We all (unfortunately) knew the hell she went through the past couple years while battling incurable cancer. The reason I don’t link to that nonsense is out of respect. I’m sure you can understand.

Personally, I’m glad her suffering is over, even though I’m so sorry that her children have lost their mother. That’s certainly a tragedy and even if you didn’t believe in what she believed, I hope you find it in your heart to think good thoughts for her family in their time of need.

She was born Mary Elizabeth Anania. More about her life here.

I know that Justin already posted about this, but I wanted to add my two coppers.

I didn’t always agree with Senator Kennedy — both in politics, and in personality — but I have a respect for the man and what he accomplished in his many years in public service. Politico:

His career spanned almost a half-century of American history, and covering Kennedy was like a relay race, in which those who knew him best in the early years have long ago retired.

Education and healthcare initiatives will always be associated with his name, and the enactment this year of legislation authorizing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco is a Kennedy legacy. But this was also a senator who played a major role in airline deregulation, criminal code revisions and battles over the Supreme Court. Conservatives still resent him for his wholesale assault on Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987, and Kennedy is one of the few senators in history to see a former aide, Stephen Breyer, move up to the high bench.

Kennedy’s power base rested on three major committees: Judiciary; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and Armed Services, the first two of which he chaired at different points in his career. And he never lost an old-school style of politics, which set him apart in the increasingly impersonal Senate.

His booming voice filled the chamber when he spoke from his desk, always in the back row on the Democratic side and a gathering point over the years for younger members.

I know that there are many conservative partisans who still gleefully cite the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident anytime that Kennedy’s name is brought up — and I get that. However, I think that Ted Kennedy’s legacy will not be controversial issues like Chappaquiddick but rather things like children’s health care, his support for Barack Obama’s candidacy for president, and the various Senate committees on which he served.

The man was truly a larger-than-life character and I’m sure that the halls of the Senate will be a very different place when Congress returns from it’s recess.

The brain cancer finally caught up with him at age 77.

Some more from ABC:

Kennedy was first elected to the Senate in 1962, at the age of 30, and his tenure there would span four decades.

A hardworking, well-liked politician who became the standard-bearer of his brothers’ liberal causes, his career was clouded by allegations of personal immorality and accusations that his family’s clout helped him avoid the consequences of an accident that left a young woman dead.

But for the younger members of the Kennedy clan, from his own three children to those of his brothers JFK and RFK, Ted Kennedy — once seen as the youngest and least talented in a family of glamorous overachievers — was both a surrogate father and the center of the family.

And certainly it was Ted Kennedy who bore many of the tragedies of the family — the violent deaths of four of his siblings, his son’s battle with cancer, and the death of his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.

He will be missed.

Yesterday, Obama positioned the public option as something that everybody was getting hung up on. Not only that Kent Conrad said he wouldn’t vote for legislation that had it in it and neither would Blue Dog Dems or moderate Repubs.

Well, now HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is continuing the meme that the public option isn’t necessary…and if that’s the case, well, it’s dead folks.

Here she is today, along with a clip of Obama…

If anything passes, and I bet it will, we’re looking at health care co-ops.

Count on it.

He was the face of CBS Evening News for the better part of two decades and known as the most trusted man in America. Even his famous sign off, “And that’s the way it is,” speaks to the type of objectivity Cronkite seemed to value above all else.

This brings up a broader question about the journalism of today…who can be compared to Cronkite? Tom Brokaw comes to mind and Brian Williams certainly seems to be carrying the journalistic integrity mantle. But with the advent of the 24 hour news channels where they have to fill the void with constant opinion/pundit shows, when it comes to trusting a journalist to give you the facts straight and clear, will we ever have another Cronkite?

Discuss.

The great writer John Updike has died at the age of 76. I say writer, because Updike was more than a novelist. He was a storyteller, an essayist, a man of letters in a way that is rare in our current age. With Updike’s passing we have one less literary great who was widely known by the public. We have precious few of those.

Without the intention to belittle such writers as Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, Patricia Cornwell or other bestselling authors, Updike was a rarity in that he became famous writing not just popular fiction but difficult, literary fiction. He presented us works meant to do more than provide an enjoyable diversion. He wanted his readers to think about our life and our world, to consider the implications of our choices and the meanings behind our relationships. He wasn’t always great, but he always tried to do more than simply write an entertaining story.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing distasteful about entertaining stories. I am egalitarian in my views of fiction — the more, the merrier. I’d rather see my kids reading comic books than reading nothing at all. But I have great affection for literature and what it adds to our culture. Like all the arts, the best literature can change minds and hearts. Updike undoubtedly changed a few.

He will be missed. I can only hope his passing does not portend the end to an age when literary writers can become, if not household names, then widely known and appreciated. Many other writers deserve the recognition Updike enjoyed.

With the $700 billion market bailout inflating the power of government and a big-spending, big-regulating lDemocrat or a big-spending, big-regulating Republican poised to take the White House, a lot of experts and politicians are giving last rites to small government.

Just today, I’m reading the era of small government is over. And Reagan capitalism is a goner. And, dang it all, we need even more government.

Dick Meyer, writing for NPR, claims that small government was done in by 9/11, Katrina and the credit crisis. That sounds accurate, but I would add that the Bush-led inflation of spending is also to blame. Once you add money to budgets, it’s hard to ever take those dollars away.

So, should those of us who are wary of big government just roll over and hope we get a big ole’ federal belly rub? Nah. I’ve always said this an issue that doesn’t have to be either/or. The choice has never been between an overinflated government and a skeletal one. You can chart a more reasonable course. And, lucky for me, Meyer describes this viewpoint better than I could:

The modern federal government will and must be big, but it ought to be as little as possible, too. The American take on statecraft is to be wary of bureaucracy, sensitive that taxation is a curb on liberty, respectful of local authority, wary of centralized planning, and impressed but not blinded by the virtues of free markets and uncomforted by Big Brother. Common-sense adherence to these civic impulses is what constricts the vices of big government, not just the size of budgets.

It is precisely the lack of that common sense that has brought us to the Era of Huge Government, where our capacity to flexibly deal with new and unforeseen problems will be sorely constrained.

The major challenge for the next president is to figure out how to wield the bloated apparatuses of government so that they don’t cause more problems than they solve. I would suggest the new president could start by streamlining the areas that are inflexible and bulking up the areas that have grown ineffective. Of course, prioritizing would depend somewhat on ideology. But at the very least, we need a commitment to creating well-targeted government services rather than just tolerating the unwieldy, potentially oppressive government we are currently building towards.

Rest in peace.

The author David Foster Wallace was found dead two days go from a suicide.

Many of you probably know him as the mind behind “Infinite Jest,” but in 2000 he wrote a piece for The Rolling Stone about John McCain and his run for the White House.

Trust me, it’s a must read…especially for observations like this…

One reason a lot of the media on the Trail like John McCain is simply that he’s a cool guy. Nondweeby. In school, Clinton was in Student Government and Band, whereas McCain was a Varsity wrestler and a hellraiser whose talents for partying and getting laid are still spoken of with awe by former classmates. At 63, he’s funny, and smart, and he’ll make fun of himself and his wife and his staff and other pols and the Trail, and he’ll tease the press and give them shit in a way they don’t ever mind because it’s the sort of shit that makes you feel like here’s this very cool, important guy who’s noticing you and liking you enough to give you shit. Sometimes he’ll wink at you for no reason. If all this doesn’t sound like that big a deal, you have to remember that most of these pro reporters have to spend a lot of time around politicians, and most politicians are painful to be around. As one political columnist told Rolling Stone and another pencil new to the Trail, “If you saw more of how the other candidates conduct themselves, you’d be way more impressed with [McCain]. It’s that he acts somewhat in the ballpark of the way a real human being would act.” And the grateful press on the Trail transmit — maybe even exaggerate — McCain’s humanity to their huge audience, the electorate, which electorate in turn seems so paroxysmically thankful for a presidential candidate somewhat in the ballpark of a real human being that it has to make you stop and think about how starved voters are for just some minimal level of genuineness in the men who want to “lead” and “inspire” them.

Rest in peace Mr. Wallace.

His battle with colon cancer has finally come to an end.

Joe Gandelman, a former newsman, weighs in on Snow’s legacy…

Snow was a public figure who truly seemed to have fun at his job and did it well. He was the quintessential broadcasting pro who put a professional TV face on the White House point of view. Not all people who leave the job as press secretary do so with their integrity intact — particularly not those who’ve left administrations suffering Grand Canyon-like credibility gaps. But if Snow didn’t leave with his reputation as pure as snow, he left it unbattered unbruised and unbowed.

He was 53.

Earlier today, former Republican senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms died at the age of 86. Helms, often a controversial figure, was one of the Republicans who led the expansion of the GOP base to included blue collar workers and especially evangelicals and other social conservatives. A staunch opponent of abortion and communism and a strong proponent of free trade and fighting the African AIDS epidemic, he was an important and powerful senator in his time.

May he rest in peace.

Of all the great comics of the late 20th century, I found George Carlin to be one of the most hilarious. Even when he was being banal and mean-spirited, he could make me laugh. So I’m saddened to hear of his death yesterday at the age of 71.

His routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” is a cultural classic, as funny for the devil-may-care delivery Carlin gave it as for the bitingly powerful social commentary created by nothing more than a few dirty words. Later in his career, he expanded the list of obscenities into a long, rolling collection of filth that was the Iliad of vulgarity, epic and lyrical in its crudeness. I laughed every time.

Carlin skewered not just those in power but the rest of us as well. He took no prisoners. But apparently, he wasn’t immortal. I think Carlin would approve with my reaction upon hearing the news of his death: well, that f**king sucks.

A fitting tribute.

It almost doesn’t seem real.

He was 58.

The apparent cause of death was heart attack.

Some of his life and times…

Russert, of Buffalo, N.Y., took the helm of the Sunday news show in December 1991 and turned it into the most widely watched program of its type in the nation. His signature trait there was an unrelenting style of questioning, sparing none of the politicians, business giants and even sports figures who appeared on his show.

Washingtonian magazine once dubbed Russert the best journalist in town, and described “Meet the Press” as “the most interesting and important hour on television.

He also wrote best-selling books, “Big Russ and Me,” in 2004, and “Wisdom of our Fathers,” in 2006.

This year, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Russert also was a senior vice president at NBC.

Rest in peace.

We interrupt the political commentary to bring you this quick but needed tribute to one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians: Bo Diddley, who died yesterday at the age of 79. I know of no better way to remember him than through his music. So, here’s a little bit.

The family put out a press release…

“To his loving friends, colleagues and fans, we appreciate your heartfelt prayers and support. Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played. Indeed, he committed himself to every role with passion, and pursued every cause with unmatched enthusiasm and integrity.

We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather, with an infectious sense of humor. He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity. He loved deeply, and he was deeply loved.

No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country. In his own words, “I have lived such a wonderful life! I’ve lived enough for two people.”

A private memorial service will be held. The family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Motion Picture and Television Fund:

MPTF
22212 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 300
Woodland Hills, CA 91364
www.mptvfund.org

The icon was 84.