ArcaMax

On the eve of our nation's 249th birthday, a Gallup poll finds that only 58% of Americans feel "extremely" or "very" proud of their country. This is a new low in the 25 years Gallup has been asking this question, and the reasons are not hard to divine. We are led by a monomaniacal vulgarian who endangers all we hold dear -- all while enjoying ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Well, this Fourth of July weekend will be awkward.

As we mark the end of the first month of the Trump administration's occupation of Los Angeles -- which is centered around an un-American crackdown on Latino immigrants, and anyone who looks like them, by masked men who won't identify themselves, don't act like police and get ...Read more

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against "universal injunctions" last week, President Donald Trump hailed the decision as a "GIANT WIN" for his administration. Trump added that "the Birthright Citizenship Hoax" -- by which he meant the conventional understanding of the 14th Amendment -- also had been "hit hard," albeit "indirectly."

That ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- It's been nearly eight months since the 2024 presidential election, and Americans are still debating what happened, why it happened and what it means that it happened.

The Pew Research Center recently provided more grist for the mill when it released an extensive study of nearly 9,000 voters conducted in the weeks following the ...Read more

A plethora of lawsuits, involving more than 1,800 plaintiffs, have been filed against social media companies, including ByteDance, Meta Platforms, Snapchat and Google, within the past two years. We are now seeing some progress being made toward litigation, as 11 social media addiction cases have been selected for test hearings by U.S. District...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- As they try to tell the complicated story of what has been happening for the last three weeks on the streets of Los Angeles, the media have been making a big mistake.

Reporters, anchors and columnists need to stop accepting at face value the increasingly dubious claim that these are, in fact, "ICE agents" who are snatching from ...Read more

Mahmoud Khalil, the first target of President Donald Trump's crusade against international students he describes as "terrorist sympathizers," was released from custody on Friday after more than three months of detention. But the Trump administration is still trying to deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on his participation in ...Read more

When I read the shocking news of the assassinations of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, along with the attempted murders of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, it felt like watching a tragic political thriller unfold in real time. The Hoffmans miraculously survived 17 horrific bullet hits. We've learned ...Read more

The suspect in the Minnesota murders, Vance Luther Boelter, has been charged, for now, with second-degree murder. He allegedly killed two people, Melissa and Mark Hortman, in cold blood, and shot and wounded two others. According to Minnesota police, he showed up at the homes of at least two other people who were on his 45-person hit list (...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The modern-day classic Western "Tombstone" has plenty of memorable scenes. One of the best is set in a saloon when Doc Holiday (played masterfully by the late Val Kilmer) meets fellow gunslinger Johnny Ringo (played exceptionally well by Michael Biehn).

Referencing Ringo, Holiday turns to his female companion and asks: "What do you...Read more

Early on a Wednesday morning in October 2017, FBI agents terrorized three innocent people, including a 7-year-old boy, by breaking into their home in Atlanta. The agents tossed a flashbang grenade, rousted the two adults from the closet where they were hiding, manhandled and handcuffed one of them, and threatened them with guns before ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Some say politics is poetry. But much of it is metaphor.

As a disturbing symbol of the extreme disrespect being shown Latinos in California, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. -- a mild-mannered Mexican American MIT-trained engineer -- was recently manhandled, thrown to the ground and handcuffed by members of Secretary of Homeland ...Read more

About a week after my column on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death was published, I received a vile email from a reader who called me a "leftish, DEI b--h." At the beginning of his despicable message, he used a nasty expletive to describe Floyd and ruthlessly suggested that we should dig up the body to make sure Floyd is dead. Like ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Americans are really good at pointing out the contradictions of others, but really bad at acknowledging their own.

The immigration debate proves it. That's where consistency goes to die.

Trust me. Having written and spoken about that issue for more than 35 years, I've become an expert.

I'm not saying I'm an expert on ...Read more

On Monday, President Donald Trump endorsed the arrest of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who irked him by criticizing his militarized response to Los Angeles protests against his administration's immigration raids. Just four days earlier, Trump had suggested that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, his former ally, could lose his government ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The Trump administration's invasion of the City of Angels is really quite devilish.

A Mexican American friend says that what surprises him most is that this is occurring in a city that is overwhelmingly Latino.

My friend is half right. Occupy L.A. is happening not despite the fact that Los Angeles is a Latino city but because it...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- If presidencies were akin to attractions at Disneyland, President Donald Trump's second term would be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

When it comes to spreading demagoguery, creating mayhem, generating chaos and turning people against one another, Trump really is in a league of his own. He has a knack for doing the wrong thing.

Trump's ...Read more

Last week, a federal court ruled that President Donald Trump had exceeded his statutory authority by imposing a raft of tariffs based on the "national emergency" supposedly caused by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit. Those tariffs are part of an alarming pattern: In his rush to enact his agenda, Trump frequently treats legal constraints as ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- I've given commencement speeches. Many graduates want a warm bath. But what they really need is a cold shower.

This is what the class of 2025 needs to hear. And it wouldn't hurt the rest of America to listen in as well.

Dear graduates:

There is an expression that is usually identified -- some claim, misidentified -- as a ...Read more

May 25 marked five years after the gruesome murder of George Floyd that shook the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before we saw the shocking news videos of Floyd begging for his life with the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, the fear of death and infection from COVID-19 was ...Read more