ArcaMax

Life is filled with nuance, with complexity. Take, for example, the case of Amy Cooper. Cooper is a 41-year-old white woman who worked at Franklin Templeton, an asset management firm. She was walking her dog without a leash in the Ramble section of Central Park when she was confronted by a black man named Christian Cooper (no relation). He told ...Read more

In national polling, former vice president Joe Biden is the clear 2020 front-runner. He's up nearly 5 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average; he's up in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. That's because Biden campaigned as the anti-Bernie Sanders: a "return to normalcy" candidate rather than a transformational one. His entire...Read more

This week, former President Barack Obama reemerged from hibernation to lecture Americans about the threat to rule of law posed by the Trump administration. After Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the Department of Justice would be dropping its case against President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had ...Read more

As Americans debate how to reopen our society in the wake of COVID-19, we seem to be breaking down into three groups: first, those who believe the virus isn't particularly serious and desperately want to reopen everything as soon as possible (a small minority of Americans, by polling data); second, those who believe the virus is ...Read more

This week, new evidence emerged in the sexual assault allegation by former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade against the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. According to Business Insider, four people have stated that Reade told them contemporaneously about her accusation that Biden forcibly penetrated her with his fingers in 1993. ...Read more

This week, the price of oil futures collapsed catastrophically. In fact, the prices collapsed into negative territory in the near term. This bizarre situation, prompted by lack of consumer demand and lack of storage facility, led the irrepressible Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to tweet: "You absolutely love to see it. This along with ...Read more

As our national lockdown drags on, Americans seem less and less inclined to move swiftly toward societal reopening. Perhaps that's due to the consistent media focus on the risks of reopening. Perhaps that's also due to the psychological comfort of the status quo: When we've been made to feel safe in our home, it's difficult to leave it. Or ...Read more

This week, according to members of the federal government, and state and local governments, Americans have begun to flatten the curve in the novel coronavirus outbreak. The excitement was muted -- after all, trends can easily reverse -- but real. Americans have abided by recommendations and orders. They've left their jobs to stay at home; they'...Read more

"There are no libertarians in a global pandemic." So goes the smug punchline of large-government advocates who point to the necessity of collective action in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. Without government, they say, we'd all be dead.

Few libertarians would disagree. The hardcore libertarians at Reason magazine aren't spending ...Read more

This week, President Donald Trump began openly considering at what point the American government ought to take steps to reopen the American economy. He explained: "Our country wasn't built to be shut down. America will again and soon be open for business," suggesting that the timeline will be weeks instead of months. "If it were up to the ...Read more

This week, President Donald Trump came under fire for his use of the phrase "Chinese virus" to describe the coronavirus, the source of the new pandemic that has led to a global economic shutdown as well as lockdowns of citizens in every major Western country. That media have somehow found time to hone in on the one issue that matters least -- ...Read more

As the markets have plummeted over global fears surrounding the fallout from the new coronavirus, political pundits have taken up the call: Find some meaning in the coronavirus outbreak and response. And where there is a demand for speculative opinion, there's never a shortage of supply. Thus we've seen the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan...Read more

On Super Tuesday, the Democratic Party came to its senses -- at least, to a point.

Through the first three primaries, Democratic voters seemed sanguine about the possibility of a lifelong communist fellow traveler taking their presidential nomination. Conventional wisdom -- including, I admit, my own -- suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders', I-Vt...Read more