Formor high ranking democrat speaks out about Ted Kennedy.

From Newsmax.com a formor high ranking democrat speaks out about Ted Kennedy.


Former Democratic Chief Counsel: Ted Kennedy Disgraced Himself
Jerry ZeifmanMonday, Jan. 30, 2006

In my view (as a Democrat and former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee), Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., has disgraced himself and our party by misusing his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to achieve self-serving partisan ends.
Kennedy was the architect of an unprecedented tactic: using filibusters to polarize the Senate along party lines thus denying the confirmation of qualified conservative judges. In Bush's first term the Senate Democrats used that tactic successfully against at least 10 nominees for judgeships on circuit courts.
Fortunately, Kennedy has failed in his partisan attempt to deny Judge Alito a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. [Editor's Note: Get the bestselling book about Ted Kennedy's hypocrisy -- Click Here.]
This occurred largely because Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska formed a non-partisan coalition of seven Democrats and seven Republicans to oppose filibusters, except in extraordinary cases.
Story continues below:
Filibusters first arose after the Civil War as a means of defeating legislation intended to foster desegregation. They were an anathema to those of us who joined Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington in 1963.
Fifteen years later during the Clinton administration filibusters were presumably also abhorrent to Senator Kennedy, who then wanted to outlaw them entirely. On Jan. 28, 1998, he argued: " The president and the Senate do not always agree [on judicial nominations]. But we should resolve these disagreements by voting "yes" or "no." Three years later Kennedy put politics above principle and became a champion of the filibuster. He also threatened to boycott any work of the Senate that was not essential for national security if a Republican majority was trying to outlaw filibusters by amending the Senate rules.
Subsequently, in a badgering cross-examination of Judge Alito, Kennedy tried to portray him as an undercover enemy of equal rights for women and minorities.
For me, Kennedy's effort to impugn Judge Alito's integrity was reminiscent of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, who tarred his victims with the brush of guilt by association. Kennedy's charge against Alito was based on the fact that 34 years ago, while a reserve officer in the Army, he joined a Princeton alumni group that opposed the banning of ROTC programs from the university's campus. Some members of the group (other than Alito) wanted Princeton to continue its traditional policy of denying admission to women.
They also opposed affirmative action programs based on quotas. (Quota-bases programs were subsequently prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court.)


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