ArcaMax

An attorney I used to know told me how he figured out when to go home.

"When I can't pronounce 'judiciary,' I should pay my tab and leave," he said at the 8 p.m. end of his "after-work drink."

"Habeas corpus?" I said to him.

He laughed.

"You can say habeas corpus when you're too drunk to walk," he said.

What you can say when you're drunk ...Read more

I own a yarmulke. It's embroidered in gold, and I bought it in the gift shop at Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest Jewish temple in America.

I've had it for decades. I've worn it to a couple Jewish weddings, and as a reporter, I wore it when I had to cover a Jewish religious ceremony.

You go in the temple to attend or cover...Read more

Eternal vigilance is the price of paranoia, and that's why I check my garage carefully every day.

I check the garage because I figure if we get mice, that's where they're gonna get in first.

We had mice in our last house. We had them for about two weeks, and then the exterminator we hired killed them all, and we had a couple of small cracks ...Read more

I went out to buy envelopes Tuesday.

When you're semiretired, as I am, those small tasks become the day.

"Well," you say to your wife when you wake up, "I gotta go buy some envelopes today."

I walked to a chain drug store. They had envelopes. You got a box of 100 for $2.99.

The woman behind the cash register looked, as my father used to ...Read more

Some people (fewer every decade) put a little sticker inside the front cover of books they own. It's called a "bookplate," and it tells people you own the book. Maybe it also makes people return the book when they borrow it from you. Sometimes the bookplate says, "From the library of," and then your name. You can have them made, and they're ...Read more

You can tell Valentine's Day was designed with women in mind because there is no holiday meal for Mom to cook.

Thanksgiving and Christmas both have women out in the kitchen baking animals or parts of an animal. In a lot of households, it's a woman who makes the Super Bowl wings and things.

On Valentine's Day, the tradition is to free your ...Read more

A few years ago, some people acted like they were horrified when a poll showed that a lot of high school and college students wanted to work for the government when they grew up.

"No ambition, these little punks," grumped people who would soon be voting for Donald Trump, the working man's friend. "They just want to work for the government ...Read more

If, like most people in the United States, you wanted something done about immigration, you got your wish this last week.

It may not be what you wanted. You might think it's stupid or cruel or racist or fascist. But something is by God being done, and it's being done by President Donald Trump.

Will it make things better? No one knows, but it...Read more

Every newspaper columnist in America is expected to write 800 words every week about President Donald J. Trump.

I refuse.

I refuse because there's no point in calling someone an "enemy of the state" unless you want to kill them, and I don't want to be remembered just for the political stuff.

"Come on," I'll tell the hooded and robed judges....Read more

"When I stand here today, about to take the Oath of Office, the flags at half-staff remind me of the long line of presidents. In particular, I am reminded of President Jimmy Carter, a man of honor, compassion and duty, a veteran, a man of deep faith, a fighter for human rights, a man who loved one woman his whole adult life, and a man who ...Read more

President Narrowly Elected Donald Trump wants to buy/annex/conquer/steal the entire country of Canada.

There is a lot to be said for this idea, principally because it's so magnificently stupid. It's not average stupid, like eating in a restaurant with rat traps in the dining room. It's stupid like ordering the ratatouille in a restaurant with...Read more

NEW ORLEANS QUESTION: What did you do for those beads?

ANSWER: I got run over by a truck and now I'm lying in the street like a busted Barbie.

Yeah. I know. It wasn't Mardi Gras, though everything in the United States now leads uphill to the cross.

I call 'em "Watermelons," those columns that come in like a slow ball over the plate, aimed ...Read more

Yeah. It was a hell of a Christmas. Elon Musk was in the manger, nursing greedily at Mary's exhausted body. One of the Wise Men was a crooked New York City real estate developer with an impossibly cotton candy combover, and Matt Gaetz was lustily pursuing the sheep who came to see the babe.

By the time the REAL apocalypse gets here, things ...Read more