From the Left
/Politics
/ArcaMax
Family Separation Causes Real and Lasting Harm for Children and Parents
A grieving mother had her children ripped away without warning in the wake of a family tragedy in Georgia in July 2024. After her son died by suicide, the state obtained an emergency order to immediately remove her surviving children -- with no notice, no hearing and no finding that the children were in any danger. In the same state, a ...Read more
Big money vs. the people
America makes its choice two weeks from tomorrow.
It’s not really a choice between two parties. After all, a record 45%t of American voters now call themselves “independent” and don’t align with either party. And most of us who still describe ourselves as Republicans or Democrats don’t have much love for whichever party we’re ...Read more
Clarence Page: Beware the charm of our rising chatbots
Leave it to a comedian with a national TV platform to express what troubles a lot of us, even if we hesitate to talk about it — for fear of being ridiculed as backward-looking worry warts.
"When the people who are making AI are scared of AI, it's time to shut the whole thing down until we can figure out what the hell is going on,” Bill ...Read more
What a Losing Campaign Looks Like
If you want a one-word answer to how the president is approaching this election, I'll give you my favorite. Kentucky. That's it. He has exactly one public event scheduled on Saturday -- a rally in Kentucky. Kentucky, a state that President Donald Trump carried by 30 points two years ago. Kentucky, a state he handily carried in 2016 and 2020. ...Read more
A Missed Chance to Look Terrible
Trump's decision to back out of his planned public execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter is sad for America. Not because it wouldn't have been a gruesome spectacle that eroded whatever is left of the country's international standing -- it would have. Not because Nidal Hasan won't still be killed on Dec. 3 -- he will.
"Many very good and ...Read more
Public Parks Aren't Development Opportunities. A Historic Park Serves as a Warning.
I thought the University of Louisville had listened.
Two years ago, the university hosted public meetings about the prospect of developing Stansbury Park, a historic Olmsted-designed park at the edge of campus. The community pushed back, and the idea seemed to disappear.
Then, in August, U of L President Gerry Bradley listed Stansbury Park ...Read more
Dreading What I've Got To Watch
Please note: This column was written before the cancellation of the livestream. But they're bound to try it again.
"'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-on-Parade.
"'I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant said."
Rudyard Kipling, the racist poet of the British Empire and the writer of the made-into-...Read more
Clarence Page: A botched execution shakes our attitudes toward the death penalty
Almost a week after receiving a double shot of a lethal execution drug, Christa Pike woke up in a Nashville, Tennessee, hospital, handcuffed to a bed and, according to one of her lawyers, “angry and confused.”
Indeed, anger and confusion is pretty much where this horrifying episode leaves most of the rest of us, regardless of where we stand...Read more
Guilfoyle Never Mastered the Art of the Shakedown
About three weeks before Republicans expect an electoral beating, Donald Trump had to get rid of Kimberly Guilfoyle, his ambassador to Greece. He simply had to.
Trump's money-grabbing corruption was wearing thin even on devoted fans, but the president knew how to wrap his mob-like patter in foggy euphemisms and double meanings.
Guilfoyle was...Read more
Having it All
It was Katie Zacharia's first day as White House Press Secretary and it may be the only time I'll defend her. Not for just reading a prepared eight-minute homage to her perfect King, or only taking three questions (from Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail), but from the question raised by the Daily Mail's senior political correspondent, ...Read more
My Kingdom for Another Golf Course!
WASHINGTON -- Something told me to get me over to East Potomac Park before Donald Trump destroyed it.
Sure enough, I did, on a rainy Sunday morning, for a rally to protect the waterfront parkland from his axe. On the next weekend, he cut down 430 trees -- for a fancy golf course, of course. He sneakily started on a Saturday morning on the ...Read more
Do You Suspect the System Is Rigged? Here's Proof
Years ago, a Texas lawmaker got caught using his official position to enrich himself by taking money from special interests, in exchange for voting their way. The culprit did not deem this as corrupt, but just the normal ethic of an enterprising business transaction: "I seen my chances," he explained, "and I took 'em."
This is the Clarence ...Read more
Pumping Up Putin: Moscow's Little Helper Lends a Hand
America has been disgraced by the Oval Office's current occupant in ways so numerous as to bring sands on the seashore to mind, but warranting special recognition is his relentless effort to sell Ukraine down the river. Since it invaded Crimea in 2014 and then with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has killed or wounded over ...Read more
MAGA Masculinity: Protesting Too Much
We've seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lifting weights in snug Levis, sweat pouring down his naked muscled chest. Last February, the secretary of health and human services was "giving body" in the "Rock Out Workout" video. A jeans-clad Kennedy flexes alongside Kid Rock in black shorts, then strips off his shirt and joins Rock in a grotto-like pool. ...Read more
We Launched the First Comprehensive Civil Rights Review of Mass Deportations. Here's How It's Impacting Democracy.
The cattle rancher industry, Republicans in battleground states and United Nations human rights experts have little in common. But like millions of Americans, they've all expressed concern that the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign has gone too far.
The ACLU's latest report, "76 Ways Mass Deportation Is Breaking Our Democracy,"...Read more
The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
I’m allowing myself to believe that sane people may be in charge of Congress starting next Jan. 20. I know, I know: Polls have gotten our hopes up before only to have them dashed on the rocky shores of political reality.
But this time it does seem as if congressional Republicans will finally get their comeuppance for their blind loyalty to ...Read more
Clarence Page: A botched execution shakes our attitudes toward the death penalty
Almost a week after receiving a double shot of a lethal execution drug, Christa Pike woke up in a Nashville, Tennessee, hospital, handcuffed to a bed and, according to one of her lawyers, “angry and confused.”
Indeed, anger and confusion is pretty much where this horrifying episode leaves most of the rest of us, regardless of where we stand...Read more
Love Stays
The one thing you can't make when you get old is old friends.
Pam Fleischaker was one of my oldest friends. We met more than 40 years ago as two young political activists. She commuted from Oklahoma City to help run the Democratic Platform Committee for Geraldine Ferraro. She was a charter member of the "A Team," a band of feminists ...Read more
What Is the Death Penalty For?
Once again, the debate over capital punishment is raging, driven by the staggering incompetence of Tennessee's would-be prison executioners, who have repeatedly failed to kill Christa Pike for a murder she committed 30 years ago, and by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's shocking announcement that the military plans to livestream the firing-...Read more
We're Chasing Significance in the Wrong Places
It seems like everyone wants to be a social media influencer these days. Researcher Matthew Simoneau surveyed middle and high school students from 2021 to 2024 and more than 60% of them said they wanted to be social media influencers. People think fame and fortune will make them happy. But it's not viral significance that we need. What we ...Read more

















































