Accomplishments of Senator Kennedy

From the Senate website:

Senator Kennedy has authored more than 2,500 bills throughout his career in the United
States Senate. Of those bills, several hundred have become Public Law. Below is a sample of some
of those laws, which have made a significant difference in the quality of life for the American
people.

Click on the link here:

http://kennedy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Kennedy%20Accomplishments.pdf

Ted Kennedy Arrangements

Dear Democrat:

Yesterday was a very sad day for all of us. Senator Kennedy's passing makes us all pause to remember fondly times when he or his work impacted us personally. Over the course of the last 24 hours, the State Party's office has been inundated with calls requesting information and people looking for ways to express their love for Senator Kennedy. As a Democratic leader, I am sure you are also receiving these kinds of requests so I wanted to be sure you have all the information you need and to alert you to opportunities to remember Senator Kennedy.

Arrangements

For all updated information regarding arrangements and to celebrate the life and work of Senator Edward M. Kennedy please visit www.tedkennedy.org. Motorcade information is below.

The public is invited to participate in services in honor of Senator Kennedy. The Massachusetts Democratic Party would like to ask you to join us today along the motorcade route as we pay tribute to Senator Kennedy.

The motorcade will depart the Cape at 1:00 PM and travel north to Boston on Route 93. They will exit at Government Center, and travel down Hanover St. into the North End, past St. Stephen’s Church, where his mother Rose was baptized and her funeral Mass celebrated.

Continuing down Hanover St. and crossing over the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the park Senator Kennedy joined community leaders in creating that gives mothers and their children green space in the heart of the city. The park sits on the same land young Rose Fitzgerald enjoyed as a child. Senator Kennedy will pass Faneuil Hall where Mayor Menino will ring the bell 47 times.

Continuing to Bowdoin Street, Senator Kennedy will pass 122 Bowdoin, where he opened his first office as an Assistant District Attorney and President Kennedy lived while running for Congress in 1946.

He’ll pass the JFK Federal Building where his Boston office has stood for decades, and then travel to Dorchester Street into South Boston and to the JFK Presidential Library.

People who wish to honor Senator Kennedy are urged to line the motorcade route at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, City Hall Plaza and the Boston Common, in front of the State House on Park Street.

Books of Condolence

At least three options exist for people to send their best wishes to the Senator's family:

The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum - In remembrance of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the library will have condolence books available until Friday September 4th for the public to sign during normal Museum operating hours, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Massachusetts State House - In remembrance of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Secretary of State William Galvin has placed a condolence book at the State House in the Hall of Flags for the public to sign during normal business hours through Friday August 28th.

Democratic Leaders - If getting to Boston is not easy for you, the Massachusetts Democratic Party is collecting the thoughts, memories and condolences of citizens from around the country and we will deliver them to the Kennedy family. You can do so online by [clicking here] .

Thank you,
John Walsh

Ted Kennedy's Humanity by E. J. Dionne

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/26/AR2009082601895.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR

Ted Kennedy's Humanity

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, August 27, 2009

Ted Kennedy was treasured by liberals, loved by many of his conservative colleagues, revered by African Americans and Latinos, respected by hard-bitten political bosses, admired by students of the legislative process, and cherished by those who constituted the finest cadre of staff members ever assembled on Capitol Hill.

The Kennedy paradox is that he managed to be esteemed by almost everyone without ever becoming all things to all people. He stood for large purposes, unequivocally and unapologetically, and took hard stands. Yet he made it his business to get work done with anyone who would toil along with him. He was a friend, colleague and human being before he was an ideologue or partisan, even though he was a joyful liberal and an implacable Democrat.

He suffered profoundly, made large mistakes and was, to say the least, imperfect. But the suffering and the failures fed a humane humility that led him to reach out to others who fell, to empathize with those burdened by pain, to understand human folly and to appreciate the quest for redemption.

That made him a rarity in politics. Never pretending that he knew everything, he had a magnetic draw for talented people who stayed with him for years. He trusted them and gave them room to shine. Their guidance and his own intelligence and feverish work made him one of the greatest senators in history.

There was another Kennedy paradox: Precisely because he knew so clearly what he wanted and where he wished the country to move, he could strike deals with Republicans far outside his philosophical comfort zone.

He worked with Orrin Hatch, one of his dearest friends, to bring health coverage to millions of children; with George W. Bush on education reform; with Lamar Alexander and Mike Enzi to improve child care; with John McCain on immigration reform. It was hard to find a Republican senator Kennedy had not worked with at some point during his nearly 47 years in Washington.

Kennedy's willingness to cross party lines only enhanced his credibility when he needed to stand alone as a progressive prophet. In early 2003, while so many in his party cowered in fear, Kennedy stood against the impending invasion of Iraq, warning that it would "undermine" the war against terrorism and "feed a rising tide of anti-Americanism overseas."

And for his entire career, in season and out, Kennedy had a righteous obsession with the profound injustices and shameful inefficiencies of an American health-care system that bankrupts the sick and inflicts needless agony on those who cannot cross a doctor's threshold. It would be an unforgivable tragedy if Kennedy's death were to weaken rather than strengthen the forces battling for health-care reform, which Kennedy called "the cause of my life."

Yet Kennedy's liberalism was experimental, not rigid. Principles didn't change, but tactics and formulations were always subject to review. He gave annual speeches that amounted to a report on the state of American liberalism. He always sought to give heart to its partisans in dark times -- "Let's be who we are and not pretend to be something else," Kennedy said in early 1995, shortly after his party's devastating midterm defeat -- but he did not shrink from pointing to liberal shortcomings.

In that 1995 speech, he insisted that "outcomes," not intentions, should determine whether government programs live or die. In 2005, he criticized liberals for failing to harness their creed to the country's core values.

Many who didn't know Kennedy will wonder about the sources of the cross-partisan affection that will flow liberally in the coming days. It goes back to his humane identification with those in pain. Literally thousands of people have stories, and I offer my own.

In 1995, Kennedy was at our church on a Sunday when a call for prayers came forth for a hospitalized member of our family. Kennedy eventually learned that it was my 3-year-old son, James, who was stricken with a rare condition.

I returned home late that night after spending the day at the hospital. Waiting for me was a message from Ted Kennedy. A quiet voice described his own son's youthful illness and expressed a total understanding of the fear and pain I was experiencing.

My son recovered, thank God, and I will never forget what Kennedy did. His compassion was real, not contrived, and it extended to individual human beings and not just to the masses in the crowds who cheered him, and will keep cheering for a long time.

Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein calls it like it is.

The full column can be found here but here are excerpts:

There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation.
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While the government will take a more active role in regulating the insurance market and increase its spending for health care, that hardly amounts to the kind of government-run system that critics conjure up when they trot out that oh-so-clever line about the Department of Motor Vehicles being in charge of your colonoscopy.

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the probability that a public-run insurance plan is about to drive every private insurer out of business -- the Republican nightmare scenario -- is approximately zero.
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While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn't, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.

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Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test.