Posted on 05/17/2004 10:36:00 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
Edward Kennedy ought to resign from the U.S. Senate.
Likewise, Sen. Kennedy's protegé John Kerry ought to publicly disassociate himself from, and denounce in no uncertain terms, his mentor's latest inflammatory remarks.
Sen. Kennedy has made a career of verbal attacks so vicious that few other politicians could get away with them. But the frequency and outrageousness of his cheap shots have increased in recent years -- and this past Monday he outdid himself.
His remarks on the Senate floor were so obnoxious, so inexcusable, that no apology can make amends for them. In them, Sen. Kennedy had the gall to assert a moral equivalence between the routine brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime and the humiliating, but exceptional, treatment of some Iraqi prisoners by their American guards.
Consider Mr. Kennedy's statement: "Protection of the Iraqi people from the cruelty of Saddam had become one of the administration's last remaining rationalizations for going to war. All of the other trumped-up rationalizations have collapsed. ... On Dec. 24, 2003 -- the day Saddam was captured -- President Bush said, 'For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.' On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked: 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management -- U.S. management."
This comes on top of Mr. Kennedy saying last year that the entire war effort was a "fraud" undertaken for political advantage, while accusing President Bush of using "bribery" to secure the support of foreign leaders.
It comes on top of him calling judicial nominees "Neanderthals." And on and on go the examples of his calumnies, including, most famously, when he slandered Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 thusly: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."
This is all hate speech, pure and simple, coming from a man whose own moral compass has time and again been notoriously skewed.
But to go so far as to impugn the Bush administration, and the U.S. armed services, as having deliberately "re-opened" Saddam Hussein's "torture chambers" is to go beyond the acceptable limits of public discourse.
Sen. Kerry, meanwhile, has a duty to denounce his mentor's remarks. Mr. Kennedy, after all, has been his political sponsor ever since Mr. Kerry slandered fellow American soldiers in his infamous testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1971.
Last fall, when Sen. Kerry's campaign for the Democratic nomination looked like a monumental flop, Sen. Kennedy sent his longtime aides, Mary Beth Cahill and Stephanie Cutter, to bail out his Massachusetts colleague. In the run-up to the crucial Iowa caucuses, with John Kerry nursing a sore throat, Sen. Kennedy seemed more visible on the hustings than the candidate himself.
Candidate Kerry therefore should take this moment to separate himself from the senior senator, to say once and for all that hate speech has no place in American presidential politics.
In calling for Sen. Kennedy's resignation, we hasten to note, the Register editorial board applies the same standards it applied to Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, then Senate majority leader. In the wake of Sen. Lott's racially inflammatory remarks related to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, the Register editorialized that "the cause of an honest moral reckoning demands that he step down."
In the wake of this latest entry on Sen. Kennedy's record, the same moral reckoning, long overdue, should apply to the senior senator from Massachusetts.
Isn't there a law about Hate Speech?
Why does Bush give this bloated, bigoted fraud the time of day? That's been puzzling me for a long time. No amount of photo ops after signing fatboy's latest socialist wet dream could be worth putting up with these rants. Pubbies are way too nice. Fighting to win is one thing the Dems could teach the Pubbies.
Time to bring the hammer down on the swimmer.
Breaking news Sun rises in the east.
His will be the Second Burial Plot I piss on, right after Clinton's!
More evidence that even the very best Scotch destroys brain cells.
Kennedy's own brother Robert was assassinated by the terrorist Sirhan Sirhan, Sirhan is still in prison and let us all hope Teddy keeps in touch with him and sends "care" packages to make his stay more pleasant.
I know the dems tried to get one through Congress, but I don't think they made it. Some states do have "hate crimes" laws.
However, I note the paper was quick to say it recommended the resignation of Lott .. but they forgot to mention the equivalent statements made by a democrat re senator Byrd. As the democrat's comment was equally offensive, evidently this paper didn't think it needed to call for the democrat's resignation.
At least this time they are doing the right thing.
They drummed out John Tower, who hardly deserved it. This pig is far worse. He's a demonic, certifiable lunatic, and yet his colleagues indulge him, over and over again. The Senate has become a useless, preening,
obstructionist, bloated aberration.
Damn! Those two lines are gonna be LONNNNG!
Oh, last monday.
I thought I missed him say something dummer today.
I'd say good article, but it isn't. If a writer is afraid to put Kennedy and Chappaquidick in the same sentence IN an article then thay aren't telling the whole story to people.
ytedk.com
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The Dems only fight to win when their foes are Republicans and conservatives. They are abject cowards when it comes to fighting our nation's enemies.
Walrus-boy Teddy is going through
"Tuberty"
Well, yeah, that's what I was referring to.
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