News: I know you shouldn't speak ill of the dead...

...but the breathless hyperbole from the network news almost begs a response.

Edward "Ted" Kennedy died today. Obama, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year, called him "the greatest United States Senator of our time."

Well, I guess that might be valid since we're only talking about the snakehouse that is the U.S. Senate. Kennedy, if nothing else, was a great advocate for the gamut of Democratic legislative goals, sponsoring hundreds of bills.

He was also emblematic of all the problems with the Democratic party, too. Here was a limousine liberal who never had a real job, who cheated his way through Harvard, whose handling of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne was gross negligence at best and calculatingly malicious at worst. He was an advocate for minorities and civil rights, except those that didn't fall into lockstep with the rest of the Democrats.

His 47 years in the Senate are the mark of a successful politician, nothing less, nothing more. It brings this quote to mind:

The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.

- Frank Knight