ArcaMax

As 2025 comes to an end, I want to thank my readers who have emailed me throughout the year with encouraging and kind words. I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness put into every message. Due to my teaching and grading load, I am not able to respond to every email, but I am deeply moved that people would take the time to write me. I'm also ...Read more

In the course of his losing race with the teleprompter during his Oval Office address on Dec. 17, President Donald Trump returned to a theme that obsesses him -- respect. Even before his entry into politics, Trump was convinced that "weak" leaders including Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama were despised by other nations and that the U.S. was a ...Read more

Nearly four decades ago, Francis Young, chief administrative law judge at the Drug Enforcement Administration, concluded that marijuana did not belong in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law's most restrictive category. Although Young was ultimately overruled by DEA Administrator John Lawn, he was belatedly vindicated last week...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The worst thing about the immigration debate is not the divisiveness. It's the dishonesty.

After more than 36 years of covering this rhetorical shoving match, I can tell you this much: The whole bloody thing is replete with lies. I've compiled a list of the top ten untruths.

Incidentally, the biggest whopper of them all -- No. 1...Read more

With Christmas near, many people are excited to exchange gifts with family and loved ones. Children are especially enthusiastic on Christmas morning as they open their presents under the tree, hoping they received everything they asked for. They could be getting the latest technological gadgets or fashionable clothes that represent current ...Read more

When I go to synagogue, I always smile and wave at the armed police officers stationed outside. I want them to know they're appreciated, but also, at some level, I guess it's fair to say that I'm trying to ingratiate myself so that the cop will want to put his or her life on the line to save us if a gunman decides to open fire on or torch our ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- My holiday wish for my fellow Americans is that we should all be so lucky in this life as to find someone who loves us as much as President Donald Trump loves Donald Trump.

I realize this is not breaking news. We've known for decades that the billionaire real estate developer and former reality TV star has an ego the size of ...Read more

Priscilla Villarreal was not arrested for "merely asking questions," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists in a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Laredo news vlogger's petition for review of her First Amendment case. Yet that is literally what happened to Villarreal in 2017, and the precedent set by that incident poses a threat ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- The word of the day is reverberating through the world of college football: "Heismendoza." And it's powerful.

As a Mexican American, my father was always excited to see a brown face in a high place. We'd be watching the news, and he'd spot a Spanish surname. He'd point at the screen like a little boy on Christmas morning and ...Read more

Absorbing the news about the brutal treatment of detainees, to say nothing of the outright murder of "suspected" drug runners in the Caribbean, I think back to a conversation I had in February of this year. My interlocutor was a Trump voter who had just had a friendly encounter with an African immigrant striver -- the kind who came from poverty ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Once the Trump administration started attacking Venezuelan drug boats that appeared to be traveling to the United States, it was inevitable that Americans would be pulled back into a conversation about the much-ballyhooed War on Drugs. Just as it was predictable that, once we were enmeshed in that dialogue, we'd lose our bearings ...Read more

I have a riddle for you. If we call a drug smuggler a combatant, how many combatants died when SEAL Team 6 killed 11 men on a cocaine boat near Venezuela on Sept. 2?

Zero, because calling a drug smuggler a combatant does not make him a combatant. That reality goes to the heart of the morally and legally bankrupt justification for President ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- All Americans want for Christmas is for things to cost less. Is that asking too much?

It is if they're making the "ask" of President Donald Trump. When it comes to fulfilling his 2024 campaign promise to be the "affordability president," he is way out of his depth. How is Trump supposed to battle inflation if he doesn't even ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- You have to hand it to President Donald Trump. His brutally racist comments about Somali immigrants managed to alarm and terrorize a group of people who -- having survived warlords, famine, and marauding gangs -- don't scare easily.

Some former U.S. presidents might have aspired to emulate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- It's been less than a week since the tragic shooting of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers by an Afghan refugee in Washington D.C. and already many Americans are pretty far down the road in terms of casting blame and discerning motive.

We're even starting to debate what would be historic and radical changes to our asylum ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- With all due respect to baseball, the real national pastime is complaining.

Oblivious to how soft and comfortable our lives are compared to those of millions of other people around the world, Americans love to gripe. Whether it's harvest time or not, we make "whine" year-round.

We complain about the weather in the places we ...Read more

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

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

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

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