COUNSEL FOR THE LEFT: We note with great admiration the life of Victor Rabinowitz, champion of and lawyer to the left for nearly seven decades, who died at the age of 96 on November 16. His grandson, Michael Rabinowitz, who carries on in Victor's spirit as a political director at UNITE HERE, offered these words:

"My grandfather was someone who participated in a million (almost literally, it seems) good fights to make the world better--in organizations from the National Lawyers Guild to the American Labor Party in New York. He provided legal representation to unions from 1199 to the Teamsters, civil rights activists, the Black Panthers and left-wing governments like Salvador Allende's in Chile. Wherever there was a left, he was of it. While he knew the world was many shades of gray, he also knew there was a right and a wrong. And he relished taking a stand for right--even (perhaps especially) if it was unpopular. As I think about my grandfather, I will treasure the great personal memories--the baseball games, the free legal advice and the smile he'd form when he was about to make a particularly devastating argument. But what will live on, what he has passed on to me, is that it's not enough to believe the right rhetoric--you have to get your hands dirty. Victor was my moral and political compass, and that's something that will never die."

TWO NATIONS: A recent New York Times/CBS poll of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire revealed that America is indeed a deeply polarized country, not when it comes to abortion or other hot-button social issues but on a matter often thought to be of broad concern: national security. According to the poll, 30 percent of Republicans in Iowa and 29 percent in New Hampshire rank national security as the most important issue in deciding which candidate they'll support next year. But just 6 percent of New Hampshire Dems and 3 percent of Iowa Dems feel this way. On no other issue is the gap so wide, a fact about which the Times was curiously silent. What might account for the chasm?

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