Rep. Sonny Callahan, who died Friday, helped stabilize the Middle East

MOBILE, Alabama — All too often, once-powerful U.S. representatives are less remembered in history books than their Senate counterparts. Republican former Alabama Rep. H.L. “Sonny” Callahan, who died Friday at age 88, is one worth remembering.

Because the East Coast cognoscenti tend to look down on Alabama, very few Washington know-it-alls would have predicted that a former 18-wheeler driver from the heart of Dixie would have been the driving force behind a major, successful shift in the U.S. foreign aid packages to Israel (especially) and Egypt. Yet, that’s what Callahan did from his perch in the mid-1990s as the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.