As you may have heard, George W. Bush gave Oscar Biscet the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That is, he will present it to him on Monday. Or rather: He will give it to him in absentia. Dr. Biscet is a political prisoner in Cuba.

		Steyn: The Superbower Blase: A Medicaid Buy-Off Sanders: Blanche Lincoln’s Balancing Act Costa: Saturday Night Fever Miller: The Man Who Would Kill Lincoln Hibbs: Just Bite Her Already Goldberg: We Need Your Help Spruiell: Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Editors: End It, Don’t Amend It Goldberg: Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later Murdock: Medicare: A Glimpse of the Future? Krauthammer: Travesty in New York Charen: Holder’s True Motive Lowry: Barack Obama’s Chump Diplomacy Spakovsky: Criminalizing Health-Care Freedom Anderson: Roadmap to Victory

I have been yelling about him ever since this column began, I believe — and that was in March 2001. (I think it was March.) He is one of the bravest and most inspired of the Cuban political prisoners. He is a physician, an “Afro-Cuban,” a follower of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. If he were a prisoner of anyone but Castro — a Communist dictator — he’d be world-famous. If he were a South African, under apartheid, he’d be on the stamps of virtually every country in the world.

Let me continue in this vein: If he were a prisoner under a right-wing dictatorship, he’d be featured on 60 Minutes every week. He’d be on the cover of Time magazine every week. College campuses would hold sit-ins. Biscet’s face would adorn posters and T-shirts. Etc., etc.

You will find a website dedicated to him here.

In awarding this medal, President Bush — not for the first time — has shown huge brass ones. How many other presidents would have done this? I can’t think of any (save our boy, the 40th). And don’t hold your breath for a president in the future who will act this way.

As I said in a recent column, conservatives are down on President Bush, blaming him for everything under the sun, picking at him. Sure, he’s made mistakes. But he also has greatness in him. And this was a great act. In bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Oscar Biscet — an all-but-forgotten and all-but-helpless man in a Cuban dungeon — George Bush has done an incredibly large-hearted and important thing.

Do not think it’s merely symbolic: This award has rocketed through dissident circles, and nerved Cubans and their well-wishers everywhere.

President Bush also gave a Medal of Freedom to Ben Hooks. When I was coming of age, he was head of the NAACP, and he was on TV constantly, calling President Reagan a racist. It was Hooks, in fact, who turned me — hard — against the NAACP. He was notably unfair and mean. I’m sure he has done better things in his life. And it’s large-hearted of Bush to give him this award.

Of course, it’s nothing that a Democratic president wouldn’t do, right? I mean, give a Medal of Freedom to a man who repeatedly trashed a Democratic hero. Right? Right?

Was interested in this story, from the AP, titled “Some US Diplomats Angry Over Iraq Posts.” The lead sentence: “Several hundred U.S. diplomats vented anger and frustration Wednesday about the State Department’s decision to force foreign service officers to take jobs in Iraq, with some likening it to a ‘potential death sentence.’”

I can certainly understand these State Department employees. But I can also understand American needs in Iraq. A lot of people have a romantic view of the Foreign Service: You sit at Les Deux Magots in Paris, griping to your friends about Republicans back home who get elected. But, as we all know, sometimes life is terribly unromantic.

You may have read the story — circulated by Drudge — about the Columbia professor who had a swastika sprayed on her door. I was a little surprised by this: I didn’t know there was a professor at Columbia worthy of this kind of attack. I assumed they were all Said-ists, safe from swastikas daubed on doors.

Know this: Long after the cessation of death and taxes, there will be swastikas daubed, sprayed, or scrawled on doors. Of all viruses, it seems about the most dislodgeable.

And imagine yourself as Elizabeth Midlarsky, the professor whose door it was. You had family members killed in the Holocaust; you teach about the Holocaust; and one fine morning you come to work and find the swastika on your door — just as in the old days. Nice, huh? Terribly, terribly reassuring.

Department of Plus Ça Change: Naomi Campbell, the mega-hot model, used to go down to Havana to see and smooch with Castro. But, as we’ve noted before in this column, Hugo Chávez — the mini-Castro — is the new destination dictator. And Naomi, as we read in this article, now goes to him. Real sweet.

But why does she deny Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the pleasure of her company? Not anti-American enough?

Let’s have a little music. For a review of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, conducted by Yuri Temirkanov, with violinist Julia Fischer, soloist, go here. For a review of Mozart’s Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, go here. For a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Christoph von Dohnányi, with violinist Nikolaj Znaider, soloist, go here. And for a review of the pianist Yefim Bronfman, playing with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, go here.

All reviews were published in the New York Sun.

Hey, didn’t I say it would be a little music?


CONTINUED    1    2  Next >