ArcaMax

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

It's been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, breaching New Orleans' protective levees, unleashing unprecedented destruction. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history, killing over 1,800 people, mostly poor residents of New Orleans' historic Black neighborhoods. Katrina was also the U.S.' ...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

Seems like only yesterday when warnings that Donald Trump qualified as a neo-fascist and that what he was selling qualified as neo-fascism guaranteed rolled eyes, dismissals that the warnings were hysterical, and cries of "Trump Derangement Syndrome," a neat little expression utilized by those who argued that the evidence in front of our faces...Read more

I don't always say that. Sometimes the California governor and would-be 2028 contender drives me slightly crazy with his transparent stunts to get attention.

But this is not a stunt. The redistricting bill that the California legislature passed and Newsom signed aims to counter what Texas is doing with its mid-census redistricting plans. They...Read more

The first time I encountered a police checkpoint was in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. My first reaction was excitement. I'd read about this facet of autocracy; here it was! It quickly gave way to fear. The men posted on the Almaty street intersection were armed. They had the power of the state. They could do anything they pleased. ...Read more

In May, my son and I gathered with hundreds of our neighbors at a community meeting to protest a pickleball and tennis complex planned for our local park. We're not against the sports. My son likes to play tennis with his dad. What we objected to was clearing trees and utilizing green space for a bricks-and-mortar complex. Fortunately, our mayor...Read more

As any pooch owner knows, a dog will eat its own vomit.

Catholic theologians hundreds of years ago used this doggy behavior to illustrate how humans return to their sins time after time after time.

In America, sometimes our conscience gives a great heave and we vomit up our thick, ugly racism.

But we always come back to eat it again.

Some ...Read more