MSNBC reports that former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died.

For whatever else might be said of Yeltsin — and there is plenty, good and bad — no one of my generation will ever forget the picture of him standing on the tank in those crucial days during the attempted coup by old-line Communist generals against Gorbachev.

The amount of sheer physical courage it took for Yeltsin to confront the military was mind-boggling. When the Red Army soldiers didn’t shoot him, I knew the world’s long international nightmare, Soviet Communism, was over.

Roll Call reports that our top military commander in Iraq will make a rare visit to Capitol Hill next week, but House majority leaders initially declined the Defense Department’s offer of a members-only closed-door briefing with Army Gen. David Petraeus.

Some might recall that it was only quite recently when these same House leaders travelled several thousand miles to talk with President al-Assad of Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism according to both the Bush and Clinton administrations. But when it comes to travelling eight feet across the hall to meet with the commander of our own soldiers, an entirely different attitude emerges.

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Yesterday’s mass murder at Virginia Tech University will doubtless re-ignite the Second Amendment debate. While the American Civil Rights Union has its view of that issue, it is not our purpose, for now, to discuss it. This is a time in which respect for the murder victims counsels circumspection.

We can, however, treasure the heroism that was shown by some during the siege. Below, Paul Mirengoff, writing on Power Line, notes the story of a 76 year-old Holocaust survivor, Professor Liviu Lebrescu, who gave his life so that his students could escape. Paul in turn quotes Ronald Reagan, who asked — […]