The state of the judiciary

Want to read something really weird?

Check out this link to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Now forget the topic/headline and read the first seven pages.

Could you have guessed that this was a 2025 report on federal courts?

OK, I know most of you are too lazy — or too annoyed that I asked you — to click and read all that. I apologize, so I will explain. What you see there is a history of Thomas Paine and the Declaration of Independence written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

There’s even a quote from Calvin Coolidge. You don’t see that very often. (You have to get to page seven to find it — determination pays off.)

There are also illustrations including photos of the Assembly Room at Independence Hall in Philadelphia (which looks like a pretty boring but formal place to eat) and Martin Luther King.

Why does this piece of storytelling and art exist in an update on the federal courts of today?

I have no idea. Maybe Justice Roberts just found out about this stuff and wanted to spread the word?

You finally get to the actual report part on page 8 (of this 13-page document). It comes with bar charts that, among other non-fascinating things, inform us that filings were up in all the federal courts except the Supreme Court, which saw a 9% decline in filings. Criminal immigration offense filings were up 27%.

Are we shocked?

For some reason, there’s no mention this year of judicial ethics or fabulous vacation trips. Apparently they solved those problems.

But we did get to find out about this Thomas Paine guy.

The future is now

It’s really amazing how good science fiction can predict the future. We had another example of this last week that was very much in the news. Did you spot it?

Just for fun, see if you know which of the following events from last week was accurately predicted in a classic 1973 sci-fi film:

**The precision extraction of a South American dictator so that a North American dictator can plunder his country.

**The announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services headed up by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that we should prioritize eating red meat and full-fat dairy products.

**President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. was withdrawing from an international climate treaty and 65 other international organizations and treaties that “no longer serve American interests.”

**The analysis that found Grok, the artificial intelligence program on X, has been generating about 6,700 sexual images an hour that include undressing people in pictures without their consent.

No, the answer is not “all of the above.” This is not a trick question.

Come on, you old people out there, you know the answer. This is definitely something that stuck in my brain (but, then, of course my brain is pretty weird).

The correct answer of course is RFK Jr.’s high-fat endorsement as accurately predicted in the film “Sleeper.”

In case you missed the movie (or aren’t old), Google’s AI Overview explains that in the film, “ice cream is portrayed as a highly nutritious, health-promoting food” and “scientists reveal that staples like hot fudge, steak and cream pies are deemed essential.”

So RFK Jr. is either a man of the future or a graduate of the Woody Allen School of Medicine.