ArcaMax

The skilled trades have become hot of late. That has many young people dropping plans to attend college. Meanwhile, some desk-bound professionals are said to gaze longingly at nearby construction sites. They daydream about trading spreadsheets for tool belts. They imagine becoming plumbers, electricians or carpenters -- welders, riggers or ...Read more

It clocked in as the longest State of the Union speech in history. Probably the only prize it could win?

Nastiest? Most theatrical? Maybe.

Full of Trumpism's -- phony symbolism all about him, overblown claims and outright lies -- the usual stuff.

No, what surprised me most about the president's latest diatribe was not what was there, but ...Read more

"These are days you'll remember" -- 10,000 Maniacs

Dear Friend,

Seeking wisdom and advice.

Signed, Heartbroken in Washington

The 2020s under Donald Trump are strangling the life out of the city. The mood is as bleak as the midwinter weather.

In a friend's words, it's hard to find ways to feel joyful. A taxi driver told me he'd driven many...Read more

In 1988, I was one of only two white elected Democratic officials in all of America to endorse Jesse Jackson to be our party's nominee for president. The other was Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vt.

As a Texas politico, my endorsement of the fiery Black leader was both derided as political suicide and hailed as gutsy. But it ...Read more

In times of war and peace, prosperity and depression, American presidents have complied with their constitutional obligation to deliver to Congress an update on the nation.

It's a hallowed tradition, but this year, due to President Donald Trump's own actions, the state of this union is bleak. However, the good news is that We the People are ...Read more

Former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank used to mock those pretending not to be influenced by cash funneled into their pockets. "I can't be bought," Frank put it, "but I sure as hell can be rented."

These days, it's Performative Primary Politics 101 for Democrats, catering to a left-tilting base that swallows every accusation against Israel hook...Read more

Another exercise in nonpartisan cooperation ended sadly, as Donald Trump undoubtedly planned. Every year, the nation's governors meet with the president to discuss common concerns. Trump had initially banned two Democratic members of the National Governors Association from attending -- governors Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of ...Read more

Stephen Colbert was right to be mad. His bosses at CBS put the kabosh on an interview he wanted to do with a Texas Senate candidate on his late-night talk show. But you can't just blame CBS. The fault lies, as it so often does these days, in the Trump administration, which last month announced new "guidance" from the Federal Communications ...Read more

"Move fast and break things," Mark Zuckerberg famously ordered his employees at Facebook. His thought wasn't original. "Inaction is death," Benito Mussolini wrote nearly a century earlier. "Fascism is action in which doctrine is immanent." Do first, think later -- or perhaps not at all.

Clearly, the Trump administration subscribes to rapid-...Read more

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. While we celebrate this milestone, we are also grappling with efforts to remove or revise Black history in the classroom as well as the exhibits found at federal parks and museums. But Black history cannot be erased; it is preserved because individuals and communities decide to step...Read more

A recent mass shooting at an ice rink in Rhode Island sent us on the hunt.

When someone commits a mass shooting, people of the most extreme political genders set out to find reasons why that would bolster their own beliefs.

What you want to look for is a sexual identity that differs from yours, Nazi sympathies, membership in cultlike ...Read more

A poster depicting an enormous face gazed from the wall. The caption ran, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." So wrote George Orwell at the open of his dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

Big Brother's image was everywhere, on printed material and on telescreens blasting state propaganda in homes, workplaces, streets and shops. The fictional ...Read more

It's just that they are so shameless about it.

On Thursday, the Commission of Fine Arts will welcome the newest, youngest, and least qualified member in its 116-year history. She is Chamberlain Harris, the president's 26-year-old receptionist/executive assistant, the only job she has ever had. She has zero background in the arts and ...Read more

In early 1862, Union generals, soldiers and even the commander in chief of the Civil War were literally at a loss. Morale ran low.

Engaged as we are now in a great civil war, a leader tearing the nation in two, it's well to look back to this time.

Taking the oath of office in March 1861, President Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was a newcomer ...Read more

Except for Zorro and Batman, people who put on masks to hide their identity when going to work are rarely up to any good.

And as Americans learned decades ago when Ku Klux Klanners covered themselves from head to toe, the bigger the mask, the greater the evil hiding behind it. Which brings us full circle to "Operation Metro Surge."

OMS is the ...Read more

Time was when throwing your political opponents into prison on trumped-up charges was the deplorable domain of despots over whom we claimed moral superiority: Saddam Hussein or the Iranian mullahs, say. Or pick your Soviet premier. Or Vladimir Putin.

Those were the good old days.

Now it's us.

But for the smarts and guts of a small group of ...Read more

May we talk about spiritual matters? "In the beginning," the Bible opens, "God created the heavens and the earth." Several lines down, God says, let humankind "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon ...Read more