Congratulations are in order for Senator Rubio for his speech this week in respect of Cuba. He was replying to one of the most disgraceful pack of lies ever uwrapped in the upper chamber, a report by Senator Thos. Harkin, a Democrat of Iowa, on what he characterized as his “two recent fact-finding” trips to the prison island run by Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul. Mr. Harkin was unsuccessful at finding facts. Instead he treated the Senate to one communist canard after another. It was all taken apart by Mr. Rubio in a speech that was made more impassioned by the fact that the Florida Republican has so much direct family acquaintance with the communist tyranny that has gripped the Island since its “revolution.”

It happens that as Mr. Rubio spoke a Soviet . . . excuse us, a Russian warship fetched up in the harbor at Havana. It’s the Viktor Leonov, a Vishnya-class intelligence ship that is armed with 30 millimeter guns and anti-aircraft weapons. It was named after a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union, who fought fiercely in World War II and died in 2003. Matt Drudge, who has kept an eagle eye on the Caribbean, put it up as the top story on his Web site, under a photo — from another moment — of Mr. Obama extending a hand to President Putin, who stares at it with disdain. Mr. Obama was offering to Comrade Putin the same hand which he once used to shake the hand of Comrade Hugo Chavez of Venezuela

There has been some talk that Senator Rubio damaged himself by taking a leading role in the fight for immigration reform. The situation with Cuba is one, if only one, reminder of the fact that America has been a big net winner in the immigrants who have fled here. It’s but rarely noted these days that the president who implemented the embargo Mr. Harkin wants us to lift was John Kennedy, who would be aghast at the kinds of things that are now said by his party elders. So Mr. Rubio moves to the ground held by the idealist Cold War Democrats and the pro-liberty Republicans, center ground, in our opinion, for a winning platform in 2016 election. Mr. Rubio’s speech on Cuba is a reminder of the eloquence and passion he can bring to this issue.