ArcaMax

On Oct. 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. As Edmund Morris relates in "Theodore Rex," many Americans were pleased with this precedent-shattering dinner. But not all. Definitely not all. In the South, disgust and vitriol shook the rafters. A sample of headlines: "Roosevelt Dines a ...Read more

Almost exactly 60 years ago, the newly appointed Chadian ambassador to the United States, Adam Malick Sow, was heading south on Maryland's Route 40 toward Washington, D.C. He stopped at the Bonnie Brae diner and asked for a menu. The owner, Mrs. Leroy Merritt, sneered, "We don't serve ------- here," and threw him out.

The same thing happened to...Read more

Sen. Mitt Romney appeared on Jake Tapper's CNN show last weekend, and for a few brief minutes, I felt transported to a saner world. Asked about the gross things some on the right are saying about Gen. Mark Milley, he responded that "Gen. Milley is a person of extraordinary accomplishment and personal character and a brilliant man." Asked about ...Read more

There was a Father's Day parade in Washington, D.C., last week that warmed my family-obsessed heart. It was called the Black Fathers Matter motorcade, and it featured silver and black balloons, a band serenading the crowd aboard a flatbed truck, kids singing their dads' praises, community leaders, politicians and at the end, a pop-up tent to ...Read more

Speaking to the Munich Security Conference in February, President Joe Biden proclaimed that "America is back." It's a pleasing sentiment, but our allies as well as our adversaries can be forgiven for taking a wait-and-see attitude.

America's approach to the world has gyrated over the past two decades from George W. Bush's assertive ...Read more

When Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would oppose the For the People Act, Steve Benen of MSNBC spoke for many Democrats when he declared that "Joe Manchin is prepared to be remembered by history as the senator who did little more than hope as his country's democracy unraveled."

One can share Democrats' alarm about the state of our democracy ...Read more

The Chinese communist government is going to permit three children per family. How nice. Here's how The New York Times put it: "The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world's toughest, have jeopardized the country's future."

To describe China's "one child policy" as "...Read more

The economy is reviving. On the East Coast, the cicadas are singing their love songs. There's a supermoon on the West Coast. We are at peace (at least with other nations). And yet President Joe Biden's approval rating remains almost precisely where it was in the first week of his presidency -- 55%.

We are so trapped in negative partisanship ...Read more

As soon as the Supreme Court granted cert in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, I rushed online to see the anticipated outcry. More on that in a moment.

The case challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi's gestational age law that barred abortions past 15 weeks except in exceptional circumstances. This is a ...Read more

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength. -- George Orwell, "1984"

Welcome to the funhouse world the Republican Party is building. Up is down. Black is white. Lies are truth.

The great cause that Republicans are uniting around is "election integrity." That's rich. The reality is that somebody did ...Read more

Subsidized day care and universal pre-K are goals that sound so wholesome only a ghoul could oppose them. Especially in an era when Democrats and Republicans have achieved consensus that money grows on trees, who could possibly object to spending a few hundred billion or so, as Biden has proposed with his American Families Plan, to ensure that ...Read more