Today is the 90th birthday of a great man—my friend, Ron Paul. During my 30 years in the U.S. House, I served with almost 1500 other members. To me, Ron Paul was the best. He was a man of great courage and conviction. He never wavered. Every speech he made, every vote he cast, was based on his core beliefs in freedom, liberty and peace. For many years, I had hanging on a wall in my Knoxville office a guote I learned from Bill Kauffman, the great columnist and author. It is from a 1930 novel...

I remember like yesterday when Dr. Paul called me into his Member office in 203 Cannon with a draft of his famous "What If" speech. He had written it in his own hand and he asked me to go over it and clean it up a bit. Not unusual for how he writes: from the heart. And afterward I spent a good deal of time in his office with a stopwatch making sure he could deliver it under the five minute rule. Shuffling the papers. What do we have to cut. Which paragraph could be spoken a bit faster. I knew...