A friend discusses the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy

While the Left is busying trying to immediately use their friend's death to shove a terrible bill they won't read down the throats of regular citizens (one that they voted not to be subjected to themselves, of course) I wanted to give voice to my friend's concerns because he speaks for so very many of the real citizens in this country.

Today, there are many words of praise for the late Senator Edward Kennedy. He is referred to as the "Lion of the Senate," a gifted politician," and by many other laudatory appellations. Much of this is political puffery; and some of the praise is from those who were opposed to much of what Kennedy stood for.

Behind the facade of "public service" was a man of bulk, intemperate appetites, a drunken philandering, irresponsible and dishonest son of wealth, whose lack of courage allowed him to ignore a woman drowning in a car he drunkenly drove off a bridge, and instead seek a fall guy to report that they had done the deed, instead of Kennedy. His failure to induce anyone to take the rap used up time that experts contended could have been used to rescue the young woman passenger from the car, before her pocket of trapped air was used up. Indeed, he did not even report the situation until many hours later, when she was surely dead. Most people would have served prison time for homicide, if convicted; but, daddy's money enabled him to escape real punishment with a wrist slap, and a monetary award to the grieving parents of Mary Jo Kopechne.

This was no aberration in his lack of character. He hired a person to take exams in his place at Harvard. The discovery led to his expulsion. His record in the senate was one of always pushing to make wage earners in America pay for transfers of funds to others, ever expanding the role of the federal government in contravention of the fundamental law of the land, the Constitution. He repayed attempts to reach across the aisle by president Bush, by denouncing him in the most ungentlemanly terms, even after the president allowed Kennedy to write his No Child Left Behind bill. His vitriol was almost unmatched, even by a congress increasingly given to intemperate attacks on those whose consciences are of different values.

Kennedy had been a senator for almost half a century, and was a representative of the class of politicians who have no idea what the world outside of government consists of. In contradistinction to the vision of our founders, who proposed that people of all backgrounds would have a period of service, he created a lifelong career of elected office. He made senator as the inheritor of the Kennedy mystique, and parleyed his father's riches into political success. He was thus one of many high elected officials who have essentially "bought" their positions, at least initially, and used it as a career for the mediocre and manipulative to assert their power. Their one talent is to smile fake, lingering smiles, to promise what they could not deliver, and to lie with the greatest sincerity. Even their victims have resisted seeing through their phony pasted on smiles.

His passing is not a sad day for me. He is only one of many in congress who have attained their positions through family riches, not real ability and public service. Their only accomplishments in life were to take from the productive, and waste the fruits of their toil, building an ever larger and more intrusive government that today is bent on controlling every moment of our lives, including the most private and intimate.

There must be special ring in Hell for dishonest politicians. If so, it must be the most crowded ring.

Robert A. Gismondi
Los Angeles, California