Dear readers, I have let you down once again. Yesterday, it was the cows, now it's the inconvenient fact that today's Lincoln's birthday. As such, the courthouse is closed, no one's around and my calls are going unreturned. So, tragically, no law stories for the blog today.

By way of diversion, however, check out our 16th president in the Lawyer Hall of Fame. Rather than bringing with him a degree from a fancy law school, he had a mere year of formal schooling. Had he not taken that inconvenient detour of becoming the president, Great Emancipator, martyr and face of the penny, sounds like he would have been a pretty famous lawyer.

And, if you're into Lincoln law (as opposed to Lincoln lunches), here's more than you could ever ask for at AbrahamLincolnOnline.org. Happy reading.

As a final, random thought, I met a Lincoln impersonator once at a funeral, of all places. He was out of uniform, but the 19th century beard was a bit of a giveaway, so he started chatting about how he was really into Lincoln and had been goaded into dressing up like him by friends. After several years of appearing at parties and school events, he'd even looked into his family tree to see if his resemblance to the president turned out to be familial.

And, of course, who did his ancestor turn out to be? That's right, friends, John Wilkes Booth.