I remarked to a local standing next to me, “It is so interesting that the British tolerate all this anti-government talk, here, right in the heart of the city.”

“Sir,” said he, “we believe in free speech here and have found the ‘nut’ of today may well be the prophet of the tomorrow. Many a ‘weird’ idea first preached here is now part of our national government system.”

I thought of that when I interviewed Mike Moloney, 65, Tom Lantos’ Republican opponent for the Congressional District 12 seat, who reigns as our local “political nut.”

Moloney describes himself as, “A shanty Irish ‘mick’ from Brooklyn, with white trash tendencies, who is being domesticated along the way.”

But don’t buy that. Part of the domestication process has been to graduate from James Madison High in Brooklyn, where the terms of the U.S. Constitution were drummed into his head. This is one of the most prestigious high schools in New York City, one that turned out such luminaries as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And he followed up with St. John’s, a superb university in Queens, New York.

So, this is all an Irish put on. This guy’s no “nut.” He is an incisive analyst of contemporary national and international political events, cutting right down to the bone of issues, and a fierce defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, a copy of which he carries along with him like any bible-thumping preacher on the circuit.

I guess it takes someone like me, a lower-middle-class city dweller from the tough ethnic streets of Chicago, to grasp and understand his gruff manners and pierce the public facade he places to conceal his keen street-wise and educated intelligence.

He is a brawler, no doubt about that, but in the code of the streets, he respects only the “fair fight.” And he feels that code has been savagely violated in the years since the last declaration of war in 1941. Both parties, in his view, have been ignoring the constitutional mandates and did anything they needed to do to go around it from the phony “Gulf of Tonkin” resolution excuse for the Vietnam involvement to the undeclared war-invasion of Iraq. And, who can argue with him on that?

He argues Tom Lantos has repeatedly been a complicit facilitator in much of this tragic history.

Moloney may label himself a Republican, but he is no defender of the current national administration. If elected, his first act would be a motion to impeach both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for multiple violations of the provisions of that cherished political bible, the Constitution. Then, move to have Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fired, and cite others involved in the Iraq invasion, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith for treason.

Pretty extreme sounding, but if adjudicated in an impartial court of law, from recent revelations, he might have a very strong case.

But, he is not a “Johnny one note.” If elected, he chooses to work for traditional Republican values, such as reducing the deficit and the horrendous national debt and reducing the size of national government. But, as an independent, he wants to fight to give up the hopeless war on drugs, already costing us $25 billion, with no visible effects, and insists we must reduce corporate welfare as we have scaled back the welfare of those at the poorer end of our economic scale.

So, if he is a purveyor of such truths, why is he being called a “nut” and not given more respect and votes from this district? I would gather it would be because of his take no prisoners attitude, no compromise with the truth, as he sees it, and with a Brooklynite’s bald-faced disdain for polished and pussy-footed debate.

But let’s give the guy credit. He has real guts. He gets virtually no media coverage and having taken no contributions, his major campaigning has been reduced to “call in” talk shows and parading back and forth with signs in front of Lantos’ District Office. The latter is fraught with the risk of physical attacks. In fact, one toe-to-toe confrontation with a marine, I gather, ended when the marine contemplated Moloney’s still formidable athletic build.

But, reports Moloney, the middle fingers of the early days are being gradually replaced by thumbs ups and V for victory signals, so maybe he is winning in that sector of the political wars.

Will he give up? Not on your life. Not as long as he is still standing in the ring, true, battered and bruised, but just waiting for that moment when the opponent underestimates him and lets his guard down, so Moloney may administer the knockout punch. With this guy’s drive, don’t bet against that.

Yah! Well, OK! Maybe, he is a nut. But, like the British, we need nuts like Moloney around to remind us of what the Founding Fathers really intended and what the “power” politicians of today have been clearly subverting.