Adolf Hitler made the news posthumously when his stash of gramophone records turned up in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer; he'd found them in the Reich chancellery when Berlin fell in May1945 and "liberated" them.
The most striking aspect of the collection is that Nazi Germany's great Wagner fan, champion of Pure Aryan music, had had the good taste to collect some of the finest recordings made by Jewish musicians, including performances by pianist Artur Schnabel, whose mother was killed by the Nazis, and violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who founded the Palestine Orchestra, forerunner of the Israel Philharmonic, in 1936.
There's doubtless an ideologically acceptable explanation. Maybe Der Fuehrerwas planning another of his exhibits of Decadent Art. There was one that featured works of Jewish painters; its contents are now highly prized by collectors.
Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he needs to question Alberto Gonzales about the kind of advice the attorney general, now on his way out of office, gave George W. Bush.
So much for the constitutional separation of powers. If Congress could learn all the confidences of the executive branch, who would risk giving the president candid advice? Which may be why just about every president - going all the way back to George Washington and the foofaraw over Jay's Treaty - has fought congressional attempts to monitor presidential communications.
Imagine the ruckus that would erupt, and rightly so, if the White House suggested that it be allowed access to Senator Leahy's strategy sessions with his aides - or even with his fellow Democratic senators as they cook up these power grabs.
If a president or his advisers could be compelled to testify about their conversations, the constitutional separation of powers "would be shattered, and the president, contrary to the fundamental theories of constitutional government, would become a mere arm of the legislative branch of the government (for) he would feel during his term of office that his every act might be subject to official inquiry and possible distortion for political purposes." - Harry S Truman, rejecting a subpoena from the House Committeeon Un-American activities, November 1953.