One of the downsides of avoiding the news is that I sometimes miss something of importance that has nothing to do with The War.

Last week, former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan passed away due to complications following a ruptured appendix.

I was disappointed: the Senator was someone I'd long admired and would have liked to have met to bask in one of his lectures on poverty or foreign policy or any other of his many areas of expertise.

What I admired most about him was that not only did his stands on policy seem to be based on a genuine desire to do The Right Thing, but he had the curiosity and intellectual discipline to make a strong effort to identify just what The Right Thing might be -- he definitely was not a fuzzy-headed academic without understanding of the real world.

Anyway, I think I'm going to go dig out my copy of his Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics and raise a glass in salute to a guy did what he could to make the world a better place.