WISCONSIN — Birdsong on my grandmother’s porch in morning sun. Seeing the Village revel in the Fourth of July with a bake sale, egg toss, parade, children’s contests and antique fire-engine rides.

The Village dance is free for all ages and comers, as are the fireworks over Lake Mendota.

This heartland was once home.

All these things restoreth my spirit, after a slow season of heartburn in Washington. There I cover the antics of Congress — and the mob riot one hellish day.

Seen from a distance, the House Republicans are faintly ridiculous, a divided house within a House Divided. The hard-right Freedom Caucus is a stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. They consider McCarthy soft in dealings with the White House on the debt ceiling deal. They pledge allegiance to former President Donald Trump every day. Bitter at Joe Biden’s successful presidency, they want him gone at all costs — even an unlikely impeachment.

Such talk in the air poisons the well on the House floor. It makes the majority Republicans seem hoisted by their own petard, too paralyzed to move forward. Legislation they passed lately: the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, as if gas stoves were under threat of being taken from America’s kitchens. (They are not.) That took several days in the People’s House.

The clubby Senate is somewhat stymied, too. One Alabama freshman, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, is holding up hundreds of Pentagon promotions, including the top brass. That’s awkward timing for aiding Ukraine’s war against Russia. He’s stepping out of his place, I might add, over the military policy of covering travel costs for reproductive care.

Tuberville, a famed football coach, has a monumental ego to stand up to party leaders and the Armed Services committee, defying most of his 99 fellow senators. He really doesn’t care.

John Winthrop, the colonial governor of Boston, famously called America a “City on a Hill” lighting the New World: hopeful and optimistic. But in its 234th year, Capitol Hill is clearly showing its age. The House is a mess, and the Senate is stuck in Southern molasses. Its main mission these days is approving judges.

Across the street, the John Roberts Supreme Court has gone rogue under the robes. Six rule to roll over human rights and the legal custom of precedent. Their hegemony over American law is complete, with no checks. How they got the last word — or “judicial review” — is due to John Marshall, a long-lived early chief justice and Virginia enslaver.

You can count me out of judicial review now. The Roberts court votes politically when none of its nine elites were ever elected to anything. It is a threat to American democracy.

That Court, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepting lavish gifts and trips, is out of bounds. Keep an eye on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., for this. He’s on the case of the court’s poor self-policing. Whitehouse refers to the court, with three Trump appointees, as “captured” by undisclosed dark money.

But don’t despair. The president has seasoning, judgment and friends. That’s how Biden passed a big infrastructure, climate and prescription drug bill. Avuncular “Joe” may make a dicey call — like giving Ukraine cluster munitions — yet stays the soul of American decency.

Give him this: Biden learned from mistakes made along the way (like chairing Thomas’ confirmation.) He’s a better man today.

After Trump’s toxic outrages, Biden brought the tonic the sore body politic needed. Under the radar, most people sense his steady hand and know the economy’s engine runs at a healthy clip.

At the Village’s Frank Lloyd Wright Unitarian church, the reverend urged us to know when we’re happy.

The Jeffersonian pursuit leads me right here.

All’s well within an enchanting walk: the lake where I learned to swim, the courts where I first held a racket, the field where we skated in winter. My sweet piano teacher, Polly, still sings in the Sunday choir.

The Republican Party was born in Wisconsin in 1854, naming Abraham Lincoln as its presidential nominee in 1860.

Let the current crowd of rascals come to honor and breathe in a proud past. No better medicine for what ails them. The state motto: Forward.

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Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. Follow her on Twitter @JamieStiehm. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit Creators.com.