(The Center Square) – Two Massachusetts families have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the state can deny certain special education services to children whose parents choose private school, arguing the regulation forces families to choose between education and access to special support.

Ohioan John Ream is an accomplished aerospace engineer and brewery owner. He would like to try his hand at making Bourbon. However, federal law prohibits distilling spirited beverages at home. On Monday, he filed a petition in the Supreme Court of the United States asking it to hear his case, which raises important questions about the limits of federal power.

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Scholarly surveys, discussions and polls have consistently revealed a clear consensus: the leadership capacity of the founding generation — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison — is unrivaled by any subsequent coterie of American statesman. It is true that these same academic conversations reflect agreement that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt stand atop the list of America’s greatest presidents, with founding chief executives such as Washington and Jefferson closely on their heels, but there is, it seems, no generation of political leaders across 250 years that is comparable to those who launched the American Revolution, drafted the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

July 1, 1776, witnessed one of the most consequential debates in American history. The venue was the floor of the Second Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The topic was whether America should declare independence. The principal participants were the passionate John Adams of Massachusetts for the affirmative and the eloquent John Dickinson of Pennsylvania for the negative.