The First Time I Heard of Barack During the period of roughly February 1992 to mid 1994, I was making frequent trips to Moscow, Russia, in the process of starting a software development joint-venture company with some people from the Russian scientific community. One of the men in charge on the Russian side was named V. M.; he had a wife named T.M. V. was a level-headed scientist while his wife was rather deeply committed to the losing Communist cause - a cause she obviously was not abandoning. One evening, during a trip early in 1992, the American half of...