Left Flank

Is the eulogizing premature? After all, Strom Thurmond crawled into late veneration, and Robert Byrd is an angelic shell of his former pork-barrel self. There is something strained and bizarre about all this, as if pundits and Washington were trying to raise the ghost of bipartisanship through a collective act of remembering youthful innocence.

David Rogers makes Kennedy sound like some other titans of the Senate—all failed in bids for the White House—like Henry Clay (who could have been Kennedy's drinking buddy), Daniel Webster, or John C. Calhoun. But "...passion once made Kennedy a polarizing force in national politics. But Kennedy is a man who discovered himself in the Senate, just as the Senate discovered more in him." is nearly epitaph-worthy. But, his is a rare script.

More common, and equally insulting in their own separate ways, are the post-Kennedy election bets and "Hillary Clinton is the next Teddy" arguments. The latter is a few degrees shy of insulting both the Senate and Kennedy, but it is a rather sly way of milking Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama, instead of mourning the Massachusetts Falstaff's opportunity to remain a Democratic kingmaker.

Yet, all change is exciting. Mind you, that's a very broad emotion!

Everyone knows how much I love Chesapeake blue crabs and oysters! (And, if not, then read the last sentence again.) But, perhaps, this quote, and the story of how Yonathan Zohar has singlehandedly tried to save blue crabs and fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay through the cunning exploitation of Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski's earmarks, reveals how ecologically misguided that pursuit might be:

"The program must continue, one way or the other," Zohar said. "The Chesapeake Bay needs it."

That maniacal plea follows this gem:

"There is no other way to conduct this type of program other than to get this type of federal funding. ... And for the blue crab, it was so well- deserved because we wanted to do something before it was too late."

It almost makes me feel swindled for all the backfin and claws me and my parents have consumed through the years.