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Some would go farther and say that the memorandum from Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB that was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR, outlining a secret proposal made by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviets to help them "understand Reagan" in return for their help in making him president, constitutes treason. It's not a word to throw around lightly and the reason I refrain from using it is because I am unsure Kennedy's actions meet the definition. Kennedy was not in direct contact with Andropov, using his good friend John Tunney, former...

For decades, Edward Kennedy was considered the most powerful voice in the Senate for gay rights as a strong supporter of HIV/AIDS funding, hate crimes legislation and same-sex marriage. His death struck a blow to gay rights advocates, who say they've lost a key ally. "Having somebody in the Senate who was never afraid to stand up and say, 'This is the right thing to do' lifted all of our spirits and made all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people know that there was hope," said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee.

Ted is dead. My self-imposed 24 hour grace period, which the left would never give to George W. Bush or any other conservative, has ended. I was willing to leave Ted Kennedy be and let his family mourn on the day of his death. I will not sit back and let the media lionize his life. It is time to take the Ted to the (wood) shed. Not only was he a bad person, but he managed to make everybody around him worse. I will not let Chappaquiddick go. Liberals who chant that “Bush lied, people died,” apparently do not...

With Sen. Ted Kennedy dead at 77, the political iconographers on Wednesday were working feverishly, like alchemists over a fire. The Kennedy legacy has always been about American royalty and the appetites of kings and the use of myth, and that myth was always Camelot, those shining knights and the idealistic boy who drew the sword from the stone. With the death of the Massachusetts Democrat, finally, mercifully, let's let Camelot go. The iconographers on the political right, including some who call themselves Christians, were busy damning his soul to hell for walking away from that crash at Chappaquiddick 40...

Some leading conservatives, who for years painted Edward M. Kennedy as the face of ominous liberalism and made him perhaps their most public foil, marked the Massachusetts senator's death this morning with an outpouring of respect and in some cases, even endearment. Far different appraisals sprung from conservative talk radio and the blogosphere, where readers filled comment sections with excoriations of Kennedy's politics and his personal life, chiefly his role behind the wheel in the car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne 40 years ago. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele issued a statement saying Kennedy served his country "with...

America has lost a giant in politics and public policy. I have lost a close personal friend. People called us the “odd couple,” which was certainly true. There are few men with whom I had less in common. Ted was born to a famous patrician family of Boston. He attended private schools and Harvard University. He was politically liberal, and liberal in his lifestyle – at least until he married Vicki Reggie, who set him straight. I grew up in a poor, working class family in Pittsburgh. Where Ted was the affable Irishman, I was the teetotaling Mormon

The Fleet has arrived today in Portland. We need to get a banner and take it down to the Concourse today that reads, "R.I.P Abu Z! One More Mission Accomplished!" Welcome Back, USS Cole!

MARTINEZ -- The story of Charles "Junior" Jackson keeps getting worse, even though he's been dead for 3 1/2 years. The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office announced today that it has used DNA evidence to link Jackson, a onetime handyman, to the unsolved killing of Cynthia Waxman, an 11-year-old Moraga girl who was sexually assaulted and strangled in April 1978 while playing with a kitten in a field near her home. That brings to eight the number of East Bay slayings Jackson allegedly committed in the 1970s and early 1980s. Jackson died in Folsom prison in February 2002 while serving...

MONTGOMERY -- Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted of killing four black girls in a racially motivated bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963, died Thursday in prison. He was 74. Cherry died at about 3:30 p.m. in the hospital unit at Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery,