Back in the early 80's, when I was the Public Affairs Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, it came to pass that the US support for the International Monetary Fund was up for reauthorization.

Under normal circumstances this would be been a walk-over; what with the Reagan White House in full support and both Republicans and Democrats elbowing each other out of the way to proclaim their love for the agency.

Gramm realized that there was language in the bill which forbad the IMF from lending money to any nation which practiced Apartheid. There was only one: South Africa.

The IMF was not permitted to to make loans based upon politics - only economics - so there was a lengthy explanation about why Apartheid was an economic barrier to growth - prohibiting free movement of labor and some other stuff I can't now remember.

Congressman Gramm looked at that and proposed an amendment which said, in effect, at any point in the bill where the word "Apartheid" appears, insert the phrase "or Communism" because the same economic argument the drafters had used to describe the evils of Apartheid, also described Communism.

The amendment passed, and I had my folks send out a press release to the newspapers in the districts of the Democrats in the House who had voted against the Gramm amendment.

So-and-So Votes to Use American Taxpayer Money to Support Communism, sounds about what I might have headlined the release.

Not only that, but I sent my staff to the Federal Election Commission to get the names of the ten-or-so largest supporters of those Democrats in the House and mailed a copy of the release to each of them.

The White House howled in protest and offered a letter from President Reagan to any Democrat who thought he might need it to offset what I had done.

There were, of course, calls for my immediate firing.

Who came to my defense? Reps. Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm. They introduced a motion at the next meeting of the NRCC not only defending me, but ordering me to look for similar opportunities.

Mullfoto of the Day

A rare shot of a flock of the national bird of the United Arab Emirates: The Crane.

Catchy Caption of the Day

Actual Caption:

NGC 520 is the product of a collision between two disk galaxies that started 300 million years ago. It exemplifies the middle stages of the merging process: the disks of the parent galaxies have merged together, but the nuclei have not yet coalesced.

It is about 100 million light-years away and about 100,000 light-years across.

This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on April 24, 2008.

Ok. I am willing to accept the notion that maybe, perhaps, I am not as big a deal as I think I am.

(NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team - STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and B. Whitmore - STScI/Handout/Reuters)