ArcaMax

Like the song says, it's time for mistletoe and holly. The holly tree has been a winter favorite throughout human history, but the genus, which includes hundreds of species, goes back much further than that. The oldest holly tree fossil came from Victoria, Australia. It lived alongside dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period more than 90 million ...Read more

"You're a columnist," the wing-tipped, gray-haired inner voice bellows. "Write about politics. Write about impending disaster. The Federal Reserve Bank. Gunfire. Donald Trump."

"It's almost Christmas," my 8-year-old self says. "Write about Frosty the Snowman."

I'm happy to say the 8-year-old won. He should win sometimes, too. Anyone who is a...Read more

Sean Duffy's entreaty to "dress with respect" on airplanes rapidly ran into some turbulence. The transportation secretary's request had a bumpy touchdown, landing so close to Donald Trump boorishly telling a female reporter on Air Force One, "Quiet, Piggy."

Duffy's boss often struggles to maintain the thinnest veneer of courtliness -- a ...Read more

The "fog of war" is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's latest explanation for what was going on with the second strike on the boat in the Caribbean. He told a Cabinet meeting, "I did not personally see survivors. The thing was on fire. It exploded, there's fire, there's smoke. This is called the fog of war."

Not exactly, according to military ...Read more

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims he had nothing to do with killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage of their boat, following U.S. missile strikes on Sept. 2. The first strike killed most of the 11 people on board. The Washington Post, citing multiple unnamed sources, reported two people survived, and the officer in charge of the ...Read more

Reader, who are the people who have stood up to President Donald Trump and confronted him, face to his furious face?

Answer: Women, and only women, have done so publicly.

Running for president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris put Trump's misogyny on public display in 2016 and 2024, but that's...Read more

Look out -- the corporate cat is out of the bag!

This particular "cat" is the fast-metastasizing software technology called "artificial intelligence." A cadre of multibillion-dollar high-tech giants has surreptitiously been advancing AI for a couple of decades, literally creating a new, autonomous species of thinking beings. These are computer-...Read more

Belfast-born, Dublin-raised Chaim Herzog was a son of Ireland, through and through. Educated at Irish colleges, fluent in Irish and with an Irish brogue he carried with him through life, Herzog was a rugby star and a boxing champion. His father was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, dubbed the "Sinn Fein Rabbi" for his support of Irish nationalism.

...Read more

Since President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" in 1971, federal, state and local governments have spent an estimated $1 trillion fighting it -- and losing. Donald Trump now seems fully engaged in that futile conflict, adding his own twisted brand of violence.

It's not enough to bomb boats "suspected" of ferrying drugs to the United ...Read more

In a major overhaul of immigration enforcement leadership, the Trump administration is replacing nearly half of top leaders at ICE offices across the country with current or retired Border Patrol officers.

For months, masked immigration agents have brought terror to communities across the U.S., arresting parents in carpool lines, dragging ...Read more

Everyone's talking about affordability or, more precisely, unaffordability -- and the issue is likely to drive U.S. politics for the foreseeable future.

Affordability is subtraction. If your income is higher than your expenses, goods and services are affordable. The current discussion about affordability, however, is exclusively about the ...Read more

A friend recently told me they were dreading the holidays. I get it. Holidays can be stressful. The idea of socializing with relatives you don't see all the time or don't always get along with can feel a bit daunting. Whether it's because of political disagreements, a divorce or another hardship that's all your own, the holidays can be just ...Read more

Deportations continue in America, and news organizations continue to do stories. Conservative organizations do stories about the immigrant with 16 arrests in 10 years, and how wonderful it is that he's been zip-tied and thrown on a plane home. Their readers will never get sick of this story because it represents a fulfillment of President Donald...Read more

Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. But there is something almost un-American about it. It is a day opposed to striving, to getting more. We stop adding up the numbers in our accounts. We freeze in place to give thanks for whatever is there.

Today's big issue is "affordability." But the complaint is rising prices for food, not the ...Read more

It cuts to the core, through the hot air and the blue smoke and mirrors of our politics, to what really matters. Tatianna Schlossberg's essay in The New Yorker is the one thing you must read this holiday season to touch base with what is real -- including grief,but it also love and rage.

A thirty-four-year-old woman gives birth to her second ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- A moment in former Vice President Dick Cheney's funeral at the National Cathedral brought me to tears. Not for the departed and grim old warrior but for the tableau in the front row.

A hint: something as simple as a handshake between two men who would -- or should -- be president.

Former President Joseph Biden and former first ...Read more

Oh, thank goodness for President Donald Trump!

As millions of families struggle with the ever-rising price of groceries, The Donald is bragging that his economic policies have miraculously lowered prices, just in time for Thanksgiving. As proof, he points to Walmart, America's largest food marketer, boasting that it cut the price of its "...Read more