ArcaMax

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

The United Nations' COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, known as "The Amazon COP," wrapped on Nov. 22. Powerful petrostates and large polluting nations succeeded in blocking the inclusion of a roadmap away from fossil fuels in the summit's concluding agreement. COP30 is the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations' Framework ...Read more

In an America presently diseased by crudeness and cruelty, the scene last week at Washington's National Cathedral for the funeral of former Vice President Dick Cheney was a welcome display of grace by leaders who embrace an ethos currently out of vogue. It's an ethos of bipartisanship, of respect for public service. It's an ethos of affirming ...Read more

There's no mystery why Zohran Mamdani wanted to get along with Donald Trump. The president threatened New York City with funding cuts, deployment of federal forces and other unpleasantries if its voters elected the self-described democratic socialist as mayor. But why after calling Mamdani all kinds of names, even warning of his possible ...Read more

Gary Tyler, 67, spent more than four decades in one of the most notorious prisons in the country for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1974, Tyler was one of a group of Black students bused into a formerly all-white Louisiana high school under court-ordered desegregation. When a white mob attacked their bus on Oct. 7, a white boy was killed. Tyler...Read more

This week, President Donald Trump called for the execution of six veterans who are members of Congress for posting a video telling members of the military that "they can refuse illegal orders."

On Truth Social, he posted: "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT...Read more

When you visit Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut, you may be told about his telephone. It was one of the first phones in the country, so he could neither call nor be called. He had faith in a phone-ful future. Also, he had invested in AT&T. Someone had to be first.

Alexander Graham Bell -- Twain's buddy -- was American. The ...Read more

The black-footed ferret exhibit at American Prairie's National Discovery Center in Lewistown, Montana, just opened to the public on Nov. 14. When I went to Montana in September to visit American Prairie, their newest ambassador had just arrived from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in ...Read more

"Yo! Fat Girl! C'mere. Are ya ticklish?"

So rapped the late rapper Humpty Hump, describing a good opening line to use on women who aren't a Size 4.

Maybe it worked for him. Who knows?

And, yo, if you can't say stuff like that, are you really a rapper, are you really a gangsta, are you really the leader of the free world, are you really a ...Read more

The central scandal in the Epstein's sex abuse ring targeting children is not the sex. It's the children.

What powerful men do with grown-up women -- that is, females 18 or older -- bothers me little. I never cared much about Donald Trump's assignation with porn star Stormy Daniels. Other Trump critics tried to pile on another layer of ...Read more

It took three weeks for President Donald Trump to speak up. In the meantime, Tucker Carlson's chummy interview with white nationalist and outspoken anti-Semite Nick Fuentes was tearing Trump's MAGA crowd apart. And when he finally did speak up, it was to defend Tucker Carlson -- and Nick Fuentes.

"We've had some great interviews with Tucker ...Read more