Kennedy doesn’t play by the rules. In the usual display of hipocrisy one expects from him, Ted
lectured his fellow senators last May, when Republicans were threatening to trigger the ”nuclear option” — changing the Senate’s rules to prevent judicial nominations from being filibustered. ”They agree that there must be fair rules, that we should not unilaterally abandon or break those rules in the middle of the game.”
There was nothing clandestine about that no-filibuster threat. Senate Republicans had been discussing it publicly for more than two years. Nevertheless, the senator from Massachusetts blasted the idea.
Rules, according to Ted, are for other people:
But like a lot of well-to-do Cape and Islands landowners and sailing enthusiasts, Kennedy doesn’t want to share his Atlantic playground with an energy facility, no matter how clean, green, and nearly unseen. Last month he secretly arranged for a poison-pill amendment, never debated in either house of Congress, to be slipped into an unrelated Coast Guard bill. It would give the governor of Massachusetts, who just happens to be a wind farm opponent, unilateral authority to veto the Cape Wind project.
When word of the amendment leaked out, environmentalists were appalled. The wind farm proposal is supported by the leading environmental organizations, and they never expected to be sandbagged by one of their legislative heroes. Even if Kennedy would prefer to see Cape Wind plant its windmills in somebody else’s sailing grounds, he has always claimed to support the development of wind power (”I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy, as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting the environment” — Cape Cod Times, Aug. 8, 2003). And what happened to all those righteous words about not throwing out the rulebook in the middle of the game?
Ted happened, that’s what.
The Boston Herald and The Boston Channel have more on that family. Dan Riehl speaks from experience and minces no words in an excellent post.
Maria’s articles
Running on empty on gas prices. I have three questions to all politicians:
Are you going to allow drilling in Alaska?
Are you going to allow oil companies to build more refineries?
Are you going to allow the construction of new nuclear power plants
If the answer to any of the above is “No”, then stop complaining about high oil prices.
Mike Gallagher writes about Getting serious about the illegals, and realizes that gringo is an ethnic slur. Being in the curious situation of being sometimes regarded as “Hispanic” in the USA and “gringa” or “yanki” elsewere, I’m proud of my “gringaness”. BTW, I’m not “Hispanic”. “Hispanic”, as I’ve said before, is an artificial construct. I’m Puerto Rican, the way Texans are Texan. But above all, I’m American.
Emmett Tyrrell has a nice rememberance of Jean-Francois Revel.
If you haven’t read it yet, read Israel in the crosshairs.
Since I don’t tolerate sugar, this is probably good news for me: EU food body dismisses food sweetener cancer fears, but I wasn’t worried about rats’ kidneys to begin with.
The Red Sea is shrinking.
Carnival time
The Fifth Column is hosting the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers #51: Blogs on a Plane
