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Articles written by John Sophocleus


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  • BREAKING NEWS: Southern Preparatory Academy Report: Scholarship Banquet to JROTC RangerFest

    John Sophocleus|May 1, 2026

    April held 'back to back' Southern Preparatory Academy (https://southernprepacademy.org/about/) events I've written much about this Spring. Friday evening's [4-24-26] 6th Annual Board of Trustees Scholarship Banquet filled the Marriott Grand National Ballroom in Opelika, where Col. Corey Ramsby addressed SoPrep's progress through its 'Winter at Valley Forge' into a strengthened cohort for the 2026-27 academic year. Video premiered at the Banquet (viewable at https://youtu.be/FapslyvFOOoo) opens...

  • Macon County Cancer Metastasizing

    John Sophocleus|May 1, 2026

    Macon County has espoused indefensible interpretations of administrative, legal, and environmental laws. “Without accountability, their arrogance festers like cancer,” wrote Frank Dillman, a long-term county resident, watchdog, and now independent candidate for Macon County District 4 Commissioner, recently qualified for the November 3, 2026 election. The legislature, molded and fed by the ACCA [Association of County Commissioners of Alabama] fails to provide a resource for citizens to reg...

  • AU Perspective: A Tale of Two Paychecks (for not working)

    John Sophocleus|May 1, 2026

    Campaigns based on punishing public employees for their thoughts inevitably run up a tab taxpayers must bear. Coach Tommy (TuberGrubber) Tuberville built his post‐football fortune on an AU paycheck for not coaching. His social media feed is now busy building another paycheck for not teaching. Long time readers may recall Auburn's politburo does not pay these tabs; productive (non‐parasitic) Alabama taxpayers pay them. Little wonder why last year's $228 million in college coach buyouts is att...

  • AU Perspective: Orange & Blue Pattern and Practice of Retaliation

    John Sophocleus|Apr 12, 2026

    Legitimacy and credibility are required inputs for successful leadership; little worth to those who subjugate others in a kleptocracy. This explains much occurring at AU according to productive (non-parasitic) faculty who have contacted me after recent columns. AU's BoT installed Vini Nathan as provost in May 2023 after the original job posting stated the interim provost would be ineligible for the permanent position. Dr. Nathan was the interim provost. The Board gave her the job anyway. The...

  • AU Perspective: Alabama Power Brokering

    John Sophocleus|Apr 12, 2026

    April 2, 2026 - AUBURN, Ala. - Dismissal proceedings are underway at AU against a high-profile Professor who has publicly criticized and disciplined administrator malfeasance. The charge is reportedly "repeated acts of insubordination" - i.e., this professor voiced inconvenient things effectively enough to disturb power brokers [grubbers] enjoying substantive wealth redistributions. Proceedings were initiated by Vini (Interim-to-Permanent) Nathan, an illegitimately serving Provost whose installa...

  • Defend the Guard! …now more than ever

    John Sophocleus|Apr 12, 2026

    "Defend the Guard" is proposed State-level legislation prohibiting overseas deployment of National Guardsmen to combat operations without formal congressional declaration of war. Authority to declare war is specifically assigned to Congress according to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution. Since unconstitutional creation of the National Guard (further decaying State sovereignty) the federal government has wrongfully mobilized National Guard personnel without war declarations....

  • AU Perspective: YellaGrubber's Ballroom Graftfest

    John Sophocleus|Apr 12, 2026

    Longtime readers may now look forward to seeing YellaGrubber don his white shoes and shake his ample 'junk in the trunk' to the "Chewacla Two-Step" in the ballroom of the new $350 million annex to Jordan-Hare Stadium. An AU BoT agenda item for this Friday [4-17-26] convening at the AU and Dixon Conference Center Hotel is rubber-stamping the "North Endzone Multipurpose Events Center Addition" according to administrator nomenclature. Seven stories. Roughly 300,000 square feet. A ballroom. Premium...

  • Southern Preparatory Academy Report: Cruise In to RangerFest 2026

    John Sophocleus|Apr 12, 2026

    Look forward to this year's Scholarship Banquet at the Marriott Grand National in Opelika [https://southernprepacademy.org/scholarship-banquet/] Friday [4-24-26] to showcase The Southern's recent accomplishments and prepare for next year's cohort designed to support promising students preparing for their future. Please also mark your calendar for the following day; Saturday, April 25, 2026 for this year's RangerFest [https://southernprepacademy.org/rangerfest/] at Southern Preparatory Academy...

  • Southern Preparatory Academy Report: Attend the 2026 Scholarship Banquet

    John Sophocleus|Apr 1, 2026

    April is upon us... time for another Scholarship Banquet at the Marriott Grand National in Opelika [https://southernprepacademy.org/scholarship-banquet/] to showcase The Southern's recent accomplishments and prepare for next year's cohort designed to support promising students preparing for their future. Come hear the President's (Col. Corey Ramsby, pictured below at last year's banquet) update on moving forward out of SoPrep's 'Winter at Valley Forge'... rebuilding ranks and enrollment for the...

  • AU Perspective: Cost/Benefit Analysis of HB 580 Tenure Bill

    John Sophocleus|Mar 31, 2026

    Rep. Troy Stubbs's House Bill 580 [HB580] promises to give Alabama public university governing boards more power over faculty. Some AU faculty forecast higher labour and legal expenses along with reduced grant revenue. Stubbs, a financial advisor from Wetumpka (on the Ways and Means Education Committee) filed HB 580 on March 5. The bill does three things: (1) strips faculty senates of any authority beyond "advisory" (2) establishes governing board control over every course taught at public...

  • SCotUS: Trump Tariff Ruling

    John Sophocleus|Mar 15, 2026

    Amy Howe's Supreme Court strikes down tariffs, SCOTUSblog (Feb. 20, 2026, 11:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/02/supreme-court-strikes-down-tariffs/ was among the first to report on the SCotUS ruling on Trump tariffs, widely viewed as unconstitutional by those with a fundamental understanding US tariff history. In their ruling on presidential power, the Supreme Court struck down disuniform tariffs President Trump wrongfully imposed via executive orders. The 6-3 vote asserted these...

  • AU Perspective: Auburn Trustees Impose the Creed

    John Sophocleus|Mar 15, 2026

    The month of February venerates Valentine’s Day. A holiday (dare I type Holy Day?) evoking remembrance of executing Saint Valentine by 3rd Century Roman Emperor Claudius II for secretly marrying Christians. In similar oppressive zeitgeist, February is also known for annual Auburn University Board of Trustees [BoT] meeting in Montgomery, rather than in Auburn as usual. This year’s February BoT meeting fittingly fell on Friday the 13th and was uniquely wicked as the Trustees promoted a hos...

  • Southern Preparatory Academy Report: Support Our Maturing Troops

    John Sophocleus|Mar 15, 2026

    Recent military actions in Iran since my last SoPrep Report [https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/02/23/opinion/southern-preparatory-academy-report-plowshares-to-swords-andamp-vice-versa/10169.html] illustrate yet another iteration of 'plowshares into swords' upon us. The Gazette column on Valley Forge Military Academy's closure in Pennsylvania, leaving The Southern https://southernprepacademy.org/ one of a dozen remaining prep schools in the nation with a Corps of Cadets (military)...

  • AU Perspective: Tuberville "Residency" and Coach's Florida Paper Trail

    John Sophocleus|Mar 1, 2026

    Some readers may recall previous columns chronicling the slow erosion of accountability specifically at AU and more generally across Alabama's politburo. The ‘rinse and repeat’ playbook cycle is a familiar pattern in many arenas across our State even more so in Lee County. Comrades Britt, Hubbard, Ivey, Richardson, Shelby, Tuberville, et al make claims where the record/documents affirm a different narrative. Institutions tasked with oversight, fail to look and/or act, further enabling pol...

  • Southern Preparatory Academy Report: Plowshares to Swords & Vice Versa

    John Sophocleus|Feb 23, 2026

    My February Alabama Gazette column https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2026/02/01/opinion/winter-at-valley-forge-academy/9988.html 'kicked off' posting SoPrep Reports. Citing Valley Forge Military Academy closing in Pennsylvania leaves The Southern one of a dozen remaining prep schools with a Corps of Cadets (military) program in the nation. We're blessed to have this gem right here in Sweet Home Alabama, located at Camp Hill just off US Hwy 280 in East Central Alabama. In our current...

  • Winter at Valley Forge Academy

    John Sophocleus|Feb 1, 2026

    Semiquincentennial of united colonies will begin with celebrating the 250th anniversary of declaring independence from British hegemony. Of the most gripping episodes in this hard fought victory, won a quarter millennium ago to break from the King of England was the 1777–8 winter campaign at Valley Forge; a crucible for Gen. Washington's newly minted Continental Army, strategically placed to keep watch over British forces in occupied Philadelphia. Enduring brutal cold, fatal disease, hunger, l...

  • AU Perspective: Mute Button University

    John Sophocleus|Jan 31, 2026

    Federal agents recently arrested three activists after disrupting a Minnesota church service, charged with conspiracy to interfere with other people's constitutional right to worship. Headlines from this case (re)affirm a long-standing principle upheld by the US Supreme Court; our First Amendment civil right protects one’s right to speak, not the right to prevent others from speaking. That principle was designed to be uniformly applied across all levels of government and public institutions. O...

  • AU Perspective: Roberts' Roaches continued... Retaliation, Psyops, Research Interference, etc.

    John Sophocleus|Jan 12, 2026

    Response to the first AU Perspective piece suggests more regular submissions apropos. As President Roberts enjoys long overdue federal court decisions, his minions continue to decay this once noble university. I'll focus on the CoA [College of Agriculture] in this installment as I plan to address topics later this month on impressive Phi Beta Kappa efforts, School of Osteopathic Medicine, etc. more aligned with the Auburn Creed's letter and Spirit. Prof. Yi Wang was hired [2015] as an integral p...

  • Theophany/Epiphany: Breaking 400 Years of Silence

    John Sophocleus|Jan 1, 2026

    Some missed Thanksgiving/Christmas columns this season appreciating lack of AI content/feel reading “Think” submissions to the Gazette. Not sure how to take that... further observation of poor wordsmith skills which have grown more endearing? Certainly not my human text superior to artificial. This piece emphasizes 400 years of silence in Old Testament biblical writings; prolog to Jesus enlightenment in His teachings and wisdom on the journey to Calvary/Pascha. Every January 6th or 19th, dep...

  • Pedophile Pedagogy and Harvard's Dr. Lawrence H. Summers

    John Sophocleus|Dec 1, 2025

    Many a youngin with a Greek Yiayia (grandma) heard ‘pedimou’ - i.e., my child. In the most endearing, God loving inflection and Spirit, I can still hear it spoken from both my righteous, steadfast Yiayias helping me discern good and evil. Hard to imagine a more antithetical, deleterious spirit than what we’ve observed from Clinton, Trump, Epstein, et al political parasites and pedagogues like Harvard’s Dr. Summers who educate them. There was a time our nation rejected charlatans who stole c...

  • AU Perspective: Pres. Roberts' Cockroaches

    John Sophocleus|Dec 1, 2025
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    Recent columns on AU’s academic and athletic performance induced more response than usual, prompting more regular submissions for Gazette readers to consider. If interest continues in perspectives of this sort, I’ll submit something every week to ten days. A compelling correspondence received w.r.t. AU’s current cycle of decline began with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s remark, “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more… everyone should be forewarned.” Prof. Dimon is on par with Harvard...

  • Auburn Greed 3.0: Chris Roberts Edition

    John Sophocleus|Nov 17, 2025

    Recent headlines coming out of Auburn University chronicle the ongoing metastasis of President Roberts’ cancer destroying this once great school of higher learning and athletics if we fail to remove this pollutant and his minions; (re)read my 5/1/24 Gazette column https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2024/05/01/opinion/prof-roberts-theres-a-cancer-on-the-presidency/3257.html]. These past months indicate historically unprecedented levels of failure in football and the wholesale violation of 1...

  • 'The Auburn Screed' according to Roberts

    John Sophocleus|Oct 12, 2025

    Happy 26th Anniversary to The Alabama Gazette! Time to reflect back over a quarter century to herald this brave paper standing strong on the First Amendment; it prints submissions of big government conservatives and modern liberals as well as observations and perspectives of small government conservative/classical liberals like me these past 16 years. Those who regularly consume news from our local East Central Alabama ’Pravda on the Plains’ publications recently witnessed a social media sta...

  • Gerrymander Proliferation and Constitutional Détente

    John Sophocleus|Sep 14, 2025

    Most of my readers will recall Elkanah Tisdale’s iconic political cartoon evoking "Gerrymander" nomenclature for Massachusetts’ redistricted manipulations following the 1810 census. A July 18, 2024 post by Neely Tucker [https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2024/07/gerrymandering-the-origin-story/] featured former chief of the Rare Book & Special Collections Division guest, Mark Dimunation. He offered the following on gerrymandering which has become part of our lexicon these past two centuries: “The term,...

  • From One Big Soviet Bill: American Party's birth

    John Sophocleus|Aug 12, 2025

    Comrade Trump’s Big Soviet Bill further mashed the accelerator on our path to the junk heap of history. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act [OBBBA] is now law, adding hundreds more pages of unconstitutional text to the federal register. Echoing Speaker Pelosi (Trump’s past Kabuki Theatre friend when ‘donning’ his longer worn Blue Soviet jersey) shrieks “We had to pass the bill to know what’s in it,” our DC politburo is keeping the trend to oblivion set by Comrades Trump (45) and Biden these past year...

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