ArcaMax

Historians considering the state of American depravity will doubtless pause to reflect on the remarkable support in certain quarters for accused killer Luigi Mangione, charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk last year. Mangione was caught on video pumping bullets into Thompson, a father of two, as he ...Read more

"Just FYI if you're seeing the news right now, I'm totally safe," a son enrolled at Brown University texted me. "I've been home for a few hours now and wasn't there when stuff started to happen. Seems to be some crazy shooting near brown."

What?! I turned on CNN and saw the quaint streets of Providence's College Hill -- lined with front ...Read more

The Supreme Court announced that it will hear oral argument in our birthright citizenship case. The case blocks President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to take away the right to birthright citizenship for many native-born American children, even though the 14th Amendment guarantees that right.

Just hours after the president signed ...Read more

They clearly wanted attention and attention is what they got. Eight students at Branham High School in San Jose, Calif. posted photos of themselves on social media forming a human swastika -- and lest there be any doubt, accompanied the photo with a quote from Adolf Hitler calling for the killing of all Jews.

Happy Hanukkah. It starts on ...Read more

The Achaemenid Persian Empire. Byzantium. The Ottomans. Ancient Rome. All these regimes wielded immense power relative to their contemporaries. They dominated militarily, economically, culturally and globally in ways comparable to the United States' current superpower status. All collapsed or were destroyed.

We Americans often forget that ...Read more

When visiting San Antonio with my family, I came prepared. If we were going to take our son to see the Alamo, I wanted to make sure he learned the whole history. I did not want him believing a caricature of U.S. history that only served to enshrine so-called white heroes. Especially since my husband is Tejano. Our son is a complicated mix of ...Read more

The last time I ordered a $12 coffee, the nice woman behind the coffee bar made me show her the money first.

"Yeah?" I said. "Then why don't you get those gay pride colored biscotti outta here, and the churros?"

Not that I go out for coffee all that much. I make coffee at home, is what I do.

After the coffee, I went on down to Sam's House ...Read more

Bribery, inflation, plagues, crumbling trade links, stalled innovation -- all these negatives helped bring down the once-mighty Roman Empire. But Rome needed centuries of bad leadership to collapse.

Donald Trump seems to be undoing American greatness at warp speed. Sure, the United States possesses strengths that will maintain an aura of ...Read more

He did it again. Consider the pattern. On Dec. 8, President Donald Trump went after Rachel Scott, who happens to be a woman of color, for asking him whether the administration would release the controversial video of the strike on the Venezuelan boat.

Scott: "Are you committed to releasing the full video?"

Trump: (reportedly growing ...Read more

This month marks the 70th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. Her courageous act triggered the historic Montgomery bus boycott, launched the career of a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr., and changed the world. Remarkable events like the boycott have long...Read more

WASHINGTON -- I often amuse myself by asking which member of the Trump administration is most insane and dangerous.

Dear reader, share your thoughts.

The White House is turning the lights out on democracy. Take deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, seen as a sinister Svengali for his ruthless immigration policy. Masked federal agents are ...Read more

What a mess.

I mean America's corporatized, bureaucratic, profiteering medical system. It's as though the Marx Brothers and Franz Kafka conspired to create it.

Yet, in the midst of that mess, there is one saving grace -- namely the everyday workforce of dedicated nurses, therapists, hygienists and other skilled, hands-on professionals who ...Read more

If you were looking for a great choice for a terrible Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth was always your man. It was entirely unsurprising that President Donald Trump picked him. No rational person could want Hegseth anywhere near America's chain of command, and it's unclear that any rational person ever has.

For starters, there was highly ...Read more

It seems half the country's political figures have been instructed to grin like a theme-park greeter. Supposedly, that makes them seem friendly, approachable, relatable.

When I want humanoid patter, I turn to chatbots. They're more convincing.

Why this epidemic of wax museum smiles? One reason, certainly, is social media, where every sour ...Read more

Searching for an apartment online, applying for a loan, going through airport security or looking up a question on a search engine -- you might not think anything of these exchanges other than that they are mundane things you do, but, in many of these instances, you're actually interacting with artificial intelligence.

Avoiding AI in our ...Read more