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Former Representative from Illinois, Henry Hyde is dead at 83. Story from Fox News.

Former Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, a strong foreign policy and anti-abortion voice in Congress and a leader of House impeachment proceedings in 1998, died Thursday. He was 83.

Jayson Javitz at Wizbang has this tribute.

Javitz's concluding paragraph: At a time when conservatives tend to look at former sportscasters and spoiled academics for guidance, Hyde was a man of action who accomplished more than cheap talk. Hyde retired on his own terms and personally chose his successor.

Here is the tribute given by Rep. Daniel Lipinski, Illinois 3rd District, on Hyde's retirement. Here is the conclusion: Henry is willing to work together to reach consensus and to reach important goals for our country. No matter what you thought about where he stood on issues, you listened to Henry Hyde because you knew when he spoke he would be eloquent, he would have good arguments, and you should listen to him. Now, I am very happy that I had this opportunity to serve with Henry. He has served our Nation so well. He has served the State of Illinois so well, and I know that his legacy will certainly reflect his commitment to Illinois, to his district, and to our Nation. His insights, his passion, and his presence will deeply be missed. He truly was also a man of faith, which he brought here and always used that; it was always important to what he did in the House. We wish Henry all the best in his retirement. And we are all truly grateful for his service.

Hyde will be remembered, with affection and with dislike, for the Hyde Amendment, which limited the provision of abortions by Medicaid. Here is a reasonably evenhanded description of the amendment from the pro-abortion perspective:

The Hyde Amendment

After Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion in 1973, Medicaid covered abortion care without restriction. In 1976, Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) introduced an amendment that later passed to limit federal funding for abortion care. Effective in 1977, this provision, known as the Hyde Amendment, specifies what abortion services are covered under Medicaid.

Over the past two decades, Congress has debated the limited circumstances under which federal funding for abortion should be allowed. For a brief period of time, coverage included cases of rape, incest, life endangerment, and physical health damage to the woman. However, beginning in 1979, the physical health exception was excluded, and in 1981 rape and incest exceptions were also excluded.

In September 1993, Congress rewrote the provision to include Medicaid funding for abortions in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. The present version of the Hyde Amendment requires coverage of abortion in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.


His political career, including personal information, may be found here at Congresspedia.

After his retirement, President Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom. News release including text of President Bush's remarks.
For years, Reagan detractors have tenaciously clung to a memory that portrays the "Great Communicator" not so subtly appealing to white racists by kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the infamous scene of the horrific murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.

Last week in the New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert asserted that Reagan "was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon."

Herbert's analysis (in full here):

"Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

"He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about 'states’ rights' to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you."

In an op-ed piece in the Times today (Sunday), long-time Ronald Reagan chronicler, Lou Cannon, rejects "the notion that...Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by a coded appeal to white-supremacist voters."

Cannon writes:

"The mythology of Neshoba is wrong in two distinct ways. First, Ronald Reagan was not a racist. Second, his Neshoba speech was not an effective symbolic appeal to white voters. Instead, it was a political misstep that cost him support."

The article (in full here) is worth the read. No one knew the real Ronald Reagan better than Cannon as a reporter and subsequent biographer. In addition to his testimony to Reagan's character, Cannon makes an important point that the appeal to race (such as it was) in Neshoba County played no positive role in the election. He also reminds us that the negative publicity surrounding the incident emanated from the Carter campaign, which quickly seized upon the embarrassing appearance immediately and spun the incident into a long-lasting negative Reagan myth. Cannon also reminds us that Reagan was not born a candidate with perfect political pitch; rather, the "Great Communicator" grew into the job.

An aside: Gordon Wood tells a story about George Washington in which his contemporaries imagined that he was born into this world fully clothed and, upon arrival, quickly executed a flawless gentlemanly bow before his audience. It is sometimes hard to keep in mind the human limitations of our heroes

Having said all that, Cannon does not completely exonerate Reagan in my mind. The question remains: ultimately unsuccessful or not, what message was the candidate attempting to convey with this clumsy stop so near to the tragic events of the summer of 1964?

Important Item: The well-argued defense of Reagan at Neshoba by David Brooks earlier in the month here.
Belgium still is without a new coalition government after June 10 elections. The problem? The nation is composed of two distinct groups speaking two languages and having two cultures: French speaking and Dutch speaking. Story from Breitbart.

Do we here in the U.S. really want to create a nation without a common language and a shared culture? What sort of glue would hold us together then?
An AP story from the New York Daily News.

MOSCOW - Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet-era spy chief who oversaw the espionage work of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and helped mediate the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, has died, a Russian official said Friday. He was 93.

Feklisov died Oct. 26, said Sergei Ivanov, a spokesman for the Foreign Intelligence Service, one of the successor agencies to the KGB. He gave no cause of death.

. . .

Years later, he published an autobiography, "The Man Behind the Rosenbergs," in which he described his work guiding the intelligence-gathering work of the couple. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 after being convicted of supplying the Soviet Union with top-secret information on U.S. efforts to develop the atomic bomb.

Feklisov said Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet sympathizer who handed over secrets on military electronics, but not the atomic bomb. He said Ethel Rosenberg played no part in spying - claims that were consistent with declassified U.S. intercepts of Soviet spy communications.

He was later dispatched to London, where he made contact with Klaus Fuchs, the German-born scientist who worked at the U.S. atom bomb project as well as at Britain's Harwell nuclear research laboratory. Information passed to the Soviets by Fuchs and another spy, David Greenglass, gave the Soviets crucial new information on a new way to ignite an atomic bomb.

In 1950, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years for disclosing nuclear secrets.
Full Story.

Contrary to the Liberal Orthodoxy of the 70s-90s, there were rational grounds for the Red Scare of the 1950s. The Soviets were active in spying and other activities in the U.S. McCarthy was still a power-hungry demogogue, but there was a bear on the prowl.