Scott Brown's final victory Lap

This editorial from the Boston Herald is just too good not to run in its entirety.
Finally, Mr. Brown goes to Washington
by Howie Carr

Don‘t worry, Paul Kirk, for the rest of your life, everyone will still be calling you “Senator.” Don’t ask me why - it’s tradition or something.

But now the rest of us can start our celebration - Sen. Scott Brown, (R-Mass). About damn time.

I don’t know what finally made Scott get on the stick. Was it the grumbling from his voters, or the column someone wrote in this paper yesterday? (Hint: the writers initials are HC.) Or was it that last tavern photo-op in Southie Tuesday night?

I suspect it was the fatal glass of beer in Ward 6. During the campaign, when Scott was asked about bringing back “the draft,” this wasn’t what people meant. A three-week victory lap is one thing, lapping up Bud Light is another altogether.

There were also reports yesterday that Scott had wanted to hang around long enough to make a farewell address today on the floor of the state Senate. That would have been the start of yet another new tradition.

Around here a solon’s farewell address is usually delivered by his attorney, outside the courthouse, after the solon himself has already been handcuffed and taken into custody following the guilty verdict. According to custom, the senator’s farewell address must include at least one vow to appeal, as well as a reference to the traditional miscarriage of justice.

But now it’s done. Scott will be sworn in today. Whether he wants to or not, Captain Kirk now must say, “Beam me up, Scottie.”

Whoever’s fault this delay in seating the new senator was, can you imagine Martha Coakley having to wait two-plus weeks to be sworn in? Of course not. And what would have happened to an unelected Republican senator desperately hanging on for one bad vote after another, doing everything but taking hostages in his office?

Something else happens today that’s as significant as Scott Brown’s swearing in. Today is the end of Camelot, as in the old show tune, “for one brief shining moment....”

Brief? The Kennedys (and their placeholders, Ben Smith and now Paul Kirk) owned this seat for 57 years - one for each state in Barack Obama’s union. In that last debate, Scott Brown was wrong. The Kennedys really did own this seat.

Joe Kennedy purchased it for his boy Jack, back in 1952. Bought off the owner of the old Boston Post and drenched the state in bootlegger cash and - strike up the band - “dont let it be forgot/ for one brief shining moment/ that once there was a spot/ that was known as Camelot.”

Until Ted Kennedy ordered the Legislature to change the law on Senate succession in 2004. And then demanded last year that it be changed again. If Ted Kennedy hadn’t pulled that one final “Do-you-know-who-I-am?” his family would still own the seat.

Boy, karma really is a bummer, isn’t it? And what can you say about Scott Brown except, he’s the straw who broke the Camelot’s back.

Kennedy and the USSR

There have been several news items of Ted Kennedy's note to the President of the USSR Yuri Andropov in 1983. A note turned up in the archives in 1991. It is treated in Commentary Magazine Aug. 30th by James Kirchick. You can read it there. Ted Kennedy wanted to defeat President Reagan by the KGB man’s description:

“to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the U.S.A.” In return, Kennedy would broker a series of television interviews with Andropov on the major American networks.

He goes on to say:

Even if the motive for Kennedy’s freelance diplomacy had been solely his sincere displeasure with the policies of the Reagan administration, his action would have been ethically improper. But the memo indicates that what primarily drove Kennedy was not disagreement with the administration — which, according to the Constitution, is charged with directing foreign policy — but political ambition:
“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” the memorandum continued. “Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.”

The American Thinker has an article on the same note from the archives. Both are excellent articles and you will want to read both. Paul Kengor writes:

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification.

The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a confidential offer to the Soviet leadership by Senator Kennedy. The target: President Ronald Reagan. (A pdf file of the original Russian language document and an English translation is available here.)

With Kennedy's death, this stunning revelation is again making the rounds, especially after Rush Limbaugh flagged it in his "Stack of Stuff." I'm being inundated with emails, asking basically two questions: 1) is the document legitimate; and 2) what does it allege of Senator Kennedy?

First off, yes, the document is legitimate. If it were not, I would have never reported it. Over the years, from my book to radio and web interviews, I've provided specifics. Briefly summarized, here are the basics:

The document was first reported in a February 2, 1992 article in the London Times, titled, "Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file," by reporter Tim Sebastian. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had opened the Soviet archives. Sebastian discovered the document in the Central Committee archives specifically. When his article appeared in the Times, other on-site researchers dashed to the archives and grabbed their own copy. Those archives have been resealed.

The Times merely quoted the document and ran a tiny photo of its heading. Once I got ahold of it later, I published the entire text (English translation) in my book.

These are long, detailed articles. I am glad they are getting some play. Read them both

On Kennedy, From the National Review Online

Champagne Socialism

Senator Edward Kennedy was, and will remain, an outstanding example of a champagne socialist. Sociologically speaking, the type has been well recognized for quite some time. Indeed, in Turgenev's great novel, Fathers and Sons, the hero Bazarov asks at one point if you can't drink champagne just because you call yourself a socialist. The French similarly talk about those who vote on the Left but dine on the Right. Such people are exploiting their privileged position in society to curry favor with those less privileged, and so find the way to continue being privileged while also being applauded for it. Clever, or what?

The obituaries for Edward Kennedy have been more or less unmitigated eulogies. The general inference is that he was an outstanding and constructive politician with vast achievements to his credit. At most, there is an apologetic little insertion somewhere of the word “flawed” as though that excused and explained his failure to become president. In simple fact, he owed everything in his career, especially his position in the Senate, to the fact that he had been born who he was, too well-connected and too rich ever to have to work his passage on his own. If this isn't privilege, what is? The years of good living and self-indulgence showed in his face, as once handsome features turned coarse and bloated. Physically, he could only waddle. As for morals, Chappaquiddick is only one incident among others when his behaviour proves him to have been a man of bad character....

He has enjoyed the sort of lifelong allowance that once would have been made for a corrupt eighteenth-century English duke. It is hard to believe that he was ever sincere in the populist causes he took up, declaiming about righting wrongs only to go home and commit plenty more wrongs of his own without having to account for them. That's champagne socialism for you, and it seems a taste everybody and anybody can get drunk on.

There is a little more at the Corner of the National Review, this is the gist of it.

If you Are tired of the Kennedy Eulogies go read this

I do not want to demonize Ted Kennedy anymore than he personally did to himself, but I also am not inclined to idolize him because his last name is Kennedy. In this article Mark Steyn cuts to the chase. I'm not even going to give it more space than this. Go read it here if you want to see what he says.