ArcaMax

It cuts to the core, through the hot air and the blue smoke and mirrors of our politics, to what really matters. Tatianna Schlossberg's essay in The New Yorker is the one thing you must read this holiday season to touch base with what is real -- including grief,but it also love and rage.

A thirty-four-year-old woman gives birth to her second ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- A moment in former Vice President Dick Cheney's funeral at the National Cathedral brought me to tears. Not for the departed and grim old warrior but for the tableau in the front row.

A hint: something as simple as a handshake between two men who would -- or should -- be president.

Former President Joseph Biden and former first ...Read more

Oh, thank goodness for President Donald Trump!

As millions of families struggle with the ever-rising price of groceries, The Donald is bragging that his economic policies have miraculously lowered prices, just in time for Thanksgiving. As proof, he points to Walmart, America's largest food marketer, boasting that it cut the price of its "...Read more

In an America presently diseased by crudeness and cruelty, the scene last week at Washington's National Cathedral for the funeral of former Vice President Dick Cheney was a welcome display of grace by leaders who embrace an ethos currently out of vogue. It's an ethos of bipartisanship, of respect for public service. It's an ethos of affirming ...Read more

There's no mystery why Zohran Mamdani wanted to get along with Donald Trump. The president threatened New York City with funding cuts, deployment of federal forces and other unpleasantries if its voters elected the self-described democratic socialist as mayor. But why after calling Mamdani all kinds of names, even warning of his possible ...Read more

Gary Tyler, 67, spent more than four decades in one of the most notorious prisons in the country for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1974, Tyler was one of a group of Black students bused into a formerly all-white Louisiana high school under court-ordered desegregation. When a white mob attacked their bus on Oct. 7, a white boy was killed. Tyler...Read more

This week, President Donald Trump called for the execution of six veterans who are members of Congress for posting a video telling members of the military that "they can refuse illegal orders."

On Truth Social, he posted: "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT...Read more

When you visit Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut, you may be told about his telephone. It was one of the first phones in the country, so he could neither call nor be called. He had faith in a phone-ful future. Also, he had invested in AT&T. Someone had to be first.

Alexander Graham Bell -- Twain's buddy -- was American. The ...Read more

The black-footed ferret exhibit at American Prairie's National Discovery Center in Lewistown, Montana, just opened to the public on Nov. 14. When I went to Montana in September to visit American Prairie, their newest ambassador had just arrived from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in ...Read more

"Yo! Fat Girl! C'mere. Are ya ticklish?"

So rapped the late rapper Humpty Hump, describing a good opening line to use on women who aren't a Size 4.

Maybe it worked for him. Who knows?

And, yo, if you can't say stuff like that, are you really a rapper, are you really a gangsta, are you really the leader of the free world, are you really a ...Read more

The First Amendment is a cornerstone of American democracy. It allows us to express our views, challenge authority and engage in public debate. In recent years, however, these freedoms have come under intense scrutiny, from debates over protests on college campuses to concerns about government retaliation against journalists and activists. ...Read more

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Shackled and chained while miscarrying, denied prenatal care, given inadequate food and water -- these are the conditions that pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention must endure.

Despite its own directive advising against detaining pregnant individuals, ICE has ...Read more

On April 23, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at narrowing civil rights protections and directing federal agencies to roll back the use of the disparate impact standard in "all contexts to the maximum degree," including across housing, lending, employment, education and health care. The order represents a major reversal ...Read more

Ladies and gentleman, here is your United States Senate, then and now:

Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7, 1850: “It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States (with) a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing ...Read more