ArcaMax

One year ago, almost to the day, I used this column as a "post-wedding dispatch" to offer some (very) preliminary thoughts on marriage. The column was published five days after my wedding. Now, almost exactly one year later, I am using this column as a "post-birth dispatch" to offer some (very) preliminary thoughts on another milestone life ...Read more

The Obama Doctrine is as dead as Yahya Sinwar. And the world is better off in both cases.

While the massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, was one of the most traumatic events in modern Jewish history, it's obvious now that it was a massive, perhaps existential, blunder by the Islamic State as well as a stunning defeat for its allies both in the Middle East...Read more

Don't call PolitiFact an "independent fact-checker." When they assemble to select their "Lie of the Year," they have singled out Donald Trump in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2021. No Democrat has been tagged with this dishonor since Trump arrived on the scene.

It was Trump again this year, as PolitiFact tweeted: "A lie marked a town and its...Read more

Many American institutions have beclowned themselves in the past 10 years -- too many to list. To count the right-leaning institutions that have not succumbed to Trumpian populism takes only one hand. But the decline of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has been particularly galling because, compared to the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale ...Read more

Who'd have thunk it? The Assad regime collapses in Syria after 54 years. Russian President Vladimir Putin's hold on power seems undermined by imperial overstretch, and the mullahs of Iran have been unable to defend their skies and their leaders' hotel rooms from Israeli attacks.

Leaders of the two largest nations in the European Union have been...Read more

It feels like 2013 again.

Back then, a beleaguered Republican Speaker of the House was forced into a government shutdown by firebrands in his caucus who considered him insufficiently pure.

A revolution in GOP politics has happened since, and yet a beleaguered Republican Speaker of the House has been forced to the verge of a government ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- As a Mexican American, my loyalties get questioned. Some folks offer a hypothetical. If war breaks out between Mexico and the United States, they ask, which side would I be on?

That's a no-brainer. My family and I owe everything to the country that took in my grandfather as a legal immigrant 100 years ago. And we owe nothing to ...Read more

The skies over New Jersey have been littered with strange flying objects during the past two weeks; and the feds are either hiding the truth from terrified folks on the ground or scratching their collective heads along with the rest of us. Since early December, there have been between 3,000 and 5,000 reports of large drones -- some about the ...Read more

Remember Orson Welles' radio drama "The War of the Worlds," featuring a terrifying Martian invasion? By a stroke of luck, the narrative was apocryphal.

This time, we may not be so fortunate. Mushrooming reports from California and New Jersey have revealed swarms of surveillance drones above sensitive areas, in what might be a dress rehearsal ...Read more

The Department of Government Efficiency has made a promise: It will go after regulations that slow growth, obstruct innovators and cost American households thousands of dollars each year. Here's hoping for success.

The burden of excessive regulation is hard to measure. We know, for instance, that the Code of Federal Regulations is over 188,...Read more

In the wake of the collapse of the Syrian government, CNN reporter Clarissa Ward and her team were in Damascus last week, looking for any sign of American journalist Austin Tice, alleged to be held in a Syrian prison since 2012. Although they did not find Tice, they did find a man alone in a cell of an abandoned prison. He claimed to ...Read more

On July 13, 2024, as he turned to consult a chart, an assassin's bullet grazed the presidential candidate's right ear.

A half-inch to the right -- to be graphic, the bullet hitting the human being's head -- and 2024's biggest news story would be the history-destroying murder of Donald Trump.

The bad guy missed. Instead, we witness the ...Read more

Last week, after 50 years of tyranny and repression, the government of Bashar Assad fell in Syria. It fell thanks to a combination of three forces: first, Israel's military utterly eviscerated Assad's foreign military support base, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia; second, Ukraine has bled dry the Russian military coffers over the course ...Read more

According to coverage in The Wall Street Journal in the case against Luigi Mangione, suspected of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare outside a Manhattan hotel, potential arguments in his defense will be his "mental state at the time of the killing."

"Two defenses in New York state -- a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and claiming ...Read more

Everyone's blaming health insurance company greed for the soaring claims denials and roadblocks to care. That's naive. Follow the money to find the real culprits: lying politicians.

In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association. But under ACA ...Read more

The movie "The Matrix" gave us the "red pill" and the "blue pill." The red wakes you up to reality; the blue keeps you indoctrinated. Internet culture then invented a black pill. Those who take it think the world is doomed. So, podcaster Michael Malice wrote the book "The White Pill," calling it a "symbol of hope." "Young people in recent years,...Read more

During the Christmas season when I was a boy, my mother used to take my brothers and sisters and me down to one of the roughest neighborhoods in San Francisco -- to visit some animals that were gathered there.

This was the Tenderloin District, which attracted drug dealers, drug users and a sad number of homeless people.

Our destination was ...Read more

After ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $16 million over George Stephanopoulos incessantly lying about Trump being held "liable for rape," the hot concept in media panic was the "chilling effect."

MSNBC commentator Barbara McQuade lamented "the chilling effect it might have on people who otherwise would be critical of Donald Trump." Is ...Read more