ArcaMax

For a long time, inflation has been the phantom of the American economy: often expected but never seen. But the latest Consumer Price Index, which showed that prices rose by 5% from May of last year to May of this year, raises fears that it is breaking down the front door and taking over the guest room.

The price jump was the biggest one-month ...Read more

To everything there is a season, and in a season when the Supreme Court will decide many important questions, the justices have recognized an important truth: For major constitutional issues, there is a time to act, and there is a time to do nothing.

They followed this wisdom in declining to hear a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of ...Read more

Kamala Harris has been vilified by critics on the right, but the people who may end up detesting her most are not conservatives or even contemporaries. They are future vice presidents, who will curse her for loading up the office with heavy burdens.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced that she will lead the administration's charge against...Read more

A lot of young people enroll at a university they think will suit their needs but later realize they've made a mistake -- maybe because of costs, maybe because of professors, maybe because of a failed romance. Fortunately, they have the option to move on, attending Missouri one semester and Kansas the next, and pursue whatever they went to ...Read more

When he became president, Joe Biden summarily reversed his predecessor's policies on a range of issues, including climate change, immigration, taxes, social welfare and police reform. But on international trade, it's almost like Donald Trump never left.

Trump had a primitive view of this issue. Good, in his view, were exports, trade surpluses, ...Read more

The American system of government has been around for 232 years, and it has survived wars, depressions, social upheavals and pandemics. But we should not bet that it will survive much longer. The proliferating signs of rot suggest the end may be near.

The election of 1800, in which Thomas Jefferson defeated incumbent John Adams, was perhaps the...Read more

Of the many mortifying moments of Donald Trump's presidency, few can match his hopeless infatuation with an unlikely partner: North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong Un. It is still hard to believe that the leader of the free world could stand up in public and tell an audience: "We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters ... We ...Read more

In one of his 19th-century novels, Anthony Trollope depicts a protagonist who learns that his beloved has accepted a rival's marriage proposal. "A horse will gallop for some scores of yards, after his back has been broken, before he knows of his great ruin; -- and so it was with Phineas Finn," he wrote. Soon, however, Finn realizes: "The game ...Read more

The modern era of gun rights began in 2008, when the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's near-total ban on handgun ownership. It later overturned a similar Chicago ordinance. Both were serious infringements on a freedom enshrined in the Second Amendment -- "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

But gun rights ...Read more

In a Democratic presidential debate in September 2019, Julian Castro thought he heard Joe Biden say something that contradicted himself, and he pounced on the opportunity to suggest that Biden was over the hill. "Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?" he demanded. "Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?"

...Read more

AUSTIN, Texas -- In 2006, mystery author and musical humorist Kinky Friedman ran for governor of Texas as an independent on the slogan: "Why the hell not?" He lost, but Texans seem open to the same concept with a different candidate: Matthew McConaughey.

The Oscar-winning actor says he's seriously considering a race for governor next year, and ...Read more

For most of the past 20 years, the United States has had a clear policy in Afghanistan: avoiding reality. We kept telling ourselves that if we stuck it out a while longer and did one thing or another differently, the outlook would brighten, paving the way for us to leave in the glow of victory. But that improvement never came.

President Joe ...Read more

Driving has gotten much less dangerous over time, thanks to new safety features in cars, better highway design and a decline in drunk driving. But that's no solace to motorists who face dangers of a different kind -- not when they are driving, but when they are stopped on the side of the road.

Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old African American, was ...Read more

The Biden administration has grand dreams for mass transit. In its blue-sky vision, subways and buses will do everything from reducing traffic congestion to curbing climate change. But like generals preparing for the last war while failing to imagine how the next one will differ, it has the perfect strategy for an era that has passed.

The ...Read more

Mitch McConnell has been presented with the spectacle of giant American corporations taking sides on a political issue, and his eyes were seared by the sight. The Senate Republican leader could not have imagined Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola, much less Major League Baseball, coming out against a piece of legislation. Processing the trauma may ...Read more

If there is any fundamental belief that has always united conservatives, it's the central importance of property rights. James Madison wrote: "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort ... (T)hat alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Said economist Milton Friedman, "Nothing is ...Read more

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan is nearly old enough to buy a beer, having gone on since 2001. Two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, promised it would come to an end, but the war outlasted them both.

Trump's administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban that committed us to leave by May. That obligation was conveniently scheduled ...Read more

Many national problems have simple, effective solutions. To curb global warming, reduce fossil fuel use. To combat child poverty, give money to families with kids. To end a pandemic, get people vaccinated. But some problems are impervious to any plausible remedy. Mass shootings are one of those.

In the days after the bloody carnage in Georgia ...Read more

This is a time of pandemic, economic turmoil and mass shootings, but no issue has galvanized the American public more than President Joe Biden's long refusal to hold a press conference. The deafening chorus of popular outcries, however, finally forced him to schedule one for Thursday.

Just kidding. Americans have a lot of things on their minds ...Read more

In 2014, the Obama administration was faced with a surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America showing up at our border and seeking asylum. In an effort to reduce the number of kids trekking across Mexico, it created a program to let them apply for asylum in their home countries. Some 13,000 did, helping to ease the rush.

You can guess ...Read more