Contra

They call them rogues They travel fast and alone One hundred foot faces Of God’s good ocean gone wrong —Brand New, “Play Crack the Sky” I’ve been feeling listless lately. That’s an interesting word. It’s close enough to the nautical term listing that it evokes the image of a ship haplessly paused at an angle in the water after being savaged by a storm. Merriam-Webster will tell you it means “lacking bodily energy or motivation,” or, in a word, lethargy. But it’s worse than that.

I wish politicians would look out for miners And not just minors on an island somewhere —Oliver Anthony, “Rich Men North of Richmond” Right up to the moment when heavily armed federal agents raided his apartment in downtown Minneapolis, Anton Lazzaro was living the dream at 30. At the time, he was an influential Minnesota GOP operative and donor who helped run a high-profile campaign.

To a land of fine horses have you come, Stranger, to the mightiest dwellings on earth, To Colonus, gleaming white, where The clear-toned nightingale Sings so often, Beneath the green glades, Dwelling in the wine-dark ivy And the untouched foliage of a god, Of countless berries, without sun, Without the wind from any Storms. Here are the haunts of Dionysus, always, In Bacchic revelry, Roaming with His divine nurses.

Joan Didion in Los Angeles on Aug. 2, 1970. Sources: Kathleen Ballard / Los Angeles Times In the summer of 1968, a woman checked herself into the outpatient psychiatric clinic at St John’s Hospital, in Santa Monica, California, after suffering what was described as an “attack of vertigo and nausea.” But it was something far more terrible than that, something that lives with all of us today.

It was the middle of “Pride Month,” also known as June, at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, California, when a math teacher decided to play a video celebrating the extended observance. What happened next, which was caught on camera, might seem surprising. The classroom instantly erupts in boos and groans. One student makes a vomiting sound. “Why are you showing this to kids?” another shouts.

Just days after the war in Ukraine began last year, Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, was asked by a reporter about Russia’s use of “illegal cluster bombs” on the battlefield. The munitions, which carpet landscapes, are banned in more than 120 countries because they are indiscriminate weapons and due to the danger they pose to civilians even after conflicts have ended. “We have seen the reports,” Psaki said.

What the left and right get wrong about the riots in Paris.

America, like any nation, consists of stories we tell ourselves about it. Whether we love or hate it is determined by how we remember it and the people who forged its destiny, as villains or complex, flesh and blood humans. For Independence Day, here are two short tales I hope you’ll enjoy. Join Contra YOU WOULD HAVE A GOOD CHANCE of finding George Washington perched at his mahogany card table beside Mrs. Washington and surrounded by friends on any given night at Mount Vernon.

The golden rule for surviving controversy is don’t apologize. But I am faced with a Gordian problem, a knot connecting the future to the oxcart of the past. The dilemma is this: you are never supposed to apologize; the people sticking their necks out to defend me deserve an explanation.

I joined the Conservative Review with Daniel Horowitz to discuss the endgame of the GOP with Donald Trump as its figurehead. You may have noticed that I’m no longer on Fox News or Newsmax. That’s a conscious decision. I don’t have any plans to try to get on either network anymore. Independent and authentically conservative media is needed now more than ever. The biggest networks don’t offer that, which is why Daniel and The Blaze are important.