Tom Lantos

Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he will not run for re-election after he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. Lantos, who often discomfited right and left alike with his unflagging insistence on respect for human rights anywhere and everywhere they are abused, will be missed. His press release announcing his decision is the best recent description I have read of why this country matters and why it continues to be the powerful attraction it is -- " It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." Our challenge, Lou Dobbs and others aside, is not to close or further limit that promise and opportunity, but to extend it further, and most especially to those who currently hold the United States in deep suspicion.