ArcaMax

The silliest Trump scandal imaginable is the forthcoming White House ballroom, funded entirely by private donations. If everything is a scandal, is nothing a scandal? Anything that feeds President Donald Trump's ego must be denounced no matter how much it serves a larger public purpose.

Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott uncorked a ...Read more

Undermining the principles that made America wealthy is no way to fix poverty.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently participated in a CNN Town Hall. Sanders appears to be passing the socialist leadership torch to AOC. Don't expect her to support collective ownership of that prize.

You shouldn't discount her ability ...Read more

DONEGAL, Pennsylvania -- It is 6:14 p.m. on a Thursday. You're hiking along the Forbes Trail, nestled deep in the Appalachian Mountains somewhere along the Westmoreland-Somerset County lines. It is 19 minutes until sunset, and you have just over a mile to go, mostly uphill, before you are out of the deep forest and in the clearing.

The ...Read more

Politicians in Washington have the shortest memories.

Maybe that's why they so seldom learn from their sometimes catastrophic mistakes.

It was less than 20 years ago that the U.S. economy was flattened by the mortgage and banking crisis. Anyone remember?

The experts said that the odds were tiny that the housing market could crash; that the ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump and Canada are at war again -- or should I say, Trump is in a tariff war with Canada?

Indeed, on Friday he announced he was cutting off trade negotiations with America's neighbor to the north.

The cause? It feels more like a soap opera than high-stakes international trade.

This tiff began with an ad ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The partial government shutdown hit its 23rd day Thursday, yet much of Washington has been consumed with rage because President Donald Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House to make way for his dream Big Beautiful Ballroom.

The timing is so convenient for the 47th president that you have to wonder if Trump decided to ...Read more

I write from a quiet, mountainous part of Central Europe. The scenery is idyllic, and the fall air is crisp. But much as the case has been in my other recent trips to the European continent, the sights I see and the conversations I hear are all underscored by a similar haunting concern: Will there even be a Europe, in any cognizable ...Read more

Is it "Islamophobic" to wonder if NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has a soft spot for Islamic terrorists? Hardly.

"God forbid, another 9/11 -- can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?" New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo told WABC's "Sid and Friends in the Morning" this week.

"He'd be cheering," host Sid Rosenberg replied.

"That's ...Read more

For over a week, Democrats have attacked the Young Republicans for a leaked group chat that had lots of offensive comments in it. Some were very sarcastic and taken out of context to score points. Others were sincere. All were offensive. None of the Young Republicans are running for office. Most have lost their jobs.

A Democratic Senate ...Read more

Every once in a while, the "fact-checkers" at PolitiFact publish reader comments, and this one stuck out: "Your site seems to be mostly about Trump all the time," read one comment. "How about a little less Trump, and write more about any other falsehood subjects?"

PolitiFact's audience chief Ellen Hine acknowledged they've published over 1,000 ...Read more

No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year's presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8% for Kamala Harris and 45.9% for Donald Trump. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris and 46.1% for Trump. Aside from the...Read more

Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat has built a respectable NBA career, averaging about 20 points per game some years.

In all likelihood, though, the Miami Heat point guard will now be remembered less for what he did on the court than as another data point in how runaway sports betting is corrupting major athletics.

Rozier stands accused of ...Read more

President Donald Trump's use of the U.S. military to kill persons on speed boats in international waters, or in territorial waters claimed by other sovereign nations -- all 1,500 miles from the U.S. -- has posed grave issues of due process. The Constitution's guarantee of due process requires it for every person, not just Americans. The ...Read more

Amazon Web Services is the backbone of much of the economy and the government. AWS is a cloud computing platform that enables companies to do a number of things, such as store data and increase their computing power.

Today, AWS underpins a significant portion of global internet infrastructure. Over 90% of Fortune 100 companies use AWS ...Read more

When House Speaker Mike Johnson lashed out at last weekend's "No Kings" rallies soon to arrive on Washington's National Mall, he reached for an old conservative refrain: "They hate capitalism. They hate our free enterprise system."

I am sure he's correct about some of the protesters. But the message rings hollow coming from a party leader ...Read more

On Oct. 21, news sources reported roughly 15% of the entire U.S. Navy's warships were deployed in the Caribbean Sea. The exact type and number of warships was not revealed. Still, the fleet and aircraft deployed off South America had muy macho offensive and defensive firepower, enough to support a major air campaign and possibly an ...Read more

Three weeks ago, The New York Times released a poll of Americans on the question of whether America's political system could still solve the nation's problems. The overwhelming response: no. In September 2020, 51% of Americans believed that America's system could still address America's problems; by September 2025, that number had declined to ...Read more