Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009

Edward M. Kennedy, R.I.P.

Senate passes Kennedy-Brownback Down Syndrome Bill

Legislation which has the potential to encourage parents to give life to babies with Down Syndrome and discourage abortions has passed the Senate:

WASHINGTON — Doctors would have to give more comprehensive information to expectant mothers who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome or other medical conditions under a measure approved by the Senate.

The bill, passed late Tuesday on a voice vote, is the product of an unusual partnership between Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, an abortion-rights advocate from Massachusetts.

Brownback hopes the measure discourages women from terminating pregnancies if they test positive for Down syndrome or certain other conditions, such as spina bifida or cystic fibrosis. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of women who learn they are carrying a fetus with Down syndrome opt for an abortion.

The bill would require doctors to provide parents with the latest information about caring for children with disabilities as well as available support services and networks that can help parents unfamiliar with Down syndrome. Similar legislation is pending in the House. ... (Read the rest)

Congratulations to Senator Brownback and Ted Kennedy for coming together in support of this legislation.

Related

• See The Catholic Down Syndrome Society for regular updates on this topic.
  
• Unlikely to Survive: Few Down Syndrome Babies Making It to Birth, by Father John Flynn, LC. "One of the consequences of the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican party's vice-presidential candidate is renewed attention to Down syndrome."
  
• UPDATE Early Help: Special needs call for a special attention, by Sam Brownback. National Review September 30, 2008.
  

Robert Novak -- on his diagnosis of cancer, and compassion from unexpected sources

Robert Novak talks about the diagnosis of his brain tumor -- and compassion demonstrated by his foes in a political context:

My dear friend, the Democratic political operative Bob Shrum, asked Sen. Kennedy's wife, Vicki, to call me about Dr. Friedman. I barely know Mrs. Kennedy, but I have found her to be a warm and gracious person. I have had few good things to say about Teddy Kennedy since I first met him at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, but he and his wife have treated me like a close friend. She was enthusiastic about Dr. Friedman and urged me to opt for surgery at Duke, which I did.

The Kennedys were not concerned by political and ideological differences when someone's life was at stake, recalling at least the myth of milder days in Washington. My long conversation with Vicki Kennedy filled me with hope. . . .

There are mad bloggers who profess to take delight in my distress, but there's no need to pay them attention in the face of such an outpouring of good will for me. I had thought 51 years of rough-and-tumble journalism in Washington made me more enemies than friends, but my recent experience suggests the opposite may be the case.

But Joe and Valerie Wilson, attempting to breathe life into the Valerie Plame "scandal," issued this statement: "We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak's typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette."

Thanks to my tumor, the Wilsons have achieved half of their desires. I probably never will be able to drive again, and I have sold the Corvette, which I dearly loved. Taking away my typewriter, however, may require modification of the First Amendment.

Support for me and promises of prayers sent for me poured in from all sides, including political figures who had not been happy with my columns. I'm told that President George W. Bush has not liked my criticism, particularly of his Iraq war policy. But the president is a compassionate man, and he telephoned me at 7:24 a.m. on August 15, six minutes before I went into surgery. The conversation lasted only a minute, but his prayerful concern was touching and much appreciated.

In the rough and tumble world of politics (and political polemics), compassion comes from the least expected sources. Let's pray for Robert Novak's continued recovery -- and for Senator Ted Kennedy as well.

Senators Kennedy and Kerry send Archbishop Wuerl a message

From the Washington Times:

Two Catholic politicians fired a shot across the bow June 22 at the installation of Archbishop Donald Wuerl at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

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But now there’s a new guy in charge. On the very day of Archbishop Wuerl’s installation, two of Massachusetts’ most pro-choice [read pro-abortion] Catholics — Kerry and the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy — showed up and sat in the VIP section. Archbishop Wuerl shook their hands as he moved toward the altar. I didn’t see whether Kennedy took Communion, but I know Kerry did because I talked with him immediately afterward. He was there, he said, as a longtime friend of the archbishop’s.

Isn’t it odd that two of the Senate’s most liberal Catholics made time in their schedules to be at the installation Mass while their conservative Republican colleague from Pennsylvania, Sen. Rick Santorum, did not?

Santorum, I heard, had to stay close to his office for a vote. All the same, here were two Democratic senators giving the new archbishop notice that they intend to ignore any move to disenfranchise them from the Eucharist. No one could miss the message.

UPDATE: AmericanPapist has more.

Kennedy to Cardinals: You're All Bigots!

Is this man really Catholic?

America's Best Senators?

From Time magazine. The list includes two Catholics, Senators Edward Kennedy and Richard Durbin:

On Kennedy:

Over 43 years in the senate, Democrat Ted Kennedy has fought serial battles on behalf of the working class—from defending overtime pay and workplace-safety regulations to expanding health-care availability and penalizing discrimination. But the key to his legacy is not that he is determined to stick up for his principles. It's that he is willing to compromise on them.

Late in 1990, for example, Kennedy sat red-faced as House Democrat Pat Schroeder berated him for supporting something he didn't believe in: caps on damages for workplace discrimination. But by agreeing to limits, Kennedy won over the handful of Republican and Southern Democratic Senators he needed to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening laws that banned job discrimination. The result was a law that protects women from sexual harassment at work and has yielded a surge in lawsuits and tens of millions of dollars in damages to aggrieved plaintiffs.

Kennedy was a bit of a joke when he first arrived in Washington in 1962. When John F. Kennedy ran for President, he kept his Massachusetts Senate seat warm for his youngest sibling, placing a college buddy in it for two years until Teddy reached the constitutionally required age of 30. But starting with a 1965 bill that did away with country-by-country quotas for immigrants, and especially in the quarter-century since his failed 1980 campaign for President, Kennedy, 74, has amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country. With a succession of Republicans, he helped create COBRA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, portable health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act and more than 15 key education programs, including the landmark 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He also pushed through the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries and the reduction of the voting age to 18. By the late '90s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him.

Some bipartisan efforts have backfired on Kennedy. He has complained that he was taken in by Bush on the No Child Left Behind law because it was inadequately funded, and Democrats are distressed that he has collaborated with Republicans on immigration reform. Worse than that, critics say, Kennedy's inability to stop the confirmation of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito show he's losing his swat. But Kennedy still finds a way to deliver the goods for the less advantaged. Over the next five years, more than 100,000 severely disabled children will become beneficiaries of a new $872 million program that continues government health-care payments to them even as they move out of poverty. Kennedy and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley managed to slip the program into last year's budget.

On Durbin:

Even though the senate is occasionally dubbed the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, actual debate on the Senate floor rarely happens: members just read prepared speeches written by aides and then return to their offices. Then there's Dick Durbin. On issues from immigration reform to judicial nominees, the Illinois Democrat frequently engages in public back and forth with his Senate colleagues in hearings and before votes—and rarely uses notes to do it. "I can't do it any other way," says Durbin of his off-the-cuff style. "That's me."

And while the debates don't often change the votes of other members, Durbin's tough questioning of his colleagues and his willingness to defend his own proposals clarify and distill complicated issues for the C-SPAN-viewing public. Occasionally, Durbin's arguments even carry the day, as when he won support on the Senate Judiciary Committee for a provision in an immigration bill that would protect church groups and others from prosecution if they aided illegal immigrants.

Of course, speaking extemporaneously has its risks, which Durbin learned last fall after he was forced to apologize for comparing alleged abuse of prisoners by American troops at Guantanamo Bay to techniques used by the Nazis, the Soviets and the Khmer Rouge. And some Republicans complain Durbin is too strident in his role as assistant leader of Senate Democrats, constantly on the attack against Republicans and President Bush. But Durbin, 61, has a bipartisan side. He has joined with Senator Rick Santorum, a staunch Republican from Pennsylvania, to push the U.S. government to give $866 million in additional funds for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Early this year, he helped broker a compromise between Democrats and Republicans to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, working on a provision that will keep libraries from having to hand over information about users without an order from a judge.

And if he can't reach a compromise behind the scenes, Durbin is happy to return to the open well of the Senate. "I really enjoy debate," he says. "The battle of ideas is what it should be about."

Blah, blah, blah. I know this is a liberal magazine, but still...their records on abortion and protecting marriage, just to name two issues are horrible.

Senator Kennedy kills aid plan for parochial-school Katrina victims

From Catholic World News:

One of America's most prominent Catholic politicians has killed a proposal by President Bush [that] would have given families displaced by Hurricane Katrina financial aid to send their children to private or parochial schools, the Culture of Life Foundation reports.

A bipartisan student relief package put forth by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Wyoming Senator Michael Enzi did not include a provision that would have given students up to $7,500, because Senator Kennedy opposed the provision, according to a high-level Congressional staffer who spoke with Culture & Cosmos, an online newsletter from the Culture of Life Foundation.

Culture & Cosmos also reports that a prominent Church prelate said he was furious that aid to private schools had been kept out of the package and he was especially angry that it is being blocked by "four Irish Catholic Senators."