ArcaMax

Why, frustrated Democrats are asking, is the news media ignoring signs that former President Donald Trump is (also) suffering cognitive impairment? Why are they focusing on President Joe Biden's debate performance and calling on him, but not Trump, following his conviction on 34 felony counts, to drop out of the campaign?

You have reasonable ...Read more

According to a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, 28% of people polled are still weighing their options for president. I find this hard to believe. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are not only very familiar candidates (I mean, we've been exactly here before), but they are also completely different in political stance and ideology. Perhaps that 28% are ...Read more

They say youth is wasted on the young.

"They" are old people who are hugely offended by the beautiful carelessness of youth and its beautiful disrespect. Those qualities are beautiful in young people because they haven't been broken to the saddle yet. They're still frolicking in the green grass of the pasture, going everywhere at a run, long ...Read more

Try as he might, Donald Trump can't blur the hard reality he forced upon American women. He vowed in 2016 to get rid of Roe v. Wade and succeeded. As a result, American women lost a half-century right to end an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.

Some of the harsh truths turn into nightmares. When Nicole Miller, mother of two and 20 weeks ...Read more

He just doesn't get it. And neither do those closest to him.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos how he would feel if he loses, he told the truth and it was the wrong answer. "I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about."

No, it's not. What this is about is not Joe Biden doing "the...Read more

Cutting dead flowers while barefoot in the summer garden is a sublime sensation that seldom leads to thoughts of politics. Yet this time my thoughts traveled straight to President Joe Biden, 81 years of aged mind, body and memory.

Roses and cosmos ready to bloom need the sun and space blocked by the old ones. That's just a fact, ma'am.

In ...Read more

What is a SCOTUS? Sounds like a prehistoric critter scuttling along some seabed. But, no, it is the acronym for our Supreme Court of the United States.

SCOTUS is meant to be the impartial arbiter of legal disputes over what our laws mean. Yet, who are these arbiters, how are they elected, why don't we even know their names, and if they go ...Read more

In a time visited by one painful irony after another, it was yet one more irony that the Supreme Court decision handing Donald Trump carte blanche to commit whatever crimes he chooses if he returns to the presidency was issued on July 1, as Americans prepared to mark their independence from the British monarchy. The court's ruling that Trump was...Read more

Walking through Roger Williams Park in Providence, Rhode Island, I came upon a moss-covered monolith listing the Ten Commandments. This was some time ago, but knowing the objections then being made to placing religious artifacts in public places, I thought, "This stone won't be here for long."

It was removed in 2004.

My feelings were mixed ...Read more

The Supreme Court's decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office not only gives Donald Trump a free pass for his past crimes but sets a dangerous precedent for all future presidents.

Before Trump, no one had even argued that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal liability after ...Read more

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he has President Joe Biden's back. It's almost enough for me to take him off my list of possible successors to the incumbent president. Having Biden's back is not a matter of loyalty.

Biden has been a fine president. He inherited a country in crisis, roiled by the pandemic, and righted the ship of state. The ...Read more

President Joe Biden's unsteady performance in last week's presidential debate has sparked a debate of its own between Democrats: between those who believe the president's chances of reelection have dropped so dramatically that he should be replaced as their nominee, and loyalists determined to stay the course lest the fragile coalition between...Read more

Honor is the lost virtue. Honor, in the minds of our ancestors, was that thing beyond religion, beyond laws, beyond self-preservation, that thing that would make you stand and die rather than retreat.

Honor had some oddly twisted variants. Men banged away at each other with pistols, dueling over their honor. A man "defended a woman's honor" ...Read more

"For every park, there's a story of someone who saved it from becoming something else." Ever since I read these words in Jenny Odell's book "How to Do Nothing," I've wanted to find the stories of such people.

I love parks, and I love all that they bring to our lives. So when my Aunt Mary suggested we go hiking in one of her favorite spots ...Read more

Americans have this big obsession over population numbers. One reason is that reports related to population come with numbers. Numbers give politicians and journalists something concrete to either agonize or crow over.

The problem with this approach is that the numbers don't necessarily reflect the living reality of people being counted. ...Read more