ArcaMax

During a summer when the popularity of Donald Trump fell to abysmal lows -- and strong disapproval of his presidency achieved record highs -- those dire warnings were mostly brushed aside. What received far more intense and sustained attention were the awful numbers registered by the Democratic Party, with analysts bemoaning its "historically"...Read more

In his classic 1954 treatise on his human comparison theory, the social psychologist Leon Festinger stipulated that human beings assess their social standing by comparing themselves to those around them and how those other people are evaluated and received.

The corporate liberals who, despite being underrepresented in their own party's ...Read more

The worries we have as parents are tightly tethered to childhood experiences that shook us. Growing up in the latchkey days of the 1980s and '90s, without cellphones or supervision, it was the wild-wild west of adolescence. We explored our neighborhoods and navigated our development with nothing but a bicycle and a best friend.

In some ways, ...Read more

Half the country is hoping President Donald Trump is dying. The other half thinks that, if he does die, he will rise again on the third day and send troops into Cleveland.

This does not make me more comfortable as I head to the dollar store to buy the cat litter my wife told me we need. Everyday errands are almost embarrassing during times of...Read more

It started quietly enough. MAGA Republicans put lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. He's forced top scientists to leave and slashed research in cancer, autoimmune diseases and other health threats. Thanks to him, getting the updated COVID vaccine is harder for many and confusing for everyone....Read more

Jury nullification is a fancy term for what it's called when juries -- or, in this case, grand juries -- say no. It doesn't happen very often, which is why you may have never heard of it. The old line is that a good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Not so fast. Not in the District of Columbia right now, where a ...Read more

The first of September was a bright morning on the National Mall. We went to pay respects to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

On the top floor, we were greeted by Chuck Berry's sleek red convertible. Nearby, Odetta sang "Oh, Freedom" at the March on Washington. Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial on ...Read more

Some days I don't know whether to rage in fury, weep quietly or just throw up.

This, however, is definitely a throw-up day. Our U.S. Secretary of State (a once-honorable position that advocated humanitarian values) has just decreed that war-torn Palestinian children from Gaza will be denied medical visas that would let them come here for life...Read more

"You know," the late William F. Buckley Jr. once mused, "I've spent my life separating the right from the kooks." The conservative commentator was famously pugilistic, an ideological brawler, in fact, unrelentingly caustic, if eruditely so, about what he regarded as the deeply misguided policy prescriptions of liberal Democrats. Staunchly anti...Read more

Russell Vought is the ultimate Trumper. The head of the Office of Management and Budget just anointed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to wind down the U.S. Agency for International Development ("wind down" being one of his favorite words) had a new stunt to try out this week to subvert constitutional separation of powers. You remember -- ...Read more

When you think of the people who protect forests, loggers don't usually come to mind, but the Dale and Jackie Riddle State Nature Preserve in Athens, Ohio, is named for the founder of Dale Riddle Forest Products of Laurelville. To get the story, my husband and I hiked the preserve with Phil Cantino, who is a botanist and one of Athens ...Read more

As American schoolchildren, we are taught that the great genius of the Framers was to create a constitutional balance of powers that wouldn't rely on the assumption that "enlightened statesmen will ... always be at the helm." This structure is presented like an ecosystem, as self-regulating and auto-correcting. As the liberal political ...Read more

I didn't know who Travis Kelce was until he started dating Taylor Swift, and I only knew who Taylor Swift was because television news was always doing a story about some father who sold the family home to spend $600,000 on two tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.

It worked out fine for the dad, too. He took his 15-year-old daughter to see Swift...Read more

At the White House Monday, Trump signed another one of his infamous executive orders, this time announcing, "If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail."

Not so fast.

If the executive order said that, as Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld persuasively argues in The Free Press this week, it would be unconstitutional on its face. Under current...Read more

Just when you think President Donald Trump can't get worse, he gets worse.

Now he threatens to send soldiers and federal agents to Baltimore and Chicago next. Woe is U.S.

I live in lovely, green and safe Washington, where crime is down. The Smithsonian museums are free. The river and marble memorials make the city gleam at night. It's far ...Read more

At about 12 years of age, I began working for my father, loading bundles into the two delivery trucks used in his small business. This required that, first, I back the trucks down an alley and into the loading bay. Thus, I learned to drive going backward, which probably says something fundamental about me.

But even at 12, I didn't get stuck ...Read more