The Week

New Hampshire. The Granite State. Area: 9,304 square miles. Population: 606,921. Motto: Live Free Or Die. Flower: the purple lilac. Bird: the purple finch. Tree: the white birch. Song: “Old New Hampshire.” The state is often confused with a television show bearing the same name. Its foreign trade, involving the import of politicians and the export of forecasts, reaches cyclical peaks in the even-numbered years. It borders on Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and the impossible. The peaks of its Presidential Range were named after distinguished foreigners. It was one of the thirteen most original states, and remains so to this day.

Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters Union, has been convicted of jury-tampering; he will appeal. In thirty years of scrapes with police and prosecutor he has always appealed, and he has never been jailed. If he loses this time, he’ll be put away for up to ten years. A jury has said he’s a crook and deserves it; but those who love the majesty of the Anglo-Saxon law have been sad to see that majesty stoop, in this case, to a level of ill-tempered hectoring and harassment that is not far from naked persecution. But man’s law is one thing, and the justice of the universe another. It’s cause for wonder, a kind of ancient Grecian wonder, that Jimmy Hoffa has been struck down at the very moment of his triumph; that, after a lifetime aimed at achieving the incredible power implicit in a nation-wide union contract for almost a million Teamsters who control everything that rolls, within a month of his coup he’s canned. He’s a quarrelsome and imperious wretch; he was hounded by the law; he’ll appeal. But sooner or later the universe metes out its justice, from which there is no appeal.

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New Hampshire. The Granite State. Area: 9,304 square miles. Population: 606,921. Motto: Live Free Or Die. Flower: the purple lilac. Bird: the purple finch. Tree: the white birch. Song: “Old New Hampshire.” The state is often confused with a television show bearing the same name. Its foreign trade, involving the import of politicians and the export of forecasts, reaches cyclical peaks in the even-numbered years. It borders on Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and the impossible. The peaks of its Presidential Range were named after distinguished foreigners. It was one of the thirteen most original states, and remains so to this day.

Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters Union, has been convicted of jury-tampering; he will appeal. In thirty years of scrapes with police and prosecutor he has always appealed, and he has never been jailed. If he loses this time, he’ll be put away for up to ten years. A jury has said he’s a crook and deserves it; but those who love the majesty of the Anglo-Saxon law have been sad to see that majesty stoop, in this case, to a level of ill-tempered hectoring and harassment that is not far from naked persecution. But man’s law is one thing, and the justice of the universe another. It’s cause for wonder, a kind of ancient Grecian wonder, that Jimmy Hoffa has been struck down at the very moment of his triumph; that, after a lifetime aimed at achieving the incredible power implicit in a nation-wide union contract for almost a million Teamsters who control everything that rolls, within a month of his coup he’s canned. He’s a quarrelsome and imperious wretch; he was hounded by the law; he’ll appeal. But sooner or later the universe metes out its justice, from which there is no appeal.