ArcaMax

She has yet to even be sworn in. But the hateful Republican women in the House of Representatives have already declared war on the first openly transgender woman to be elected to Congress, Sarah McBride. She is my new hero.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who The New York Times describes as "one of the more attention-seeking members of the...Read more

As we have seen previously when a Republican has won a presidential election, the progressive individual income tax -- in which the more you earn, the higher of a percentage of your earnings are subject to taxation -- has once again become a target for dilution or elimination. We have long heard about schemes like the "flat tax," where tax ...Read more

Newspaper profiles of Pamela Bondi -- subbed in as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney general following the scandalous implosion of Matt Gaetz -- often describe her with a phrase like "longtime loyalist."

The former Florida attorney general's unwavering fealty dates back to September 2013, when a political committee ...Read more

We've all heard the story of the first Thanksgiving. The plight of pilgrims traveling from England to establish Plymouth colony in the new world. How they survived a brutal winter and then celebrated a successful harvest with Native Americans the following fall in what would become known as the first Thanksgiving. Holding this feel-good story up...Read more

I hadn't done much sanding in my life, but my wife and I bought a new house, and she asked me to sand the kitchen cabinets so she could paint. She likes to paint. I got a handheld electric sander and went to work.

Turns out I'm not a bad sander. She is mid-paint right now.

That's one of the things to remember in life. You don't know if you ...Read more

BAKU, Azerbaijan -- COP29, the 29th United Nations' Conference of Parties to the climate convention, convened this year in Azerbaijan, a small, authoritarian petrostate wedged between Russia and Iran on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The worsening climate catastrophe, fueled by the world's centuries-long embrace of fossil fuels, demands a united...Read more

I like Martha Stewart. Always have.

Two recent documentaries, "Martha" on Netflix and the CNN series "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart," follow the Greek drama that make Stewart a cultural fascination to this day. They recount the jihad against this visionary who came under attack for being a woman with fierce ambition.

Admittedly, Stewart's...Read more

What to make of Donald Trump's nominations of the Fox News team to the Trump Cabinet? Attorney General Gaetz? Can this be serious? An expert on wrestling to take down the Department of Education? An opponent of public health to run Health and Human Services? What kind of game is this? Is he really just trolling us to see how far outside the ...Read more

"Julius Caesar did not seize power; the Roman Senate ceded power to Caesar." -- Sen. Robert C. Byrd

Let that be a lesson to us from the West Virginian's grave.

Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on day one. Yet we missed his meaning: the first day after the election. Right away, we felt the president-elect's revenge, blowing in on the ...Read more

Wow! Who says election promises don't produce real change?

Candidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he'd force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.

Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major ...Read more

In just two weeks since being elected to return to the White House, Donald Trump has given those accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome ample cause to feel, well, decidedly un-deranged. Regrettably if unsurprisingly, it's shaping up to be an epic time for "I-told-you-so's," as the president-elect's selections of those who will ...Read more

It takes a cracked mindset to name a cracked pot with no scientific training to head the agency that oversees 11 agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health. They include the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid.

Donald Trump's pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump has chilling plans to use his second term to expand the federal death penalty. This expansion continues the killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency when Trump oversaw more executions than any president in the past 120 years. His plans for a second term include sentencing more ...Read more

Are you shocked? Matt Gaetz as attorney general. A man with virtually no experience as anything other than an election denier, a Jan. 6 troublemaker who called the rioters "patriotic Americans," a man who was within days of a withering report from the House Ethics Committee on everything from underage sex to misuse of campaign funds, this is the...Read more

Turbulent times can make people feel helpless and hopeless, but we have more agency than we might think. We can still choose to live life on our own terms -- whatever that means for each of us individually. This is what the McCaffertys did. "So many people have fallen prey to this idea that what they do doesn't matter and that we're all doomed ...Read more

After an election, we make nice. The loser congratulates the victor; everybody shakes hands and promises a smooth transition of power. Spicy campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, such courtesies in service to the God of Stability are made possible by the underlying assumption that, while competing candidates and parties offer different ideas of how...Read more

Among the sharpest conservative opponents of fascism is George T. Conway III. During a Nov. 14 appearance on CNN, the attorney and activist offered this pithy description of Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz and Bobby Kennedy, the worst nominees (so far) to Donald Trump's cabinet:

"If you were seeking to destroy the country, the Gabbard, Gaetz, and ...Read more