April 12, 2006

"Mr. Kennedy's drive to strike a deal with Republicans is making some in his party nervous."

Is Ted Kennedy making other Democrats nervous by behaving as though he's more concerned with solving the immigration problem than with partisan interests?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm, I must have misposted, as I could have sworn I had hit publish on an earlier comment.

Anyway, time to prepare the seder plate for me, but in the meantime, it is clear from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that the partisan act was Frist's. You owe it to yourself to read that:

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/14296144.htm

Icepick said...

The two articles (Ann's link to the NYT and Quxxo's link to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette) seem to indicate plenty of psrliamentary manaeuving by both sides, each of which is trying to achieve its legislative goals. Nothing more, nothing less. In other words, both sides have been partisan, in the basic non-inflammatory usage of that word.

What's interesting to me is that it shows just how much power Ted Kennedy has in the Senate that he can basically ignore his party leadership and not fear reprisals.

And Quxxo, when are you going to post more to your blog? And why don't you allow comments?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Heaven forbid if the Congress should actually fix even one of the country's biggest priorities.

Thorley Winston said...

Considering the results of the last times Republicans worked with Ted Kennedy on a major policy issue - NCLB and Medicare Part D - they would be wise to reconsider this obsession with "comity" and just put forth a bill that secures our borders, enforces our laws, and then and only then decides how to handle the current set of illegals.

Ann Althouse said...

Quxxo: I'm liberally deleting messages from you because of your prior bad faith. Expect more unless you clean up your act. Make the effort to compose shorter comments, and can the accusations, the stupid demands aimed at me for apologies and other bogus crap. Or take it to your own blog and see if you can get some readers there.

Unknown said...

A stalemate serves the interests of both parties. No one has to go on record as voting for amnesty, and the influx of future voters/cheap slave labor can continue unabated. Kennedy is not pushing for a vote, he's just firing up the (future) base on there on the Mall.

(quxxo with comments? Oh, the irony!)

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Maxine Weiss said...

Doesn't Massachusetts senate have term limits?

He is a blow hard. Nothing but hot air, and I'm tired of hearing and seeing his disgusting whatever----every time I turn on C-Span.

Peace, Maxine

Icepick said...

And dang it, I WANT to read Quxxo's blog! Imagine how fun the comment section would be! (If Quxxo allowed comments, that is.)

Goatwhacker said...

Wow, I felt myself respecting Teddy Kennedy and thought maybe I'd fallen into some alternate universe. Then I saw the Quxxo furor and everything's back to normal.

SippicanCottage said...

I am not a Kennedy admirer, especially this one. But he can do what ever the hell he wants without fear of anybody in his party, and never fears anybody in elections in Massachusetts.

The story touches on a few things which are fascinating, and glossed over. I'm pretty sure (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) one of the Africans let into the USA by the shift in policy mentioned was Sirhan Sirhan. Say what you want about the guy, but he's had to live with the fallout of his decisions more than some.

Everybody assumes if your Irish in Boston you're all the same. There were various tribes here too, and two that could never stand one another were the Kennedys and the most interesting politician ever, James Michael Curley.

I don't remember that Honey Fitz was a champion of a very diverse batch of illiterates being let into the country, I think he liked the Gaelic kind a lot. But he banded together with other Catholics to fight the Klan, and protest Harvard's attempts to exclude Jews and Blacks.

But I recall reading the speech Curley made against Henry Cabot Lodge's proposed ban on illiterate immigration, one especially aimed at keeping Jews and southern Italians out of America, and it can make you weep. Taft was president. The other side was argued by a spokeman for the American Federation of Labor. Figures.

Curley went on for some time about the contributions of Jews and Italians

"How strange, Mr Chairman, is this flaunt of prejudice in the faces of Dante and Tasso and Petrarch, of Raphael and Michael Angelo and Canova, of Verdi and Rossini, of Alfieri and Gidcometti, of Cavour and Mazzini...(interrupted by applause)

It goes on, and he triumphs. He later responds to a snarky question that included wild claims about illiterate immigrant crime with some snark of his own: "I was going to ask the gentleman how many illiterates had been arrested for forgery." Classic.

Taft vetoed it. The Curley did it.

Maxine Weiss said...

However, I do have to say that if I were a single diner in a restaurant....and Ted came to my table......I wouldn't refuse him.

Actually, even if I weren't a single diner, I still wouldn't refuse him.

Wouldn't drive with him, though.

Peace, Maxine