Today is the 140^th anniversary of the birth of one of the Twentieth Century’s most influential and revered philosophers:  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma (“Great Soul”) Gandhi, or simply, in India, as Bapu—“Father.”

His espousal of a philosophy of non-violence, his commitment to the concept of Truth, and his propagation of an attitude of universal tolerance and love, influenced many philosophers and social activists who came after him, perhaps most notably Dr. Martin Luther King.  He was arguably the most pivotal single person in establishing India’s independence from Great Britain.

Herewith is the man in his own words:

“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”

“Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.”

“I wanted to know the best of the life of one (Muhammad) who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.”

“Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”

“To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?”

“It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligenqe and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.”

“I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.”

“I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.”

Walk softly and in peace this day and every day.

“The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”

– William Safire

The nation lost a man of character, wit, and erudition yesterday.  William Safire, 79, died of pancreatic cancer in a hospice in Rockville, Maryland.

Safire enjoyed a varied career early in life.  He was a U.S. Army correspondent, a radio and television program producer, and a vice-president of a public relations firm before founding his own agency.  It was in this capacity that he facilitated the famous “Kitchen Debate” in Moscow between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.  The debate over the virtues of communism versus capitalism took place at the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park on the set of the display, a house filled with labor-saving devices and comforts meant to show the fruits of American capitalism.  Safire represented the home builder as a press agent at the exhibition.

The connection with Nixon was fortuitous for Safire.  He joined Nixon’s campaign for president in 1960 as a speechwriter, and reprised his role in the successful 1968 campaign.  He joined the administration as a speechwriter, serving both Nixon and his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew.  Among his unforgettable lines for the latter was the characterization of liberal opponents of the Nixon administration as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

In 1973, Safire joined The New York Times as an op-ed columnist, a position he held until his retirement in 2005.  As an opinion writer, he reflected his views as a self-described “libertarian conservative.”  Safire was an ardent supporter of Israel (he was Jewish, and had changed the original spelling of his name from “Safir”) and an unapologetic enthusiast of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a leading proponent of some of the more misguided justifications of that war.  But he was right on many other issues; he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his reporting on the corruption surrounding Carter administration Director of the Office of Management and the Budget, Bert Lance.

Politics aside, though, Safire was a zealous and tireless advocate for the proper use of the English language.  He wrote a column for the Sunday New York Times Magazine entitled “On Language” in which he expounded on proper grammar, spelling, and word and phrase origins, usually mixing large doses of humor in with his helpful lessons on usage.

Safire wrote a number of books on language, several of them anthologies of his Times Magazine columns.  He wrote some politically-themed books, including the definitive Safire’s Political Dictionary, and a handful of historical novels as well.

Regardless of ideology, many Americans are mourning the loss of Bill Safire today; I’m definitely one of them.

At the turn of the first millennium after the birth of Christ, the Vikings of Norway left their scourge on most of the western world.  For over a hundred and fifty years, the sight of Viking longboats on the horizon had struck terror everywhere from Ireland to the Black Sea.  Nordic explorers had pushed westward past the British Isles to Iceland, Greenland, and modern-day Canada.

In many previous instances, the Vikings came as raiders, not conquerors.  Legends of their savage excesses had spread by word of mouth before their arrival and was such an effective tool that the most prudent course of action of the hapless defenders was simply to send a delegation to meet the marauders and inquire as to the cost of having the Vikings spare their territory and move on to terrorize their neighbors.

But in the year 1066, the Viking strategy was different.  King Harald Hardraada of Norway, along with Tostig, the hated Earl of Northumberland who had been ousted from his lands the year before, and a variety of Norwegian allies and vassals, landed on the coast of northeastern England at Scarborough in September of that year.  Their ambitious aim was the conquest of the whole of England.

The Norwegian forces burned the town of Scarborough and, on 20 September 1066, defeated the forces of the northern earls Edwin and Morcar at the Battle of Fulford.  Morcar was the man who had taken the place of Tostig as the Earl of Northumberland.  The Norwegians sacked the major city of York in the wake of their victory at Fulford.

The King of England, Harold Godwinson, had succeeded to his position upon the death of King Edward the Confessor in January of that same fateful year of 1066.  His claim to the throne was tenuous, however; his principal adversary was William of Normandy, whose lands in contemporary France lay directly across the Channel from England.  Harold had his Saxon army camped in the south of England, poised to counter an anticipated invasion by the Normans.  However, when Harold heard of the Viking incursion in the north of his kingdom, he assembled his troops and force-marched them 185 miles in four days to counter the Norsemen’s threat.

A Viking contingent was sent to Stamford Bridge, located about ten miles east of York, where they expected to be met with representatives of Harold to receive supplies in exchange for hostages captured by the Norwegians.  Instead, they were met by the Saxons under Harold himself.  The Vikings, vastly outnumbered and caught without their armor and heavy weapons, put up a valiant defense and executed a workmanlike delaying battle, but were ultimately defeated in detail.

As the Saxons finally crossed the bridge, they were met by the last remnants of the Viking forces, the troops that remained in reserve to guard the boats and base camp near Scarborough.  Although properly armed and armored, they proved to be too few to achieve the task and suffered the same fate as their compatriots.  Neither Harald nor Tostig survived the defeat.

Harold Godwinson accepted a truce with Harald’s son, Olaf, and the remaining Norwegians.  They were permitted to return to Norway on the condition that they never set foot again on English soil.  The Norsemen complied; the era of Viking plundering and conquest officially came to an end on 25 September 1066 in the aftermath of the Battle of Stamford Bridge.  Of the more than 300 longboats which carried the invaders to Northumbria, a mere two dozen were required to transport the vanquished troops home.

Unfortunately for Harold Godwinson, the Saxon era in England had less than three weeks to live as well.  On 28 September, just three days after the glorious victory at Stamford Bridge, William of Normandy, soon to be known by the sobriquet “the Conqueror”, launched the invasion of the southern coast of England that Harold had earlier been anticipating.  Harold was forced to march from Yorkshire to an area around the town of Hastings on the Channel to contain the Norman invaders.  On 14 October, the exhausted Saxons were defeated by the assembled Normans; Harold was struck in the eye by a Norman arrow and died on the field of battle near Hastings.  The Norman conquest had begun.

There are many paths to success in the field of novel-writing.  A Scottish divorcée formerly living on welfare managed to get her clever children’s book about a young wizard and his friends published; she has managed to eke out a subsistence living from it and its sequels.  A mediocre songwriter and English teacher latched onto the idea of writing a book involving secret organizations, obscure symbols, and an unlikely protagonist hero; the most recent sequel was released last Tuesday and sold one million copies on its first day.

For Robert B. Parker, the formula has been simple and unwavering for over thirty-six years, since the debut of his first Spenser mystery:  tight plot lines, interesting characters, dialog-driven storytelling, and dry, wry humor.  Publish about one book every year until you just can’t write any longer.  (Parker celebrated his 77^th birthday this past Thursday and shows no sign of letting up:  he’s published three novels this year alone.)

Since 1973, Parker has published thirty-eight novels featuring his iconic, Marlowe-esque Boston private eye, Spenser.  The character inspired a television drama in the late 1980s, Spenser:  For Hire, starring the late Robert Urich, which, although Parker privately thought very little of it, undeniably helped the sale of his novels.

In 1997, Parker began writing novels featuring a new character, Jesse Stone.  Formerly a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division, Stone is discharged for drinking on the job.  Suffering from a broken marriage and a broken career, Stone travels east to accept the job of chief of police for the (fictional) town of Paradise, Massachusetts, a small fishing town located somewhere outside of Boston.  (The Jesse Stone character has inspired a series of five made-for-television movies aired by CBS, starring Tom Selleck in the lead role, with one more currently in production and one in pre-production.)

High Profile, the sixth in the Stone series, finds the chief investigating the murder of Walton Weeks, a national TV and radio talk-show host, whose body is found hanging from a tree in a public park in Paradise.  The discovery of Weeks’s lovely young assistant’s dead body in a Dumpster behind one of the town’s restaurants adds another dimension to the investigation.  Chief Stone and his ardent protégé Luther “Suitcase” Simpson are left with two bodies, no clues, and pressure from the governor for a quick solution to the politically explosive case.

Along the way, Stone has to deal with a personal dilemma.  While romantically involved with Boston private detective Sunny Randall (heroine of yet another Parker series of novels), his estranged wife Jenn comes to him with a horror story.  She is being stalked by a man whom Jenn accuses of raping her.  Stone has his hands full with the dual homicide investigation and can’t spend time on Jenn’s case.  Fortunately, or maybe not, his current lover Sunny volunteers to keep her rival under her wing and find the stalker/rapist.

A hallmark of Parker’s writing is his acerbic wit as displayed by the characters in the story.  Examples abound on nearly every page.  Particularly droll is the interplay between Jesse and Suit Simpson as they work the case; Suit wants to be promoted to Detective, and Stone promises him he will—“as soon as we get detectives.”

Parker’s novels are nothing if not formulaic, but formulaic is not always bad.  If this is the first Parker book you read, you’re not familiar with the formula.  If you’ve read others of his work, this one will fit like a comfortable pair of slippers.

Either way, you’re in for a fast and enjoyable read.

High Profile, © 2007 by Robert B. Parker.  Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Penguin Group (USA), Inc.  290 pages.

Ken’s Rating:  4.5 (out of five)

James Lee Burke has written novels featuring Louisiana detective Dave Robichaux since 1987, encompassing a span of over a dozen titles.  The books have followed Robichaux from his days on the New Orleans Police Department, through a stint as a private detective, and then to his time on the force of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department about 100 miles west of The Big Easy.

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita which had delivered a deadly one-two punch to southern Louisiana, I recall reading about and seeing the devastation brought about by the breakdown of civil order in New Orleans.  One of the thoughts that crossed my mind was that Jim Burke was probably sharpening his pencils right then and there to write his magnum opus, and that I couldn’t wait to see what was in store.

It took me two years after the publication of The Tin Roof Blowdown to wedge it into a personal reading list that’s more crowded than Interstate 10 traffic leaving New Orleans on a Friday evening. But I read it this past week, and it was a powerful experience.

Burke has a master’s touch for description.  His portraits of the southern Louisiana landscape have always been stunning, and he doesn’t disappoint here, either.  Consider this paragraph that has Dave describing his surroundings on a fishing trip he takes with his family:

“The change of the season was already in the air.  The leaves of the cypress had turned gold, and I could smell gas on the breeze.  The flooded woods along the shore were dark, the lily pads that had bloomed with yellow flowers in the summer now curling into brown husks along the edges.  I could smell schools of fish under the water, like the seminal odor of birth, but I could see nothing below the darkness on the surface, as though part of a life cycle were being removed from my own life.”

One of the hallmarks of a Robichaux novel is the nature of the villains Dave finds himself chasing down.  There is never a doubt about the evil that dwells within their deformed souls, but Burke goes a step further, endowing them with physical characteristics that complete their repulsiveness.  Here, he gets a description of one of the bad guys from someone who came across him:

“He’s a tall white man, bald, with a long face that’s sunken in the middle.  His mouth is a funny color, like it has rouge on it, or it doesn’t go with his skin.  He’s got a soft voice and accent, the kind people from the Carolinas have.  His eyes are green.  My daughter was working in the yard.  He kept looking at her.  I don’t want this guy around my house again.”

Burke spares no effort at describing the flooded hellhole that was New Orleans in the days after Katrina struck.  Robichaux is part of an influx of police officers that has been assigned to The Big Sleazy to help the shorthanded NOPD deal with the crisis.  It’s while he’s on this duty rotation serving in the hardest hit section of town, the Lower Ninth Ward, that Dave catches the case at the heart of the story.

Four young black street thugs commandeer a boat and set about looting some of the abandoned homes in the city, but it proves to be a fool’s errand.  Not only do they hit the wrong house on their raid, but as they prepare to finish their escapade, a sniper manages to kill one of the boys and severely wound a second one.  Robichaux finds himself trying to solve the murder and deal with the myriad of entangling results of the looting spree.

This is not a light and breezy read.  The plot is dark and suffocating; the characters are multi-faceted and deep, and as is characteristic with Burke, even the good guys have weaknesses and flaws that drive their decisions.  The dialog is raunchy and idiomatic, the ethics fluid, and the actions of law enforcement occasionally questionable.  But this is New Awlins, chères; people have their own way of doin’ things here.

The Tin Roof Blowdown.   © 2007 by James Lee Burke.  Published by Simon and Schuster.

Ken’s rating:  5 (out of five).

It was a glorious late-summer’s day.  The humidity of the previous weeks was, today, a memory, as a crisp breeze blew off the magnificent harbor and along the two rivers flowing on either side of the island.  The sun was radiant, its cheery brightness defying anyone to wallow in his troubles.  The sky was that particular light blue tint, almost translucent, that makes you believe that you can see the spinning galaxies beyond.

You couldn’t have asked for a finer morning in the city that never sleeps, that carries the burdens of the world on its shoulders.  This morning, the burdens were light, the cerulean sky filled with nothing but the promise of a bright new day.  God was in His heaven, and everything was all right…

… until two Boeing 767 airliners, commandeered by ten Islamic fanatics shortly after takeoff from Boston Logan Airport, plunged out of that bright, cheery, cloudless sky and slammed into the towers of the tallest buildings in the nation, the World Trade Center.

These attacks were in addition to two others launched against the nation’s capital, one successful against the Pentagon, the other, intended for either the U.S. Capitol or the White House, aborted in a rural field in Pennsylvania.  Together, they changed the very fabric of life in the United States.

With only marginal exceptions, the mainland of America had escaped the devastation of foreign hostile action in the twentieth century.  Within the space of a handful of hours, nearly three thousand innocent lives representing ninety different nationalities were callously destroyed in the name of Islam, the religion of surrender to the Almighty.

Residents of New York City and the Washington metropolitan area were given a taste of the daily apprehension and rigor that citizens of Israel undergo.  And citizens of Palestine, and Lebanon.  The gnawing fear that at any moment, the bus you’re riding on may explode, the car you’re driving may be shot at, or the store you’re shopping in destroyed by a rocket or artillery shell.

Now, eight years after the cowardly attack on innocent civilians, a certain sense of complacency has settled on the American population.  The longer we go without an attack, the stronger the temptation will be to consider the horror of that black day in September a unique tragedy.

This would be a mistake.

The United States Secret Service, tasked with the protection of the President, readily acknowledge that they are virtually helpless to prevent a determined attacker who is willing to trade his life for that of the Chief Executive’s.

Similarly, no matter how well the nation’s myriad of security agencies perform their job, there is no way they can prevent every potential attack  It’s a game of numbers, and the odds are stacked against us.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Please take ten minutes of your day today; watch and listen to the stirring video linked below, and consider what the lessons of 11 September hold for you and your loved ones.

Adagio for Strings, Opus 11, by Samuel Barber

I have been a student of politics and public policy for over forty years.  Since 1967 I’ve taken a vital interest in the affairs of this nation, analyzing issues, weighing all sides of a proposal, and seeking analysis from various points of view.  I have always felt that this was one of my obligations as a citizen of this great nation, the United States of America.

No longer.

I’ve had it with the analysis, the thoughtful reflection, and especially the partisan battling.  I’m not going to write blog posts expressing my political opinions any longer.  I’m done with it.

Why am I taking such a negative approach?

Two reasons.

The first is the atmosphere of “debate” in this nation these days.  I’m not naïve:  I know there has been rancorous fighting over issues and personalities since the founding of our republic.  The level of vituperation has risen up over the levees many times in the previous two and a third centuries, but the point we’ve reached lately, while perhaps not unprecedented, is quite sufficient for me.

A kind of St. Vitus Dance seems to have infected the general population.  Otherwise normal, caring, intelligent progressives go into fits of apoplexy at the mere mention of the names Bush, Cheney, and Rove.  “Evil men,” they scream, mouths frothing, “bent on the destruction of our country!”  Thoughtful Americans who have serious questions about the policies of the current Administration are tarred by these people with the brush of “Teabaggers” and “town hall rioters” in an attempt to marginalize legitimate objections to policies that many Americans feel uneasy about.

The same plague has infected otherwise normal, caring, intelligent conservatives, as well.  They go into paroxysms of rage at the mere mention of the names Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.  “Evil people,” they scream, mouths frothing, “bent on the destruction of our country!”  They attack the President of the United States for “indoctrinating our children with his socialist agenda,” and for politicizing our schools with his statement that in order to fight poverty and homelessness, in order to find a cure for cancer, our nation needs our children to receive the best possible education.

People—will you stop a moment and listen to yourselves?  Stop listening to Olbermann and Maddow and Schultz; stop salivating with Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, and Hannity and listen to the insanity tumbling from your own lips?

But more important is the second reason I quit.

While all you bloggers and netroots and activists and protesters gather at the shore and shake your fists and rage and scream in an effort to drown out the ocean, the affairs of the nation continue on as they always have.

Our laws continue to be written by lobbyists, the representatives of powerful, moneyed interests who are the real power behind the throne.  Their names are Big Business and Big Labor and Big Government, and their wishes are realized through the articulations of corrupt politicians (forgive me, I repeat myself.)

Efforts to segregate money from political power, half-hearted as they’ve been, have been futile.  They’ll always be futile.  The moneyed interests will fight all efforts at reform.  They shall fight on the beaches, they shall fight on the landing grounds, they shall fight in the fields and in the streets, they shall fight in the hills, they shall never surrender.

Forty years ago, we were snarled in a war in Asia that was unwinnable and whose supporters could not even define its objectives.  The future of the economy was dire, minorities were agitating for their rightful part of the American Dream, and the country was politically torn asunder.

Similar to today, but not as bad.

After forty years, all the efforts of all the dedicated people who shed their blood, sweat, and tears for meaningful reform have come to naught.

It doesn’t matter whether we have a Republican President or a Democratic President.  It doesn’t matter whether the elephants or the donkeys rule Congress.  Fool yourselves if you must, but it really doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

So, I’m getting out.  I’m not watching C-SPAN, or CNN, or Fox, or MSNBC any more.  I’m not reading The Nation or The Weekly Standard.  I won’t be voting, much less working for any candidates.  I’m done.

I’m going to take care of my own and live a good Christian life.  I’m going to write my stories, my poetry, and my novel.  I’m going to think locally and act locally.  Politics and government will have to go along without me.

Of course, they always have.  And that’s the point.

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union monopolized the lion’s share of the West’s attention in foreign policy, to say nothing of its defense appropriations.  It is argued that this emphasis on containing and defeating the Russian Empire led to the underfunding of efforts to gather intelligence on, and counter the rise of, the various factions of Islamic jihadism.

The lesson of the opening years of this decade, being aware of the multiplicity of threats on the global scene, may be falling through the cracks once again.  The Russian bear, largely ignored since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has come out of hibernation, and he’s hungry.

This is the argument advanced in Daniel Silva’s New York Times #1 bestselling international spy thriller, Moscow Rules.  In his eighth novel featuring art restorer and Israeli covert operative Gabriel Allon, Silva takes a look at the ties that bind the nouveaux riches oligarchs of post-Soviet Russia to the “elected” officials running the country.

The book finds Allon in an Italian estate in Umbria, working on the restoration of a painting for the Vatican and simultaneously enjoying his honeymoon.  Shortly after arriving at the villa, Allon’s Israeli supervisor summons him to run an errand for his service.  Gabriel is requested to meet in Rome with a Russian journalist who possesses information about a shadowy arms dealer and a plot that poses a great threat to the security of Israel and the West.

The meeting does not go well.  As Allon reluctantly follows the thread of information, we get a strong sense of Michael Corleone’s plight in The Godfather, Part III:  “Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in.”  Soon, he is on the trail of Ivan Kharkov, the arms dealer at the center of the threat.  Allon discovers that the best way to get to the heart of the matter may well be by way of Kharkov’s elegant art-collecting wife, Elena, who has grown tired of living in a gilded cage with her infamous husband holding the only key.

In usual Silva style, the reader is escorted on a tour at breakneck speed around the European continent.  From Rome to Moscow to the French Riviera and the English countryside, Allon’s plan draws him deeper into a murderous circle of Russian gangsters, politicians, and officers of the FSB, the security service successor of the KGB.

Moscow Rules derives its title from the work of another author of espionage thrillers, John le Carré, who coined the term in his classic, Smiley’s People. Silva has chosen one of the most important of the rules that must be observed when dealing with Russia as the epigram to his work:  “Don’t look back.  You are never completely alone.”

Silva never lets the plot drag, nor does the action stretch the reader’s credulity.  His vivid description of the people and places that populate his story brings a palpable reality to the read.  The last fifty or so pages of the novel definitely earn the clichéd but accurate blurb proclamation of “page turners.”

I strongly recommend Moscow Rules for fans of the thriller/suspense genre who have not previously been introduced to Gabriel Allon.  You’ll get a book that’s one part travelogue, one part art appreciation course, one part intrigue, and one part revelation of contemporary Russia, all wrapped up in a very satisfying thriller.

Moscow Rules.  Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Silva.  Paperback, 508 pages.  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Kens rating:  4.5 stars (out of five.)

"Moscow Rules" by Daniel Silva

Look out, world—Jimbo’s on the loose!

I’m referring to one of the most colorful people ever to grace the United States Capitol building, the once Honorable James Anthony Traficant, Jr., formerly U.S. Representative for the 17^th District of Ohio, centering on Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley in the northeastern part of the state.

Traficant, a renegade Democrat, singlehandedly was responsible for boosting the ratings of C-SPAN, the non-commercial network that broadcasts the proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives.  Every day, the House sets aside time at the beginning of the day’s session for what are known as “one-minutes”, sixty-second blocks of time where members can speak on virtually any topic they wish.  It was during these minutes that Traficant brought some entertainment to the otherwise staid and, it must be admitted, soporific chamber proceedings.

Seemingly every day, Traficant would claim his time in the well of the House.  Regular viewers had no trouble recognizing the man even without the identifying graphic at the bottom of the screen.  His clothes looked like they were purchased from the Goodwill store; his jacket frequently clashed with his slacks, and he favored unstylish plain, narrow ties.  To call him “rumpled” would be too charitable—he looked like he had slept in his clothes overnight more often than not.  Topping off, literally, the entire image was a helmet-like mullet of un-Congressionally shaggy silver-gray hair.

But more memorable than his appearance was the content and style of his one-minute speeches.  You never knew what topic Traficant would be speaking on that day—illegal immigration, the exploding Federal budget, and the power of multi-national corporations were favorite subjects, but he’d be just as likely to rant about one or another conspiracy perpetrated by shadowy figures from within the halls of power.  At the conclusion of his time, he would frequently utter what became his trademark line—“Beam me up!”

In 2002, Traficant was indicted by a federal grand jury and later convicted on ten counts of bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion.  On 24 July of that year he was expelled from the House of Representatives by a vote of 420-1; the sole dissenting vote was that of Gary Condit, who had gained notoriety of his own for his affair with Chandra Levy, a Washington intern who was later found murdered.

Traficant served a seven-year sentence in the Federal prison system.  He was transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution Ray Brook in upstate New York in July 2007 to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota.  It was from here that Traficant, now 68, was released this past Wednesday, wearing knee socks, shorts, a polo shirt, and a ponytail.

What lies ahead for Traficant?  No one knows… but the people who put him in office for nine terms in the House of Representatives still seem to have a great deal of affection for him.  Over 1200 people have already ponied up $20 each to attend a “Welcome Home Jimbo” rally to be held on Sunday; roughly half that number have bought t-shirts with that slogan emblazoned on them.  It should be interesting…

“When I get out (of prison,) I’ll grab a sword like Maximus Meridius and as a gladiator, I’ll stab people in the crotch.”

If the Great War, as the First World War was called when it was the only war fought by all of the world’s principal powers, was The War to End All Wars, it was an abject failure.  It can, in fact, be argued that the Great War didn’t end on 11 November 1918, but went into a form of suspended animation…

Only to be revived again at 04:40, precisely seventy years ago today, on 1 September 1939, when forces of the German Army and Air Force rolled across the Polish frontier and swept aside the brave but ultimately futile resistance of the Poles.  Two days after the invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany once again.  Russia, initially allied with the Germans, would find herself at war with them less than two years later when Hitler pushed his forces into the Soviet Union in an ill-fated invasion.  In June 1940, Mussolini’s Italy took on France and England and helped spread the war to the continent of Africa.  In December of 1941, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and its subsequent offensive on the Philippines and other areas of the Pacific brought a truly global face to the conflict.

There are many lessons to be drawn from the two World Wars, but I’d like to highlight just one for your consideration today.  Despite our strongest and most fervent wishes to the contrary, there will always be men, and therefore nations, who wish to dominate and enslave and exploit other people for their own wrongful ends.

And there were always be men, and nations, that will sacrifice their comfort and convenience and, for far too many, their lives to stand up against the aggressors.