ArcaMax

"Quid pro quo" was the accusatory Latin phrase most often used to describe President Donald Trump's July 25 phone call asking for a "favor" from the president of Ukraine.

New Year's prediction: The Roman poet Horace's Latin depiction: "Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus" -- "The mountains went into labor, and brought forth a mouse" -- ...Read more

"Jaw-jaw is better than war-war," is attributed, wrongly, say some historians, to Winston Churchill. Still, the words lately came to mind.

While last week ended with a hopeful U.S.-Iranian prisoner exchange that was hailed by President Donald Trump -- "Thank you to Iran for a very fair negotiation. See, we can make a deal together" -- a few ...Read more

The "Our diversity is our strength!" Party is starting to look rather monochromatic in its upper echelons these days.

The four leading candidates for its presidential nomination -- Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg -- are all white.

The six candidates who have qualified for the Dec. 19 debate -- the front four, ...Read more

At first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph.

By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests -- to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to China for trial -- had been withdrawn.

And though the protesters' demands escalated along with...Read more

Editor's note: Patrick Buchanan is off this week. The following column is by Erick Erickson.

Two weeks ago, two prominent evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump, Eric Metaxas and Franklin Graham, had a discussion about the election, the current political situation and opposition to the president.

"It's a very bizarre situation...Read more

A week from now, the 29 member states of "the most successful alliance in history" will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO.

Instead of a "summit," the gathering, on the outskirts of London, has been cut to two days. Why the shortened agenda?

Among the reasons, apprehension that President Donald Trump might ...Read more

Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens?

"Was there a quid pro quo?"

This question has bedeviled this city for months now. "The answer is yes," said U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland in sworn testimony on Wednesday.

Sondland added that ...Read more

When the wildfires of California broke out across the Golden State, many were the causes given.

Negligence by campers. Falling power lines. Arson. A dried-out land. Climate change. Failure to manage forests, prune trees and clear debris, leaving fuel for blazes ignited. Abnormally high winds spreading the flames. Too many fires for first ...Read more

On hearing the State Department's George Kent and William Taylor describe President Donald Trump's withholding of military aid to Ukraine, The New York Times summarized and solemnly endorsed their testimony:

"What clearly concerned both witnesses wasn't simply the abuse of power by the President, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical...Read more

Some 100 members of an American Mormon community in northern Mexico, nine of whom -- women, children, toddlers -- were massacred a week ago on a lonely stretch of highway, just crossed over into Arizona.

Other family members who have lived there for decades will follow.

The atrocity was the work of one of the cartels battling for control of ...Read more

After celebrating Tuesday's takeover of Virginia's legislature and the Kentucky governorship, the liberal establishment appears poised to crush its biggest threat: the surging candidacy of Elizabeth Warren.

From the tempo and tenor of the attacks, establishment fears of Warren's success are real -- and understandably so.

Two Wednesday polls ...Read more

"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

These are the offenses designated in the Constitution for which presidents may be impeached and removed from office.

Which of these did Trump commit?

According to his accusers in this city, his crime is as follows:

The president imperiled our "national security" by delaying, for his ...Read more

What are the roots of our present disorder, of the hostilities and hatreds that so divide us? When did we become this us vs. them nation?

Who started the fire?

Many trace the roots of our uncivil social conflict to the 1960s and the Johnson years when LBJ, victorious in a 61% landslide in 1964, could not, by 1968, visit a college campus ...Read more

Sunday morning, President Trump announced that the world's worst terrorist, the head of the ISIS caliphate who had raped an American woman, had received justice.

About to be captured and carried off in a helicopter by U.S. special forces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself up with an explosive vest in a compound in northwest Syria. The long ...Read more

"Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand," said President Donald Trump in an impassioned defense of his decision to cut ties to the Syrian Kurds, withdraw and end these "endless wars."

Are our troops in Syria, then, on their way home? Well, not exactly.

Those leaving northern Syria went into Iraq. Other U.S. soldiers will stay...Read more

What happens when democracy fails to deliver? What happens when people give up on democracy?

What happens when a majority or militant minority decide that the constitutional rights of free speech, free elections, peaceful assembly and petition are inadequate and take to the streets to force democracy to submit to their demands?

Our world may ...Read more

"Russia Assumes Mantle of Supreme Power Broker in the Middle East," proclaimed Britain's Telegraph. The article began:

"Russia's status as the undisputed power-broker in the Middle East was cemented as Vladimir Putin continued a triumphant tour of capitals traditionally allied to the US."

"Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a ...Read more

President Donald Trump could have been more deft and diplomatic in how he engineered that immediate pullout from northeastern Syria.

Yet that withdrawal was as inevitable as were its consequences.

A thousand U.S. troops and their Kurdish allies were not going to dominate indefinitely the entire northeast quadrant of a country the size of Syria...Read more

"There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader," is a remark attributed to a French politician during the turbulent times of 1848.

Joe Biden's Wednesday declaration that President Donald Trump should be impeached is in that tradition. Joe is scrambling to get out in front of the sentiment for impeachment in the party he ...Read more

The backstage struggle between the Bush interventionists and the America-firsters who first backed Donald Trump for president just exploded into open warfare, which could sunder the Republican Party.

At issue is Trump's decision to let the Turkish army enter Northern Syria, to create a corridor between Syrian Kurds and the Turkish Kurds of the ...Read more