Politics, Moderate
/Politics
/ArcaMax
Nondenominational Christians on the Rise
The Nov. 17 CBS Evening News "Eye on America" report focused on what is considered a rising trend of Christians now attending nondenominational churches. Quoting research from the General Social Survey, the report mentioned that in 1972, "fewer than 3% of Americans identified as nondenominational Christians." Today, close to 40 million people ...Read more
Freedom From Pain
Reflecting on gratitude for this holiday, I want to highlight something that can be shared with the wider world. Last year at this time, I focused on reasons to be thankful despite Donald Trump's reelection:
Trump ran on promises he cannot possibly fulfill. He swore to reduce prices and raise tariffs. He doesn't have the foggiest notion how to ...Read more
Why Trump Lost Latinos -- It's More Than Immigration
SAN DIEGO -- Democrats take Latino voters for granted. But Republicans must take us for fools.
Burned by both parties, U.S. Latinos are political nomads who don't feel like we can let our guard down in our own country. In this land of the free, we're in a kind of psychological prison.
Oh, one more thing: We're really pissed off.
If you ...Read more
Misconduct in the James Comey Case Stemmed From a Reckless Rush to Indict Him: A Magistrate Judge Says the Government's Missteps May Warrant Dismissal of the Charges Against the Former FBI Director
When U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick blasted the Justice Department's handling of the James Comey case on Monday, he did not address the merits of the perjury and obstruction charges against the former FBI director. But the government misconduct that Fitzpatrick described was largely a product of the reckless rush to deliver the ...Read more
How President Trump and His Thugs Broke Law Enforcement
SAN DIEGO -- My father's love affair with policing was sparked decades ago by a children's book that featured a cat stuck in a tree.
The book was part of a series that was popular in the 1950s. The main characters were two children named Dick and Jane, and they had two pets: a dog and a cat. One day, the cat climbs up a tree. A friendly ...Read more
The Importance of Opening Up About Mental Health Struggles
"Someone could be smiling, someone could be dancing, laughing, having a great time, expressing all this joy, but on the inside, they could really be fighting a battle that you never know about."
These are the poignant words of Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Solomon Thomas in describing his teammate Marshawn Kneeland, who died from an ...Read more
Prepare Now for 2026 Election Interference
Democrats and other democracy well-wishers are spilling gallons of ink and a profusion of pixels on the question of whether ending the government shutdown was a blunder or not. I submit that either way, it won't matter very much if at all in 12 months -- and the 2026 elections are where our attention needs to pivot right now.
After the most ...Read more
Anti-Semitism on the Right Is Nothing New
SAN DIEGO -- I love the smell of vindication in the morning. I'm getting a strong whiff now that at least some conservatives are finally acknowledging something I've tried to get them to confront for years: Anti-Semitism is alive and well within the Republican Party.
As a Mexican American who is horrified by ethnocentric immigration raids, I ...Read more
The Perils of Viewing Psilocybin Strictly as a Psychiatric Medication: The Most Common Uses of 'Magic Mushrooms' Will Never Gain FDA Approval
The Scottsdale Research Institute grows psilocybin mushrooms in Arizona with permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Late last month, the organization announced that it will use those mushrooms in a state-funded study testing their effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
That project, which the Food and Drug ...Read more
Vance Tries To Resolve Conflict Between Religion, Marriage and Politics
SAN DIEGO -- This Thanksgiving dinner, Vice President JD Vance might need a taste tester.
The Yale Law School graduate has for years benefited from the assumption that he's a smart cookie. Yet Vance has a knack for saying dumb things, and that's when the public image begins to crumble.
Last month, when Politico published hundreds of racist ...Read more
Will Supreme Court Conservatives Permit Trump's Power Grab?
I think the Supreme Court will rule against President Donald Trump's imposition of tariffs. That said, it's just remarkable that the vote will not be 9-0.
Trump is claiming sweeping powers to impose (and rescind and reimpose and re-rescind) tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which was a revised ...Read more
The Little Election That Wound Up Having a Big Impact
SAN DIEGO -- With elections, as with individuals, appearances can be deceiving.
At first glance, Election Day 2025 appeared to be small and inconsequential. The national media were focused on a literal handful of races in this off-year election, and the coverage wrapped up early given that most of those electoral contests were on the East ...Read more
Trump's Economic Fallacies Are Legally Relevant in His Tariff Case: Trade Deficits Are Not a 'National Emergency,' and the President's Import Taxes Won't Reduce Them
Last April, President Donald Trump announced stiff tariffs on goods from nearly every country on the planet, saying they were necessary to "deal with" a "national emergency" involving an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to "the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States." According to a Supreme Court brief signed by ...Read more
America Continues to Send Mixed Messages About Immigrants
SAN DIEGO -- America, make up your mind! When it comes to immigrants, your contradictions are big and loud and hard to square.
Let's start with the big one: America is the land of immigrants, and yet it has never liked immigrants.
Then there is this one: We insist that immigrants speak English, but companies market to them in Spanish.
And ...Read more
Laboring in a Spiritual Harvest
One of the things that I have most enjoyed about my commute to work in Lima, Ohio, during the Thanksgiving season is passing small farms and viewing the fields that are being cleared after the fall corn harvest. Much of the farmland is vast and such a peaceful sight to behold on a sunny day when God has decorated the sky with fluffy, white ...Read more
Toxic Femininity
"Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" -- Henry Higgins
Those are the words librettist Alan Jay Lerner penned for the fictional professor Henry Higgins in the 1956 musical "My Fair Lady," and honestly, it could have been the title of Helen Andrews' much-discussed recent essay in Compact. She called it "The Great Feminization" but her screed ...Read more
Democrats Can't Save Themselves, Let Alone America
SAN DIEGO -- Democrats are in crisis because they lost their way, gave up their bite and muddled their identity. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch.
The scoreboard doesn't tell the whole story. Low on points, Democrats appear to have been beaten. The truth is, they forfeited. They've been lazy, complacent, arrogant and too ...Read more
Trump, an Avowed Second Amendment Champion, Defends a Gun Ban With 'No Historical Justification': His Administration Is Urging the Supreme Court to Uphold a Federal Law That Bars Illegal Drug Users From Owning Firearms
A few weeks after taking office, President Donald Trump called the Second Amendment "an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty," declaring that "the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed." But in a case that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear, the Trump administration is urging the justices to uphold one of the ...Read more
California's Prop. 50 Will Just Create More Problems
SAN DIEGO -- In California, voters are accustomed to supporting lousy ballot initiatives because we believe the alternative to be much worse.
But Prop. 50, a redistricting initiative that attempts to offset what Texas did recently when the Lone Star State redrew five congressional seats to flip them from favoring Democrats to favoring ...Read more
Nothing Is Guaranteed in Life
This week, as I was going through my online news feeds, which included updates on the government shutdown, I came across several stories about furloughed federal workers and contractors standing in line at food banks in Maryland and the D.C. area. In Landover, Maryland, the lines were extremely long, with numerous cars parked on the street ...Read more






















































