The Dead

I've never been 100 percent clear on why you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but suffice it to say that while there were many more vile politicians in the world than the now-dead Jesse Helms they were pretty much all brutal dictators and the like. For a late 20th century United States Senator, Helms was just awful -- a bigot who's incredibly retrograde foreign policy views managed to do a surprising amount of harm for a non-president and he's probably responsible for all manner of ills I don't even know about. Good riddance.