I haven't said anything about Ted Kennedy, yet...

I liked the full-throated, non-triangulating liberal he was — and I don't buy all the revisionist Republican cant about Kennedy the Great Compromiser. Not all of it.

So far as Republicans should be concerned, Ted Kennedy was the promised land they've lost forever.

The rest of the Democrats, maybe including Barack Obama if he'll grow a spine and get with the program, will now dictate the future for Americans, just like FDR did over sixty years ago.

I liked the story on NPR's News Hour the other night about Ted Kennedy going to Mass in St. Paul, Minnesota on a Wednesday. No earthly reason to be going to church on a Wednesday, right? Apparently, this inspired Tom Oliphant, the Boston Globe columnist who was tagging along with Ted, to wonder aloud where the youngest Kennedy brother got his passion for helping the poor from?

"He looked at me like I was from Mars," Oliphant said, "and then he asked me, 'Tom, haven't you ever read the New Testament?'."

The woods are full of Bible-thumping Republicans. I'll take a Democrat who'll walk the walk and witness by example any day.

[Update: Sunday, August 30, 2009] Nice funeral service at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston (thank you, CSPAN). Only Catholics would make you say that out loud. But, hey! Actually teared up thinking of my own dear old dad, Dale Dana Oshel, D.V.M., d. June 2, 1971.