ArcaMax

Each high-profile killing by police of an unarmed Black citizen -- this week he's Tyre Nichols, 29, of Memphis -- prompts calls to reform the police. But how?

We should begin with two questions:

What is the police for, currently?

What should they be for?

Police currently fulfill two primary roles: generating revenue for local ...Read more

The strange story at the top of the headlines -- the current president and the most recent former president are both the subject of special-counsel investigations for taking home classified documents when they left the White House -- rests upon two premises. One is patently false. The other is brazenly silly.

Americans believe their nation ...Read more

Only God and Kevin McCarthy know how long George Santos, the disgraced Republican freshman congressman from Long Island whose antipathy for the truth stands out even by politician standards, will be able to remain in office. If and when he is forced to step down, say, after an explanation for his mysteriously improving financial status finally ...Read more

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Biden, the holidays are over. You know, the holidays during which you were going to decide whether or not to run for reelection. So, what did you decide?

This being a democracy, we hope that you came down on the side of the 70% of voters who don't want you to run in 2024. Even if that figure reflects the feelings of every ...Read more

Mark Twain said: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." Ironically, he didn't. The quotation should correctly be attributed to Jonathan Swift. The lie remains in high orbit.

Even when the truth comes to light, it gets nothing close to the wide distribution of the original disinformation. ...Read more

An FBI agent contacts Twitter's head of trust and safety and asks him to censor every mention of a major news story from the social media network on the grounds that the story is false, a result of illegal hacking or both. Twitter complies, even going so far as to suspend the account of the newspaper that published it. Later, the story -- which ...Read more

When you're trying to get people to change forms of address, you have two options. You can bully them. Or you can convince them.

Coercion can do the job, provided you possess that power. Less than 10 years after the Bolshevik revolution, Soviet citizens were mimicking the practice of pre-revolutionary communists, who called one another "comrade...Read more

How to respond to Kanye West? His business partners severed ties. Liberal media outlets resorted to cancel culture. Elon Musk gave the artist now known as Ye a second chance on Twitter, only to regret his magnanimity after Ye posted a graphic of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David, and kicked him back off the platform.

The freak show ...Read more

The other day, I caught myself using the phrase "earn a living." For the first time in my life, I questioned myself.

The idea that one must "earn a living" is the fundamental assumption of capitalism. When you stop to think about it, that's some extreme libertarianism.

Americans are constitutionally guaranteed the right to speak freely, ...Read more

Grover Cleveland beat Benjamin Harrison in 1884. The same men faced off in 1888, with the opposite result. A second rematch took place in 1892, and Cleveland was restored. If you died in 1892, you didn't miss a thing during your first four years of death.

What could be drearier or more indicative of calcified politics, save for four consecutive...Read more

You can't blame the Democrats for spinning the fact that their losses fell short of worst-case scenarios. But elections are arithmetic, not calculus. A loss is a loss. Democrats lost the midterms.

WHY THEY LOST

No. 1: History: In a two-party system, voters express anger and annoyance by lashing out at the party in power. They elect a president...Read more