But, while the physical presentation was flawless, I felt a strange disproportion between the ceremonial grandeur of the occasion and the contentious politics of Thatcher herself.
The House has already approved such an amendment by 286-130; butoto be ratified it needs to pass the Senate by a two-thirds majority, and then to win the support of 38 state legislatures.The most striking thing about the debate was the disproportion between the problem and the proposed remedy.
The figures bear out his horror: nearly one prisoner in four in America is locked up for a non-violent drug offence, and drug crimes now often receive harsher punishments than violent assaults, rapes or murders.Such disproportion rightly infuriates Mr Husak.
Blacks and Latinos are jailed for drug offences in striking disproportion to their numbers: according to Human Rights Watch, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.
The diaspora, some 2m-3m mostly disenchanted Zimbabweans, is barred from voting.Another obstacle is the recent gerrymandering of constituencies, which gives rural areas, where Mr Mugabe is strongest, a large disproportion of seats in the 210-member parliament.
He may also be vulnerable to the charge of disproportion: 30 of those killed on April 28th were said to be sheltering in a mosque, and most were armed only with machetes.The situation in the south is more a source of bewilderment than alarm to most Thais, but it has dented the prime minister's aura of invincibility.
The brutal disproportion of power between the United States and its southern neighbours means that inter-American relations will never be tension-free.
But is this disproportion really such a bad thing?... disproportionate coverage of Israel is, in many ways, the flip side and the natural outgrowth of the disproportionate support that Israel enjoys, especially in America.
Black children are five times as likely as whites to be excluded from schools for difficult behaviour; other immigrant groups do not show the same disproportion.
Rereading a famous passage in which the Ten Thousand first glimpse the sea, one is struck by the disproportion between its remembered impact and its brevity and indirect approach.
The disproportion of the number of physicians available between developing and developed countries is similarly wide.
