When we look back on 2008, it will be remembered not only for all the things that we have gained as a nation, but what we have lost as well.

And one of the saddest things we lost was Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones…

She had blasted through her own barriers. The daughter of a skycap at Cleveland's old Hopkins Airport, Tubbs Jones scrapped her way through college and law school at Case Western Reserve and rose to become a Cuyahoga County judge and, later, chief prosecutor, the first African-American and the first woman elected to that post. She made it to Congress in 1998, representing an East Cleveland district in which she was already something of an institution. In Washington, Tubbs Jones was best known as a ranking member on the ethics committee — arguably an odd choice, since she had a penchant for jetting off to exotic lands on privately financed junkets.

Booooo-ring. Didn't she do anything cool?

Younger voters probably recognized her more for her good-natured appearances on Comedy Central’s "Colbert Report," like the one in 2005, during which Stephen Colbert, previewing a mock TV show he called "Judge Tubbs," acted out both sides of a lovers' quarrel while the straight-faced Tubbs Jones embraced her role as the stern arbiter. Rare among politicians, she had an appreciation for the absurd.

Now, that's an achievement I can get behind.

Here's Congresswoman Tubbs Jones on The Colbert Report…

And here's Stephen's tribute to the good congresswoman shortly after her untimely death…