From The New Yorker: The Most Important Criminal Conviction in Brazil’s History. “One thing that every Brazilian knows is that while Lula is the country’s first President to be convicted of corruption, he is almost certainly not the first to have committed it. The difference is that, in the past, Brazilian politicians could quash any investigation that threatened them. The irony of Lula’s downfall is that, while his Administration was siphoning billions of dollars from public coffers, it was also allowing an independent judiciary to flourish.” (There’s a lesson in there somewhere, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a good one.)