ArcaMax

These have been hard times for American institutions. Over the past four to five decades, confidence in nearly every institution of American life has declined. A 2018 Gallup survey found, for example, that trust in Congress stood at 42 percent in 1973 and dropped to 11 percent this year. Only 29 percent of Americans gave high ratings to public ...Read more

How did we get here? The Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination circus didn't happen by accident. The emergence of incredible -- and by "incredible," I mean the literal Merriam-Webster definition of "too extraordinary and improbable to be believed" -- accusers in the 11th hour was no mistake.

It is my contention that this grand unearth-and-destroy ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- It's the beginning of a new school year, and already acrimony is in the air. America's teachers are mad as heck, and they're not going to take it anymore.

That's the message from a recent cover story in Time magazine that no doubt left many readers wondering why anyone in their right minds would enter the classroom these days.

...Read more

For Washington Post readers, we offer a quiz. Guess which one of these now-deleted tweets from Washington, D.C., Catholic college professors about the Brett Kavanaugh battle and Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick is considered scandalous and newsworthy.

1. "Swetnick is 55 y/o. Kavanaugh is 52 y/o. Since when do senior girls hang with freshmen ...Read more

When I was in graduate school, I learned a lot about the left. One lesson was that while most liberals and conservatives abide by society's rules of order and decency, most leftists do not feel bound to live by these same rules.

I watched the way leftist Vietnam War protesters treated fellow students and professors. I watched left-wing students...Read more

Who believes another FBI investigation of Brett Kavanaugh will be the end of it? If the FBI finds nothing to support Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party, will it be ...Read more

Republican leaders are "a bunch of wimps," said Jerry Falwell Jr.

Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing "nice guys."

"The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps."

So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority, and he ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Baptists tend to be teetotalers, but some obviously make an exception for the potent Kool-Aid they serve at the White House. It has produced (metaphorically) a different kind of belligerent intoxication.

Consider a recent tweet by Jerry Falwell Jr.: "Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing 'nice guys'. They might make ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Without being aware of it, Vernon Madison might become a footnote in constitutional law because he is barely aware of anything. For more than 30 years, Alabama, with a tenacity that deserves a better cause, has been trying to execute him for the crime he certainly committed, the 1985 murder of a police officer. Twice the state ...Read more

Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured.

Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a weeklong delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed to Democrat demands...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- I'll just say it: I believe both of them.

In this climate, I'll get hammered by loyal partisans on both the right and the left for reaching such a conclusion. But I don't care.

We're living at a time when a lot of people can decide whether testimony is believable even before hearing it. Don't confuse us with facts, we're too busy ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- In the end, everything -- every blasted thing -- gets sucked into the polarization black hole, never to emerge again.

That now includes the Supreme Court. It is not, of course, that this process has never been political before. But it has never been more clearly a function of contending culture war narratives.

Progressives saw ...Read more

Karl Marx, commenting on the ascension of Louis Napoleon, wrote, "History repeats itself: The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." The drama over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation has reversed the order. It began as farce. Protesters dressed in "The Handmaid's Tale" red capes lined the halls of senate office buildings. Senator Kamala ...Read more

It's fascinating when the national media's literary tastemakers make room for the transparently tasteless. Time magazine offered its picks for "The Best New Books to Read Fall 2018," and two ticks down from former first lady Michelle Obama's memoir was "Full Disclosure" by anti-Trump porn star/stripper Stormy Daniels. She "promises to divulge ...Read more

"Here's my question," tweets legal scholar Jeffrey A. Sachs, obviously in response to the controversy over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. "what is the alternative reality where Roe was never decided, levels of partisan polarization are identical to our own, and the SCOTUS appointments process is markedly better?"

Here's the problem with...Read more

At times Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh sounded rehearsed and overly cautious in their "exclusive" interview with Fox News host Martha McCallum Monday night. Brett Kavanaugh repeated ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- When John Keats said that autumn is the season of "mists and mellow fruitfulness," he did not anticipate this American autumn. It resembles the gorier Shakespearean plays in which swords are brandished, people are poisoned and stabbed, almost everyone behaves badly and those who do not are thinking: Things cannot continue like this...Read more

No consent. No disclosure. No escape.

For legions of unwitting students and teachers across the country, this is the dangerous, de facto data policy Google has imposed over their school districts. An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free "G Suite for Education" accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for ...Read more