As I sit here at my office desk thinking about today’s Fourth of July celebrations, I cannot resist the urge to link Independence Day with what transpired in the final weeks of the Supreme Court’s 2025 term. The month of June is for Court junkies like me a heady time of intense anticipation. Especially the final cases on the final announcement days.  

In 69 B.C., Julius Caesar went to the Roman province of Further Spain to kickstart his political career as quaester under the governor Antistius Vetus. Not a particularly sexy posting, the job required him to ride circuit among the native communities as a financial magistrate to rule on court cases and settle legal disputes. Yawn.

Louis the Stammerer. Justinian the Slit-Nose. Alfonso the Slobberer. Aethelred the Unready. Charles the Bald. Eystein Foul-Fart. You don’t often hear about these historical leaders whose unflattering monikers suggest they just couldn’t cut the mustard. In contrast, there’s the lengthy roster of those rated as “Greats” in the chronicles of past eras—Cyrus the Great, Peter the Great, Constantine the Great, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, Pope Gregory the Great, Pompey the Great, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and Suleiman the Great (and Magnificent). The generally accepted lineup of this hallowed order contains the names of over 150 people.

Tolstoy’s remarkable story on behalf of a man he viewed as one of earth’s greatest creations due to his manly virtue and human charity certainly deserves our attention and respect. It is reminiscent of things said by many of President John F. Kennedy, martyred nearly one hundred years later also by an assassin’s bullet. But one would be amiss to eclipse the politician for the person. Here we will consider Abraham Lincoln as a political figure.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was spot on when she stated in the beginning of her massively successful book The Team of Rivals “the uniquely American story of Abraham Lincoln has unequalled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion.” According to a recent estimate, something like 15,000 to 16,000 books have been written in English on his life and career as president.

Professor Ross Davis of George Mason University once wrote: “Nothing in the law of sports matches the frequency of baseball’s interaction with the institutions of the law or the tendency of lawmakers who speak of sports to talk in baseball terms.” Other court watchers have noted that there are more references to baseball in federal and state court opinions than any other sport.

Leo Frank was a Brooklyn Jew who’d relocated to Atlanta in 1908 to help manage his uncle’s pencil-making business, the National Pencil Company. He acted as the factory’s superintendent.

The horror of Adolf Hitler is not that he was a demon shot out of a portal of Hell but that he was a human creation, born of human parents, whose character was formed out of historical circumstance. He was a product of a particular time and place. This fact renders his monstrous behavior all the more real, all the more evil—and, therefore, all the more demanding of historical study.

I reckon everyone has at one time or another considered a wish list of mysterious disappearances they’d love to see resolved. Lost things found. The mental discomfort of not knowing the whereabouts of ‘vanished’ people or things can vex one’s equilibrium to the point of obsession.

“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or woman—not me, not Bill, nobody—more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.”

Pres. Barack Obama, July 27, 2016 at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

In the late 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll was not only big news but a big problem to most adults. Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis, Buddy Holly…the roster of teenage music heroes was growing as long as Jason Momoa’s hair. Parents, teachers, civic officials, religious leaders, even the neighborhood policeman—all the usual stop signs of public order and decency—were at wit’s end trying to grapple with its growing popularity and influence. Was it the work of Satan? The Kremlin? The Elders of Zion?

Located roughly 150 miles southwest of St. Petersburg sits the city of Novgorod, or as it was called by its inhabitants in medieval times, Lord Novgorod the Great. Long a Baltic outpost of Kievan Rus’ and an appendage of its rotational system of princely rule, the citizens of Novgorod decided to ditch their Kievan-selected prince, Vsevolod Mstislavich, in May 1136 and establish for themselves an independent republican regime.

For nearly 60 years Judy Blume has shown what literature for young people could be. Never condescending or judgmental, always honest, authentic and encouraging. Quite often provocative. Her books were not peopled with heroes and villains but human beings…

The “Black Pope” and Founding Father of the Church of Satan, Anton Szandor LaVey, was born of Jewish parents Michael and Gertrude Levey in Chicago, Illinois, on April 11, 1930. The family moved to San Francisco when Howie was an infant. Some would contend he pretty much remained as such throughout his theatrical life (d. October 29, 1997).

Circus magazine called The Tubes “the bull-goose loonies of the San Francisco scene.” Although originally comprised of Arizona musicians, the band was really an outgrowth of the outrageous theatrical rock scene…

On January 2, 1979, in Beverly Hills, California, Iranian protesters congregated outside the home of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah’s mother and sister, who’d been staying there, grew increasingly apprehensive as the protest outside their doors escalated into violence.