Free Republic

TEDDY: IN HIS OWN WORDS. 9 tonight, HBO. THERE ARE people who can forgive Ted Kennedy anything. There are people who can forgive him nothing. Many of the rest, perhaps, regard the senior senator from Massachusetts as a marvelously flawed human being who's somehow survived scandal and tragedy and more than three-quarters of a century in the public eye to arrive at a point where colleagues from both sides of the aisle appear to regard him with affection and respect. With Kennedy currently engaged in battles for both health-care reform and his own life, the timing of tonight's HBO documentary,...

In September 1998, Greg Craig, a lion of the Washington legal community, left a top job at the State Department to go to the White House to help Bill Clinton fight impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. One of his first stops was to an old Democratic friend, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who warned him what he was stepping into: “You’re about three days away from a delegation of senior Democrats coming up there to ask the president to resign.” That anecdote, recounted in Peter Baker’s history of the impeachment saga, came echoing back to mind in recent...

People have been trying to stake a claim to the legacy of President John F. Kennedy ever since that day in Dallas more than 44 years ago. Remember Dan Quayle, who compared his congressional tenure to Kennedy's and got chastised by fellow senator and vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen with that immortal insult: "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Everyone can just pipe down now. It's all over. The political and social legacy of the late president -- Camelot, the Big Myth, the story of American royalty, a sense of...

Whoa. The New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women attacked Ted Kennedy for his endorsement today with some real heat.. The Times Union reported it first (writing, "'Scathing' feels inadequate here."), and I confirmed its authenticity with the president of the organization, Marcia Pappas. I started to pick out the most eyebrow-raising passages but, that proved kind of hard, so here's the whole thing: “Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him,...

The state of their union? Icy. Rival Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama came within a foot of one another just before President Bush's State of the Union speech Monday night and managed not to acknowledge each other. It was quite a feat, given the packed House floor, the customary bear-hugging and jostling among other members. Then a doorkeeper sat the rivals in the same row, only an aisle and four senators between them. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was not caught in the middle. The Democrat from the iconic political family had taken sides earlier in the day when...

An immigration alliance with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts is damaging Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham among conservative Republicans. The damage to the two Republican senators caused by their support for Mr. Kennedy's immigration bill -- which was blocked by a Senate filibuster last night -- is especially clear in Mr. Graham's home state, scene of an early presidential primary next year. "I'm very wary of a Republican who is talking to Ted Kennedy," Rick Beltram, Republican Party chairman for Spartanburg County, S.C., told The Washington Times yesterday, after it was reported that...

In a recent speech to a Mississippi civic group, Sen. Trent Lott brought up Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's role on important domestic legislation, including Kennedy's latest push to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. When Lott was finished, a man in the audience came up to him and said: "You did real good. But that part about Kennedy -- don't say that no more." "He is the number one boogeyman for conservative Republicans," Lott said later of the longtime Democratic senator from Massachusetts. But, Lott added, "he is a good legislator, and you can't take that away from him." That Lott...