ArcaMax

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

Boy, do I miss Joe Biden. I especially miss the former president when Donald Trump and his bobbleheads unfairly blame him for everything that's gone wrong since Inauguration Day. Trump has since proven beyond doubt that he can wreck the economy all by his lonesome. And that's not all he's wrecking.

Trump was handed a great economy, "The Envy ...Read more

I probably don't agree with anything Mahmoud Khalil has to say about Israel. He's the Columbia University student activist who has been arrested and threatened with deportation in the name of fighting antisemitism.

Trampling on free speech rights is no way to fight antisemitism. Neither is cutting off funding for much needed medical research....Read more

We are in a state of emergency. Most newspapers report the facts, ma'am, but shy from stating American democracy is on the line, in serious peril.

Scenes from the resistance: the Lincoln Memorial, the jammed independent bookstore and the floor of Congress, where Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) parted waters by bellowing at the president midway ...Read more

Last week, the Democratic Party's top congressional leaders finally took a bold stand against President Donald Trump's assault on our democracy when he came to Congress to tout his autocratic agenda.

Traditionally, when a president arrives to address Congress, a bipartisan escort committee leads the dignitary to the podium. But, by gollies, ...Read more

Say what you will about Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda: the man lied for a living, and he knew one heck of a lot about lying. Before committing suicide in Berlin in 1945, he left a formidable body of commentary about the art of lying and the psychology of it.

"This is the secret of propaganda," Goebbels observed. "...Read more

You can get rich when stocks go up. You can get rich when stocks go down. When stocks go up, people who knew to buy them in advance may win big. If they go down, investors who had the wisdom to "go short" on them -- that is, bet on their decline -- can make a bundle.

Clearly, anyone who can predict what stock prices would do can make ...Read more

President Donald Trump has nominated Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney, media personality and Republican Party official, to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. If confirmed, Dhillon will lead the division of the DOJ charged with upholding core civil rights and liberties in many aspects of American life.

Dhillon is known ...Read more

Should the government be able to tell a private university what to teach and how to teach it?

Is there a libertarian left in the house?

This is the letter that former and current Trump lawyer (officially the Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney) Ed Martin sent to the dean of Georgetown Law School:

"It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown...Read more

Donald Trump's interest in rapprochement with Russia and his annoyance with Ukraine, embodied by last week's Oval Office shouting match, has corporate pundits and politicians freaking out. Trump's former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Trump's dressing down of Volodymyr Zelenskyy made him "ashamed for my nation" -- something he's ...Read more

My mother-in-law was born on a small ranch in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in 1951. After her mother died from illness, my mother-in-law crossed into Brownsville, Texas, during the Charro Days Fiesta.

She was 13, undocumented and alone.

I've written about my mother-in-law's journey before. However, in light of Donald Trump's immigration policies ...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

There they were, dressed in hot pink, waving signs, banging on a cane.

If that is what counts as resistance, we are all in trouble.

The fact is that by showing up, the Democrats gave the president an audience he doesn't deserve. Would they all have shown up at a Donald Trump campaign rally? That's what it was. He doesn't deserve the respect ...Read more

Have you ever gone to a party that transports you back in time? I've attended two in one week, in Santa Monica, California, and Washington, D.C. I'm missing the '60s of my childhood something awful.

Time trips took me to Madison, Wisconsin, and Harlem in New York, where our family and friends were making America anew. Those are places where ...Read more

Once again, Sen. Bernie Sanders is showing that he's a leader who actually leads.

While top Democratic Party lawmakers are hunkered down in their Washington bunker, immobilized by the President Donald Trump-Elon Musk oligarchic coup on America's democracy, the feisty "little-d" democrat from Vermont is out in grassroots America, rallying ...Read more

"My heart has always been truly convinced," Marquis de Lafayette declared 250 years ago, "that in serving the cause of America I am fighting for the interests of France." The French nobleman put his life where his mouth was, volunteering for George Washington's Continental Army as his country provided critical support for our war for ...Read more