You know, this is an amazing week. Massachusetts goes Republican, health care dies and the Supreme Court unshackles the First Amendment. It’s the best week I’ve had since spring break in medical school — and I don’t even remember it. And there was another item . . .  Air America, the liberal talk show network went out of business — which is a redundancy because nobody was listening anyway. ~ Charles Krauthammer on Fox

Just came down the wire. Coincidentally [or perhaps not], I tuned in for a little schadenfreude this morning, and after the Scott Brown victory, they were in particularly miserable form.

Details here. R.I.P., if that means it stays dead.

Do not be idle – join the fight for your children and grandchildren.

Apparently, this one doesn’t. Democrat Mass. Senatorial candidate Martha Coakley’s aide pushes Weekly Standard reporter down, then continues to assault him as he seeks to question Coakley. Story here.  Let’s see, assault and battery, civil rights violations . . . yes, yes, all kinds of fun things to consider here. Has Coakley fired this thug? No, she’s blaming the incident on “Republican stalkers.” Good grief.

The reporter thinks this might be the perp.  Hey, Chicago style politics is all the rage these days! And Coakley is the Mass. AG! Holy, Moley!

**UPDATE: BigGovernment.com is saying yes, Michael Meehan is the perp. And surprise, surprise, he’s an Obama appointee – for the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversees federal news operations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe no less!! He also worked with NARAL – hey, he’s used to violence. And, you gotta love this line by BIG G:

“His (Meehan’s) Senate confirmation hearing should be a hoot.”

I could not make up much better stuff than this. Thank you Mr. Meehan, you may have just handed the election to Scott Brown.

Basically, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader has shot off his idiot mouth once again. Harry Reid’s subtext was actually if Obama had been too “black,” America never would have elected him.

But Commenter “Jay” agreed on the face of it, that

It surely IS true that Obama would have had a much harder time getting elected if he spoke stereotypical Ebonics, just as a white candidate who sounded like he’d come straight from a trailer park…would lose votes on that account.

as did Commenter BSK, who noted that

Obama’s looks and diction may have played a role in his presidency (something true of all candidates)…

And that should be like, duh? to any denizen of the 21st century. If you can’t articulate the English language at least as well as the twits who read the 11 O’Clock News, you can’t be president.

OK, OK, George W, Bush couldn’t quite talk that talk and Sarah Palin could, but let’s move on, and also past Barack Obama’s relative “light-skinnedness,” which actually cuts both ways.

Because there’s a far more serious issue at hand here.

Reid’s use of “Negro” is unfortunate in this day and age, but I’m a generation younger, and I remember MAD Magazine referring to the “TV Negro,” who looked black but sounded like he went to Harvard.

Which—or who—Barack Obama is.

And there’s a PC flap right now over the 2010 US census, that in addition to self-identifications of “race,” “Negro” was kept in, as well as “Black” or “African American,” since some folks from Harry Reid’s generation prefer “Negro.”

But little of this, the word “Negro,” has anything to do with what’s important.

GOPers have some room for a righteous whine here, but not much: Lott’s praise of Strom Thurmond

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.”

was substantive, not just a comment on Barack Obama’s cosmetic appeal.

Yes, it was rhetorical carelessness on Lott’s part. His retraction:

“My comments were not an endorsement of his positions of over 50 years ago, but of the man and his life.”

Yeah, yeah. But it went far deeper than that. When Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, he was deeply committed to segregation and opposed to anti-lynching laws.

So the Republican Party can enjoy a “gotcha” moment on Democrat Harry Reid and on the press giving him a relatively free ride for violating political correctness.

But it’s a hollow victory, and indeed not a victory atall. Harry Reid mouthed some thoughtless words, but Trent Lott thoughtlessly gave voice to an abominable idea, that Strom Thurmond should ever have been elected president in 1948.

All stupidities are not created equal. Sadly, it’s just more evidence that when it comes to race, today’s GOP still doesn’t get it. Yes, Republican Ike sent in the troops to Little Rock to enforce desegration of our schools. And Sen. Everett Dirksen swung the day in 1964 to win passage of the Civil Rights Act.

But in 2009, The Party of Lincoln has few other laurels to rest on. It can’t even tell the difference between Reid’s stupidity and Lott’s. This has simply got to change.

You gotta walk the walk, but as a politician, you also have to talk the talk. When you speak an alien language like Trent Lott did that night, that Strom Thurmond should ever have been our president, even in loose party talk, you’re not speaking American atall.

Michelle Malkin breaks down who got what in “Cash for Cloture.”

As my fellow Alabamian pointed out below:

“But when  you express moral opposition to a bill and that moral opposition suddenly evaporates when your state gets enough money – that is a whole different matter.  In Alabama, we have a word for a person who sells his self for money – a whore.”

Sen. Nelson, Sen. Landrieu, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for extra Medicare funding?

Arkansas 2 is part of what I call the Jacksonian belt, the swath of counties from southwestern Pennsylvania along the Appalachian chain and extending to Oklahoma and Texas which were largely settled by the Scots-Irish immigrants that streamed into America in the dozen years before the Revolution and their descendants. Their great hero, and the son of Scots-Irish immigrants himself, was Andrew Jackson, the victor of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans, who set about removing Indians from much of this territory and was the founder of the Democratic party. In 2008 voters in the Jacksonian belt voted heavily against Barack Obama in both the Democratic primaries and the general election, as you can see on these national maps and by clicking on individual states to see the county-by-county returns. This map showing the counties which cast a higher percentage of votes for John McCain in 2008 than for George W. Bush in 2004 is essentially a map of the Jacksonian belt.

If Vic Snyder is in trouble, it’s a good bet that many other Democrats from the Jacksonian belt are too.

Very interesting. My Scots-Irish ancestors are smiling from heaven. More here.

It’s no secret that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the American Catholic bishops were pals. Friends, even. Hung out together, drank together, as friends do. Give each other awards. And they had a deal.

“I knew Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was a friend
of mine. Congressman, you’re no Ted Kennedy.”

The late Edward M. Kennedy’s son, the mostly undistinguished congressman Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI), gets an earful from the Bishop of Providence:

(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) -The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, today issued the following statement in response to a Cybercast News Service article that reported: Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I) told CNSNews.com that the Catholic Church is doing nothing but fanning “the flames of dissent and discord” by taking the position that it will oppose the health-care reform bill under consideration in Congress unless it is amended to explicitly prohibit funding of abortion.

“Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s statement about the Catholic Church’s position on health care reform is irresponsible and ignorant of the facts. But the Congressman is correct in stating that ‘he can’t understand.’ He got that part right.

Congressman Kennedy continues to be a disappointment to the Catholic Church and to the citizens of the State of Rhode Island. I believe the Congressman owes us an apology for his irresponsible comments. It is my fervent hope and prayer that he will find a way to provide more effective and morally responsible leadership for our state.”

Wow. “Irresponsible.” “Ignorant.” Catholic bishops never would dissed Teddy that way.

And Teddy Kennedy never would have attacked such reliable Democratic Party allies as the US Catholic bishops either—the deal was that the American bishops looked the other way whenever Teddy screwed up, and never opposed him politically.

That was the game, the unwritten agreement. The deal.

You know, opposed him politically over that issue—abortion—the inconvenient Catholic truth on “choice,” inconvenient for Catholics, for Catholic Democrats, and especially for Democrat Catholic bishops.

“Congressman Kennedy continues to be a disappointment to the Catholic Church.”

…said Bishop Tobin. Wow.

Of Ted Kennedy the man, what should we say? His personal life was certainly a disappointment before man and before God, before his family and before his constituents, and more disappointing than most. But being disappointing is true of all of us, even if to a lesser degree. We shall not judge.

But not only in death, but in life, Ted Kennedy was lionized not just by men, but worse, by the men of his church—and worst, by his bishops—that his politics in service of the poor somehow made up for it all, and as if that issue could be outweighed.

I can’t say I’d be strong enough to resist politics if the tide turned—and Ted Kennedy pulled a 180 from “pro-life” to “pro-choice” in a Boston minute [see Southern Appeal's Alberto Hurtado on "Teddy Who Was Once for Life" for the gory details].

But let’s think just a moment on what America 2009 would be like if the Lion of the Senate, the Lion of the Democratic Party, the Lion of Martha’s Vineyard, had put up just a fraction of his political clout against abortion, as the late Henry Hyde did.

What if there were a “Kennedy Amendment?”

Rep. Henry Hyde was no lion, just some guy in congress. He lived with little fanfare, and died with even less fanfare.

He’s remembered for nothing except one thing— theHyde Amendment stands as one of the few obstacles to the US Government being in the abortion business. It can’t finance abortions. The law is still on the books, for now.

Patrick Kennedy wants the Hyde Amendment gone, of course: erased, sent to the dustbin of history. And I expect that Congressman Kennedy will get his wish in the coming years, unfortunately.

Nothing lasts forever in politics, but what a different country this would be today if there had been a Kennedy Amendment…

Me, I might be a Democrat today, as I’m mushy [or "crunchy"] on a lot of the other issues. And the United States of America would be the standard-bearer in defense of the unborn, in defense of the gift of life all across the world.

Instead of what our country is, a big fat zero, let’s face it.

Patrick Kennedy accuses the Catholic Church of fanning “the flames of dissent and discord.” Ha. I hope you’re right, Congressman, I hope you’re godamm right, and it’s about goddam time the Church did fan the flames of dissent and discord. What’s a church for, anyway? To be an arm of the government?

We can only hope that this flap marks the end of 50+ years of the unholy alliance between the Kennedy family and the bishops of the American Catholic Church, and that “friendship” is over, and the “deal” is off.

See, after all these years of mythmaking about Jack, Bobby and Teddy, their real legacy could have been the “Kennedy Amendment,” in defense of the most defenseless of all, the unborn, and of human life itself.

That’s the Kennedy family’s greatest tragedy of all.