On Christmas Eve, 1974, John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, was sitting in Fort Holabird prison in Baltimore, Maryland, talking to a Mafia guy. “Let me ask you something, if you don’t mind. You look a little bit wet behind the ears to be the President’s lawyer. How’d you get there so young? Your old man put in...

Imagine if Watergate had been more than just a scandal. Imagine if Nixon got away with it. I don’t mean no one finds out; I mean he beats the justice system, and the only people held accountable are his co-conspirators, Republicans who were sucked into the vortex of loyalty, sacrificing their principles to protect a man who manipulated the levers...

… and former Republican Representative Liz Cheney—a Wisconsin native who represented Wyoming and served as the vice chair of the House committee that investigated the January 6th attack on the Capitol—laid out the facts of the case against President Donald Trump in his alleged criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election. In Ripon, Wisconsin—a town known as the birthplace of...

The Rockwellesque city of Springfield, Ohio, has recently been thrust into the national spotlight, not for its charm but because of false claims spread on social media that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating the pets of their neighbors. Despite a lack of evidence, former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, have used the claims...

In America’s deeply polarized political landscape, we’ve become engulfed by lies, hateful rhetoric, and now, escalating violence. The most recent example is an assassination attempt on the former president. Stoked by fear, this toxic combination has infiltrated every aspect of our society—from public discourse to personal relationships—fostering a climate where truth feels optional and outrage thrives. When hateful rhetoric drives...

“A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities.” –Canon 2, Code of Conduct for United States Judges In 1969, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was accused of financial misconduct for accepting a retainer from businessman Louis Wolfson, who had legal issues that could have come before the Court. Although Wolfson’s case never reached the Supreme...

In 63 BCE, Rome was facing an internal crisis that threatened to destroy the Republic. Roman senator Lucius Sergius Catilina, known as Catiline, was conspiring to overthrow the government. With the help of a coalition of the discontented, his plan included violent uprisings and the assassination of several leading senators and political figures, including Cicero, Rome’s famed philosopher and statesman....

Legend has it that a man once approached the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder with a challenge: if he could sum up the principles of Judaism in a single sentence, the man would convert. Hillel responded, “What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary.” Hillel’s words...

Last Tuesday, I informed readers that I used an AI program to create a commentary celebrating the 4th of July. The program is ChatGPT, a generative AI program developed by OpenAI and publicly released in 2022. The program is remarkable in its vast knowledge and ability to generate written text in various formats and lengths, and it does so in...

Last week left us gasping after the first presidential debate and apprehensive about what to expect from the Supreme Court this morning about Trump’s total immunity case. (Now we know the answer to the second issue.) Let’s begin with the obvious. Joe Biden did not have a good debate night. He had a disastrous debate night. Despite the rah, rah...