Mass. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy dies at age 77
BOSTON (Yahoo News) – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the last surviving brother in a political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in history, died Tuesday night at his home on Cape Cod after a year-long struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.
In nearly 50 years in the Senate, Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, served alongside 10 presidents — his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them — compiling an impressive list of legislative achievements on health care, civil rights, education, immigration and more.
His only run for the White House ended in defeat in 1980. More than a quarter-century later, he handed then-Sen. Barack Obama an endorsement at a critical point in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, explicitly likening the young contender to President Kennedy.
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5 Comments:
From RedState:
Senator Edward Kennedy is dead.
I had an encounter with Senator Kennedy once. When I was in law school I wrote a paper on campaign finance laws as they relate to the media. I had to interview “two people of note.” I chose Tony Snow and Senator Kennedy — Kennedy just to see if I could get to someone like that and impress my law school professor.
I could. He was surprisingly accessible.
He was very nice, generous with his time, and disagreed with me on everything. We completely and totally disagreed. He got a laugh out of it, as did I.
I can’t say that I’ll miss him. He, to me, represented all that is wrong with Washington — a kingdom of nepotism and worship at the alter of failed liberal policies that get repeated ad infinitum. He opposed school choice for the poor while segregating his kids from the poor in school. He supported policies opposed to life except when life could be advanced through the destruction of the unborn. He opposed a strong national security against even the evidence of its necessity during his brother’s Presidential administration.
Ted Kennedy supported the expansion of the welfare state and a culture of dependency on government, made all the more tragic given how ensnared his life was to dependency. He should have known better given his own life and that of his family.
And then there’s Mary Jo Kopechne. May she rest in peace.
Senator Edward Moore Kennedy of Massachusetts is dead at 77. John Kerry is now the senior senator. God help that state.
From The Patriot Post:
If it were a matter of mere political disagreement, we would join the calls to strike a conciliatory tone and mourn the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. But we do a disservice to him and the country to call him anything but what he was. Ted Kennedy was not a good man and we mourn the damage (or worse) he did both to individuals and to America.
From 'The Patriot Post':
"There is a lot one could say of Senator Kennedy -- positive from supporters, negative from critics. They say one should not speak ill of the dead. True. But I am of the view that one should not lie about the dead either."
From 'The Patriot Post':
"[Ted] Kennedy left the scene of a fatal accident for which he was at least partly responsible. Then he used his extraordinary power to get off, spending the rest of his career in pseudo-remorse, playing the most liberal of Senators. It was always an act to me, even when I agreed with him politically. This was not a life well lived."
From 'RedState':
It is traditional, upon the passing of an important and famous person - however controversial - to find some good words to say. This is not an easy task in the case of Ted Kennedy, a man whose personal life ranged from alcoholism to debauchery to sexual harrassment to (sadly, uncharged) second-degree murder, and whose public career entailed the embrace of nearly every foolish, ruinous and cruel political idea of the past five decades and whose most enduring legacy is installing the bitterly polarized modern Supreme Court confirmation process.
But a few words are nonetheless in order to recognize the man’s work. Because what we can remember positively about Ted Kennedy is his role as a Senate workhorse - a role that Barack Obama might have been wiser to emulate.
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