ArcaMax

There simply is no balderdash that Donald Trump hasn't elevated to an art form, a point so obvious by now that it's ceased to register. Lately, the Balderdash-O-Meter seems to crash hourly, as the president who claimed with a straight face to be running against a "weaponized" Biden administration devotes himself full throttle to weaponizing ...Read more

Donald Trump's defenders have taken great offense to suspicions by Democrats and others that the Trump family and its close circle are doing insider trading to profit from market convulsions. There's no "proof," they say.

It's true that there's been no proof so far, but there's surely enough smoke to warrant an investigation. Problem is, the ...Read more

President Barack Obama finally did last week what so many of us have been waiting for him -- and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- to do. He stood up and spoke out about the threat to our constitutional democracy posed by Donald Trump.

There is a very nice tradition that former presidents don't step up to criticize their successors, ...Read more

France's shocking surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940 left citizens stunned and unsure how to resist the German occupation and Vichy's collaborationist regime. Distrust was everywhere -- few knew whom to confide in without risking betrayal. Prewar political parties, blamed for the defeat, lay discredited; the French Communist Party, later a ...Read more

April 18 is National Columnists Day. Because of this, I want to hold space for the writer in all of us. Don't believe we are all writers? Just look at social media.

Gone are the days when opinions were sequestered to dinner tables or written in letters to the editor. Public opinions are no longer reserved for professional newspaper columnists ...Read more

I have never owned an autographed baseball or a basketball jersey with some guy's name on the back. I have hundreds of books, but none of them are signed.

I'm not a fanboy. I like boxing, but when I met Muhammad Ali in a hotel lobby, I didn't ask for his autograph.

For about 50 years, I've loved the writing of Jack Kerouac.

Who is Jack ...Read more

This trade war with Canada is not the first. Forty-five years ago, Maine potato farmers piled rotten potatoes at their state's borders with New Brunswick. Blocking nine crossings, the Mainers accused Canada of unfairly subsidizing its potato growers, thus driving down the prices they could get.

The Maine potato industry had problems other ...Read more

What do you do when the economy is going to hell, 401(k)s are going down the toilet and we're bracing for higher prices on nearly everything?

If you're an average American, you worry.

If you're Donald Trump, you go golfing, as he did twice last weekend, even as people took to the streets in every major city in the country to protest his ...Read more

America's family farmers were astonished recently to get a jolly tweet from the President of the United States: "Have fun!" exclaimed The Donald.

Fun? The farm economy is in the ditch, with crop prices at depression levels and bankruptcies surging. Plus, Trump Inc. is now rigging the law to give agribusiness monopolies more power to run ...Read more

I went down to the demonstration at the Washington Monument, surrounded by a multitude with signs, chants and oh so many causes under the bleak spring sky. In this setting I had a sudden epiphany: Protests are not only to send a message to the ruler golfing in Florida.

No, the point of gathering is to know there are others with you, like you,...Read more

With the erasure of 10% of Americans' retirement savings in 48 hours last week, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968, was entirely eclipsed.

President Donald Trump, the self-professed hero of ordinary Americans, marked the evaporation of ordinary Americans' retirement plans with his customary empathy, ...Read more

On Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump sent his thugs to the U.S. Capitol where they proceeded to smash up "the people's house." Trump refused to admit that he had lost the 2020 election. He called the assorted vandals "patriots" and surrounded himself with men and women of low character. That should have been enough to disqualify him for another term ...Read more

After President Donald Trump issued an executive order restricting access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under 19, many hospitals nationwide abruptly cut off treatment for trans youth. This sent thousands of families scrambling, with some even wondering if they needed to leave the country to protect their family's ...Read more

She is a self-styled Islamophobe, a proud white nationalist and a conspiracy theorist. She called 9/11 an "inside job." She has been banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (pre-Musk), PayPal, Uber and Lyft, among others, for hate speech and posting misinformation. She has been banned from events and had her press credentials suspended for ...Read more

Everyone should have known what was about to happen when Donald Trump announced huge global tariffs under the slogan "Make America Wealthy Again." Like "Make America Healthy Again," which accompanied the return of deadly measles, the cheery tagline for Trump's trade war foretold ruin -- which has arrived at warp speed.

Within hours, the ...Read more

Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? Before Hamas attacked Israel, American voters had not arrived at a consensus. They hadn't thought much about it. Asked whether the two terms were synonymous, 62% of respondents to a Brookings Institution poll taken seven months earlier said they didn't know. Fifteen percent replied yes, and 21% said no.

For the ...Read more