ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- I never had the honor of meeting George H.W. Bush, but I was lucky enough to meet one of his oldest and dearest friends.

That man's name was Don Gaylien.

Bush was a businessman, congressman, CIA director, U.S. ambassador to China, vice president, and the 41st president of the United States. When I met Gaylien, he was a 75-year-old...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- At lunch the other day, a friend -- an old Marine who will soon turn 80 -- informed me that originality is dead.

"Nothing is new," he said. "Everything that's happening now has happened before."

At the intersection of politics and media, he has a point. The alarmist anti-Trump media likes to say that things have never been this ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Who's afraid of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

A whole lot of Republican white men, it seems. I can smell the fear coming from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, radio host Rush Limbaugh, podcaster Ben Shapiro, and others.

Congress has more than enough lawyers. What it could really use is a few more bartenders.

The latter often have good ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Hola from the front row of the caravan crisis. The U.S.-Mexico border is just 17 miles from America's Finest City. So here are 17 observations:

-- From perches in New York and Washington, the liberal media showed again how little they know about immigration when some commentators claimed, after the election, that the ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- This time of year, President Trump should be thankful for the immigration debate.

It is a distraction that steals the public's attention away from administration flubs, GOP election losses and policy failures. It's a tool to fire up his base, especially those folks who say they care about the rule of law but really worry that ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- To the victor goes the mayhem. Democrats in Congress are learning that lesson as they manage their way through hard feelings and even harder choices.

It's always more fun to lead the resistance than to actually have to lead. And sometimes the first decision is the toughest, like who gets to hold the gavel.

On Monday, 16 House ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Republicans recently chose Mitch McConnell to continue on as Senate Majority Leader.

Meanwhile, Arizona voters elected Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to the U.S. Senate.

No word yet on whether Sinema plans to break from her party and support McConnell in all legislative matters because she sees him as her "boss."

It's worth mentioning ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- How fitting that California, home to Hollywood, would elect a governor who looks like he stepped out of central casting.

I'm sure my female friends in the Golden State won't mind seeing a lot of Gavin Newsom over the next four years. The 51-year-old lieutenant governor, and former San Francisco mayor, stands 6'3" with a handsome ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- As I winced my way through an uncomfortable confrontation at a televised White House news conference between President Trump and Jim Acosta, which resulted in CNN's chief White House correspondent having his press credentials yanked, all I could think about was a 3x5 slip of scratch paper.

About 15 years ago, while I was an ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Whatever other problems we may have faced with the 2018 midterm elections, voter apathy was not one of them.

The electorate was on fire. Americans are painfully divided, and they often seem to live on different planets. But the good news is that nearly the whole solar system turned out to vote.

More than 38 million Americans cast ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- To take Americans' minds off his problems, President Trump offers another shiny object: birthright citizenship.

The legal concept is jus soli, Latin for "the right of the soil." In the United States -- and more than 30 other countries, including Canada and most of Latin America -- if you're born there, you're a citizen. This...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Once again, the eyes of the nation are upon Texas. This time, our gaze is fixed on a bizarre Senate race where neither of the candidates appears comfortable enough in his own skin to go by his given name.

Republican incumbent Rafael Cruz prefers to go by "Ted," while the Democratic challenger Robert Francis O'Rourke wants you to ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- With a little more than a week left until the midterm elections, Democrats appear to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The matchups were theirs to lose, and they seem poised to underperform in a bunch of them.

A reader recently asked me: "I don't understand why Latinos are not motivated to vote against a bigoted POTUS ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- I'll often hear other Hispanic journalists talk about being attacked, criticized and picked on by racist conservative Republicans -- usually over immigration, and the assumption that anyone with a Spanish surname is soft on border security.

Amateurs. You haven't lived until you've had to put up with all that noise -- while also ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The "woke" have become a joke. The Left is devouring itself.

It happened when #MeToo collided with #BlackLivesMatter.

The collision of hashtags -- which was caught on video and has now been viewed by more than 6 million people -- occurred on a street corner in Brooklyn, N.Y., in front of a convenience store.

It was there that a ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Americans have long lived as part of different tribes. Now we live on entirely different planets.

Half the country can't stand the other half. With liberals cornering the market on compassion and conservatives having a monopoly on patriotism, everyone thinks they're superior to everyone else.

We all have to do our part to heal the...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- I've come to know Jose Antonio Vargas as a good man and a fine writer who provides -- in various media -- an essential voice in the immigration debate.

That beats the caricature of Vargas drawn by right-wing nativists as "the most famous illegal in America."

These are the kind of folks who lose sleep over the thought of taco ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Brett Kavanaugh is owed an apology.

Another one. He already got one this week from President Trump because of how badly the judge was treated during his Supreme Court confirmation process.

"On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- What's wrong with people?

I bet you've shaken your head and wondered the exact same thing lately. It's obvious that a lot of folks -- in both political parties -- have a "chip" missing that prevents them from knowing what constitutes inappropriate behavior.

They may have majored in social studies and mastered social media, but ...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