Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a Navy ace during the Vietnam war who became a congressman — before his conviction for accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes sent him to prison for 100 months — was released from federal custody Tuesday. The former F-4 pilot served eight terms as a GOP congressman from San Diego before being sentenced to more than eight years imprisonment in 2006 for steering government contracts to firms who had plied him with a luxury house, a Rolls-Royce, Persian carpets and antique furniture. He was released from what a federal-prison spokesman called “home confinement,” after getting some time off for good behavior. Cunningham has said he plans to settle in Arkansas or Florida, and perhaps write a memoir. He was a hero first, a lawmaker second, and a scalawag third. Now, at 71, he’s simply a convicted felon. He once knew how to fly a Phantom. Now he has become one, after betraying the nation that gave him wings, power and trust.