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John McCain will host a finance reception at the Strategic Air and Space Museum.

John Hood: I think you can get a clearer picture of what made Helms unique -- and how he came to be respected by millions both inside and outside his home state, often to their surprise -- by considering the story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's visit to the United States in 1975. Solzhenitsyn was a hero to Helms. After just one year of service in the Senate, Helms introduced a resolution to make Solzhenitsyn an honorary American citizen. It failed in the House. Then Helms helped to arrange a Washington visit for the exiled Soviet dissident the following year. At every turn, he faced obstruction by key figures in the Ford administration, led by secretary of state Henry Kissinger. When, thanks to the diligent work of Helms's staff, Solzhenitsyn was indeed brought to the country, Helms tried to set up a meeting for him with President Ford. Not only was he rebuffed, but the State Department even forbade its employees to attend Solzhenitsyn's major speech (to the AFL-CIO). So what did the freshman senator from North Carolina do? He went to the floor of the Senate, called it a "sad day for our country," and accused Ford of "cowering timidity for fear of offending Communists." It was a public-relations disaster for the White House. Among the conservatives angered by the administration's parade of limp-noodle lickspittles was Ronald Reagan, who lambasted Ford in his newspaper column. Trying to rectify the situation, the White House approached Helms about a meeting with Solzhenitsyn, but refused to issue a written invitation for fear of supplying tangible evidence of caving in. Lacking such an invitation, Solzhenitsyn refused.

A January 11, 1995 Jesse Helms interview to the Middle East Quarterly.

MEGAN MCARDLE: There's also this dodgy belief, fervently embraced by many liberals advocating regulations--"Look, even a big business head who would be regulated believes it's a good idea! It must be!" Au contraire, mon frere. The heads of big businesses often love big new regulatory bodies, because they have the resources to best negotiate a complex regime. The end result of this kind of radical regulation is usually that the big companies capture the regulator and use it to shut out competition. Really big companies are more like bureaucracies than capitalist enterprises. See, e.g., Dilbert.

THE LONDON TIMES: Barack Obama's policy switches are giving the Left whiplash. "Change, it turns out, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Having campaigned for the past year as the agent of transformation, the man who would lead an historic shift in America's political direction, Barack Obama is discovering that there is quite a lot he likes about the way things are. . . . If next week he named Dick Cheney as his running-mate and revealed that he spends his spare time drilling for oil in wildlife habitats, the only surprise would be that it took him so long." This is not the Barack Obama that I knew. Well, that might nail down the InstaPundit endorsement . . . .

Today, major-league baseball players will wear special Fourth of July caps. Nice idea.

THIS is a very nice photo. So's this.

The Obama family celebrated July 4 in Montana. (AP Photo) BUTTE, Montana (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama celebrated the Fourth of July with his family in Montana. Cheers greeted Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters as they arrived to watch the town parade. The crowd also broke into song, singing a rendition of [...]

Yesterday is five years since I started blogging non-nicely. I can't believe I've kept it up this long! Thomas Jefferson is attributed with the adage that the highest form of patriotism is dissent. He may not actually have said it, but it is a sentiment I heartily agree with. In this spirit I now present my annual July 4th patriotic message. My inspiration this year is recent remarks by Wesley Clark regarding John McCain. Clark has made it clear that he respects McCain's patriotism, and re

Ken Bode, a former NBC and CNN correspondent, has this advice to John McCain if he indeed plans a long war in Iraq: You should announce today that you would offer legal, green-card immigrants a fast track to citizenship in return for overseas military service. Many would serve willingly to achieve the cherished goal of citizenship. No huge change of policy is involved. The Army is quietly doing this already. According to military statistics, 4,600 immigrants in uniform became citizens in 2005.