theirs. For years, it has protected Americans with AIDS and cancer and everything else from discrimination, private ...Read more

No one is better at playing the blame game than Donald Trump. For three years, the president has been blaming the press ("fake news") and the Democrats ("low IQ" Joe Biden and the wicked Nancy Pelosi) for anything that has gone wrong and taking credit for anything that has gone right (notably, the stock market).

News flash, Trump: Now it's our ...Read more

We are now officially dealing with a pandemic. No one but the president thought a $2.5 billion program would be enough to address the threat. Congress -- not only the Democratic House but also the Republican Senate -- nearly quadrupled the appropriation, even as health officials around the country are warning about shortages of everything from ...Read more