ArcaMax

When I go to synagogue, I always smile and wave at the armed police officers stationed outside. I want them to know they're appreciated, but also, at some level, I guess it's fair to say that I'm trying to ingratiate myself so that the cop will want to put his or her life on the line to save us if a gunman decides to open fire on or torch our ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- My holiday wish for my fellow Americans is that we should all be so lucky in this life as to find someone who loves us as much as President Donald Trump loves Donald Trump.

I realize this is not breaking news. We've known for decades that the billionaire real estate developer and former reality TV star has an ego the size of ...Read more

Priscilla Villarreal was not arrested for "merely asking questions," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists in a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Laredo news vlogger's petition for review of her First Amendment case. Yet that is literally what happened to Villarreal in 2017, and the precedent set by that incident poses a threat ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The word of the day is reverberating through the world of college football: "Heismendoza." And it's powerful.

As a Mexican American, my father was always excited to see a brown face in a high place. We'd be watching the news, and he'd spot a Spanish surname. He'd point at the screen like a little boy on Christmas morning and ...Read more

Absorbing the news about the brutal treatment of detainees, to say nothing of the outright murder of "suspected" drug runners in the Caribbean, I think back to a conversation I had in February of this year. My interlocutor was a Trump voter who had just had a friendly encounter with an African immigrant striver -- the kind who came from poverty ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Once the Trump administration started attacking Venezuelan drug boats that appeared to be traveling to the United States, it was inevitable that Americans would be pulled back into a conversation about the much-ballyhooed War on Drugs. Just as it was predictable that, once we were enmeshed in that dialogue, we'd lose our bearings ...Read more

I have a riddle for you. If we call a drug smuggler a combatant, how many combatants died when SEAL Team 6 killed 11 men on a cocaine boat near Venezuela on Sept. 2?

Zero, because calling a drug smuggler a combatant does not make him a combatant. That reality goes to the heart of the morally and legally bankrupt justification for President ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- All Americans want for Christmas is for things to cost less. Is that asking too much?

It is if they're making the "ask" of President Donald Trump. When it comes to fulfilling his 2024 campaign promise to be the "affordability president," he is way out of his depth. How is Trump supposed to battle inflation if he doesn't even ...Read more

The recent Harvard report on grading practices has drawn a lot of attention from colleges and universities across the country, particularly for its claim that grade inflation remains a critical issue. The rising number of A grades assigned to students has prompted calls to return to traditional in-person exams and other lecture components, ...Read more

If you followed the twists and turns of the Jeffrey Epstein saga over the last few weeks, you already know that several prominent names emerged from the tranche of emails that the Epstein estate released. Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, who exchanged scores of emails with the convicted pedophile, has seen his ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- You have to hand it to President Donald Trump. His brutally racist comments about Somali immigrants managed to alarm and terrorize a group of people who -- having survived warlords, famine, and marauding gangs -- don't scare easily.

Some former U.S. presidents might have aspired to emulate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or ...Read more

Alina Habba said she was the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed. All three were wrong, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled this week.

That unanimous decision, which was issued by a three-judge panel that included two George W. Bush appointees, highlights a ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- It's been less than a week since the tragic shooting of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers by an Afghan refugee in Washington D.C. and already many Americans are pretty far down the road in terms of casting blame and discerning motive.

We're even starting to debate what would be historic and radical changes to our asylum ...Read more

President Donald Trump says six members of Congress are "traitors to our Country" who "should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL" because they produced a video reminding members of the armed forces that they "can refuse illegal orders." Trump's over-the-top reaction epitomizes his longstanding tendency to portray criticism of him as a crime against ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- With all due respect to baseball, the real national pastime is complaining.

Oblivious to how soft and comfortable our lives are compared to those of millions of other people around the world, Americans love to gripe. Whether it's harvest time or not, we make "whine" year-round.

We complain about the weather in the places we ...Read more

The Nov. 17 CBS Evening News "Eye on America" report focused on what is considered a rising trend of Christians now attending nondenominational churches. Quoting research from the General Social Survey, the report mentioned that in 1972, "fewer than 3% of Americans identified as nondenominational Christians." Today, close to 40 million people ...Read more

Reflecting on gratitude for this holiday, I want to highlight something that can be shared with the wider world. Last year at this time, I focused on reasons to be thankful despite Donald Trump's reelection:

Trump ran on promises he cannot possibly fulfill. He swore to reduce prices and raise tariffs. He doesn't have the foggiest notion how to ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Democrats take Latino voters for granted. But Republicans must take us for fools.

Burned by both parties, U.S. Latinos are political nomads who don't feel like we can let our guard down in our own country. In this land of the free, we're in a kind of psychological prison.

Oh, one more thing: We're really pissed off.

If you ...Read more

When U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick blasted the Justice Department's handling of the James Comey case on Monday, he did not address the merits of the perjury and obstruction charges against the former FBI director. But the government misconduct that Fitzpatrick described was largely a product of the reckless rush to deliver the ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- My father's love affair with policing was sparked decades ago by a children's book that featured a cat stuck in a tree.

The book was part of a series that was popular in the 1950s. The main characters were two children named Dick and Jane, and they had two pets: a dog and a cat. One day, the cat climbs up a tree. A friendly ...Read more