ArcaMax

A bright, clear Presidents' Day in Washington: a perfect moment in time and place to say what makes the best and worst of presidents.

For historians, the pattern is indelible. The American people show who the great presidents are, because they bring out the best in us.

The opposite is also true. Three weeks into his second round, power-mad ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Only three weeks old, the new Trump presidential power in town knows the price of everything (except eggs) and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde observed of fools and cynics.

Let's add "shameless." Shame has left the stately building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The city on the hill feels occupied.

Donald Trump, president, and ...Read more

The president's war with the nation is well underway.

Shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development was taking the smallest lamb from the flock. Other vital parts of the government may soon follow in a flash.

At least three departments face a strange Cabinet member in charge: Kash Patel at the FBI, Bobby Kennedy at Health and ...Read more

The president has declared war on the nation, the nation as we have known it. -- Anonymous

If you ever go to Canterbury Cathedral in England, drops of blood from ages ago are still there on the altar floor. Legend has it that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was brutally murdered by four knights serving King Henry II, whom Becket ...Read more

Donald Trump won the whole Monopoly game. He never went directly to jail and always passed go. Timid Merrick Garland, the attorney general, was no match and didn't even buy a railroad.

The Big Tech money boys were literally behind Trump, in obsequious unity as he was sworn in as president Monday at high noon in the Capitol rotunda.

The ...Read more

2025 is a full year so far.

If you grew up in the beautiful (but parlous) land of Los Angeles and live in Washington D.C., the moment feels like paradise lost.

Seeing your hometown burn to the ground on screen, with high winds showing no mercy and leaving vast swaths of city life destroyed, makes tears run dry as fire hydrants.

Nothing will...Read more

Yes, I was there on Jan. 6, 2021, in the sacred temple of democracy when a mob's deadly rampage darkened democracy and injured 140 police officers in a president's plot to undo the election he lost.

That was the best day of President-elect Donald Trump's life: crowd size, TV ratings, a siege, all of it for three hours. That tragic day burns ...Read more

As we reach the quarter-century mark, the 21st century has turned out a tragic disappointment. Hopes were high, leaving the world wars and Holocaust of the 20th century behind. Once, even globalization sounded good.

If the 21st century were a Broadway show, it would be a flop, closed by now.

The prelude was the Supreme Court giving George W....Read more

"The hopes and fears of all the years ..." -- Traditional Christmas carol

WASHINGTON -- Oh, the drama.

The closing days of this Congress were a mad rush, more so than usual since the white mansion up Pennsylvania Avenue will soon change hands.

The holiday parties given by the Bidens enchanted guests with a melancholy undertow. The candles ...Read more

There's one thing Donald Trump can't take away from me.

I'm ready for living in a reality where a knock on the door could take you and your rights away. I'm prepared for violent Jan. 6 offenders in prison to be pardoned on Trump's first day. I'm even braced for freedom of speech -- and the press -- to ebb toward being things of the past.

...Read more

The New York Times, NBC News and the "legacy media" have got to change with the Trump times -- before Donald Trump takes power in six short weeks on Jan. 20, 2025.

One CBS News presidential historian commented on air after Trump's cruel 2016 "American carnage" inaugural address: "That was the best speech Trump ever gave."

In plain sight, ...Read more

My father and I, discouraged at the election over the holiday, opened a book of poetry I brought along to the house.

Somewhere we traveled was back in time to John F. Kennedy's inauguration on a bright snowy day on Jan. 20, 1961.

Almost unbelievably, Kennedy asked New England poet Robert Frost to compose and read an original poem for the ...Read more

The most tragic rhyme in American history falls in November's time, one century apart. President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863; President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

These events reach over endless bends in a profound dialogue like the mighty Mississippi River, cutting through North and ...Read more