(hat tip to Athenae at First Draft)

Please take a moment to remember Irene Sendler.
What she did the last time nations with the kind of economic and political power as ours chose to behave as filthily as ours saved the lives of countless children; she paid a terrible price for her kindness, as she was tortured upon capture by the German ’conquerors’ of Poland.

In this Feb. 21, 2008, file photo, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger, left, speaks with Holocaust hero Irena Sendler, right, during a meeting in Warsaw, Poland. The family of Polish social worker Sendler, credited with rescuing 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis during the Holocaust, says she has died. Sendler’s daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, says her 98-year-old mother died Monday, May 12, 2008, morning in a Warsaw hospital. Sendler organized the rescue of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany’s brutal World War II occupation. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

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Over at First Draft there’s a sort of informal poll on whether cell phones are a staple or a luxury. What sorts of things — extra-governmental *things* — do you consider necessities?  Read more