This morning my wife told me that she just heard for the first time that Ted Kennedy was running for Senate re-elction. I knew but I had forgotten. She then tested me and I didn't know the name of his opponent. For trivia buffs, his name is Ken Chase. It is safe to say, this race is all-but uncontested.

As high ranking Republican senators are fighting to keep their seats, Sen. Kennedy is spending very little money and is not worried. He has been the perpetual target of the right. His name has been used to raise money for the Republican party. He was one of two senators who stood tall and voted against the Iraq invasion. His vote was cast despite the fact that most Americans wanted to bomb Iraq back to the stone age at the time.

When asked to comment about Senator Kerry's most recent slip, Kennedy said, "I wish the Bush administration brought as much energy and focus to trying to correct their mistakes in Iraq as it did in going after John Kerry."

Tomorrow, Kennedy will be re-elected senator by a wide margin. He will begin his 45th year representing Massachusetts. He will continue to be the target of the right and he will also be the third longest serving U.S. senator ever.

The Kennedy clan has always been a fascinating study to conservatives; we just can't figure how they continue to get elected. Senator Larry Craig is battling for his political life for copping to a misdemeanor charge that is specious at best. Ted Kennedy allowed a woman who was not his wife drown in his mothers vehicle while he slept it off and didn't contact the police. In fact, the first person he contacted was his lawyer and yet he remains in office nearly four decades later.

It's amazing that through the Mary-Jo Kopechne issue, expulsion from Harvard for cheating, sex scandals and various other unsavory issues, the one issue that has turned liberals against Kennedy is an environmental one:

The source of unhappiness is Kennedy's efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind was to be the first such project in the United States and a source of pride to environmentally minded New Englanders. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts residents in favor. But now it appears that America's first offshore wind farm will be near Galveston, Texas.

Proposed the month before Sept. 11, 2001, Cape Wind remains in limbo. It's been frustrated at every turn by a handful of yachtsmen, Kennedy included, who don't want to see windmills from their verandas. Many millions have been spent spreading disinformation and smearing the wind farm's supporters.

It says something about liberals that you can be responsible for a death and not be forced to resign but go against the environmentalists and you're despised immediately. Heaven help him if he ever votes against an abortion clinic being built in Hyannisport.

There's another story in this morning's Providence Journal that pretty interesting: Democratic leaders push mental-health insurance parity bill. It concerns the Democrats' attempt to force insurance companies to handle treatments for mental illness the same as treatments for other major illnesses. The bills doing so are being sponsored by Patrick Kennedy in the House and his father Ted Kennedy in the Senate. When passed, it will represent a significant step forward in health care nationwide. The Republicans would be foolish to oppose it.

Anyone who knows people with mental illness (not those just "feeling sad") are familiar with just how devastating and debilitating it is, both for the patients and their family and friends. The question before us as a society is not whether or not too many people are calling themselves depressed when all they're experiencing is just the "blues," but how you care for people with real mental illnesses.

To someone with mental illness, it's a sickness as real as any other chronic disease. Sometimes even worse, because of the stigma attached. It's time for insurance companies to realize that. Except in one or two cases, they haven't -- so now it's time for Congress to act.

Sen. John McCain has found himself on the wrong side of an issue that I would imagine he didn't believe would be as contentious as it has become. He's been a supporter of the immigration bill and has been (perhaps unfairly) lumped in with President Bush and Ted Kennedy. Being mentioned with Kennedy is a dagger for any Republican candidate.

Today, the senator went after another senator who is despised as much, if not more, than Kennedy to shore up the base:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said today in Los Angeles he will try to squash nearly $150 million in proposed defense spending backed by Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling the projects wasteful and unneeded by the military.

Speaking to reporters outside a downtown fundraiser, the US senator from Arizona said Clinton had larded a Senate bill with "pork-barrel" proposals that would drain funds needed to shore up armed forces arrayed around the globe.

This is pure desperation by McCain's campaign. I guess they figure if you hit Hillary Clinton hard, the base will cheer and it'll gain you some of the ground lost to Fred Thompson. The downside is that the Clinton campaign can turn this around and say that McCain doesn't support the troops. A charge that would be laughed at by right-thinking folks but one that could do damage. The piece quoted above does not say what the earmarks are so it's hard to see if Hillary would have the opportunity (Update: Clinton may well have the edge in this battle).

There's one issue in the Massachusetts governor's race that may turn out to have long-lasting significance for the nation: Alternative energy.

Democrat Deval Patrick supports the Cape Wind project. The power harnessed by wind turbines on Nantucket Sound, he argues, would present a cheaper, environmentally-friendlier alternative to oil.

The project has set off a nasty round of bickering among Cape residents, along with a surprise: Noted environmentalist (and Cape Cod resident) Sen. Ted Kennedy opposes Cape Wind.

But alternative energy holds promise for Massachusetts. In a state that's losing residents, why not try to retain them by developing innovative technology that has the side benefit of aiding the environment? Our quest for oil, after all, has led to 100 deaths in Iraq this month. And oil bills are so high in Massachusetts that we need Hugo Chavez to help out. Time for a change.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) already had a tough path to regaining the Democratic nomination. Unlike Al Gore -- who still receives sympathy from the base as the guy who won in 2000, but got denied by the Supreme Court -- Kerry is blamed for losing a race against an unpopular president after getting more money and volunteer time than any Democratic candidate in the history of the country.

But losing the commitment of his fellow Bay Stater -- Sen. Ted Kennedy -- for failing to commit to a race is rough. Kerry's approval ratings back in Massachusetts have gone south. And Garance Franke-Ruta and Drew Pitt speculate that the only real Kerry '08 constituency is the gaggle of congressmen waiting for a U.S. Senate seat to open up... and the group of state legislators waiting for those House seats to open up.

It's a rough draw for Kerry, who, despite his flaws, has been an ethical and committed public servant his whole life. Still, it may be another indication that his time as an elected leader is past and that his best route to serve is outside of office.

Here we are four years after the build-up and subsequent invasion of Iraq. First things first, the actual invasion and capture of Baghdad were a sight to behold. No military operation has ever been conducted as efficiently and expeditiously as the full-speed end-around utilized to take the Iraqi capital. Our armed forces deserve major credit for an exceptionally planned and orchestrated operation. That has been lost in the din that has surrounded this war from the beginning.

Now, on to the meat of the post, what has gone right, what went wrong, and the outright lies about both.

Lie #1: Bush lied us into war.

This is the most invidious and carefully crafted lie from the political left. Let's look back to late 2002 and remember exactly how events transpired.

President Bush went to Congress and asked for permission to use force. The majority agreed including John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and myriad others who are using the Bush lied canard nowadays. The actual truth is that Hillary, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Robert Byrd, Al Gore, Henry Waxman and Madeline Albright all agreed that Saddam had WMD and planned on using them. If Bush lied us into war, the above group gave him a major assist.

The Democrats forced Bush to follow the tedious course of presenting the case to the UN, which forced us to hold off and gave Saddam ample time to send his stockpiles to Syria and Iran (yes, Iran, where he sent his planes during the first Gulf War.) Put quite simply, the Democrats insistence that we cowtow to the UN may have actually harmed us by dispersing the weapons throughout the region.

In any case, Bill Clinton used the WMD reason to attack Iraq during the impeachment trial. I could hardly imagine that Saddam just disposed of them in the succeeding four years.

And rightly so. The president had been hovering in the mid-thirties for months. Those who represent that 30 percent are the people -- such as myself -- who know that wavering on the War on Terror would be extremely detrimental to our nation. We have hung tough with Bush because we know that we are at a turning point and the end result must be victory.

This week President Bush did waver in a crucial portion of the overall security requirements:

Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen Reports poll found Mr. Bush's approval rating dropped to an all-time low for that poll, at 34 percent.

"The president's ratings have tumbled each time immigration reform dominates the news," Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, said in his analysis.

Mr. Rasmussen said that his polling last year, after Mr. Bush gave an Oval Office address laying out his plans for more border enforcement and giving illegal aliens a path to citizenship, found only 39 percent supported the president's position.

The border issue is of paramount importance to those who see that our enemy will not stop attacking us and will continue to probe until they find an opening. That was shown to be even more important in the wake of the Fort Dix arrests. The President has ignored us, his biggest supporters, to try to gain favor with the Hispanic vote for the next and future elections. Not for him as he's not running again, but for the good of the party. If he's going to spend the next year and a half doing that, he might just as well pull the troops out of Iraq. We can't win the overall war without shoring up our borders and granting amnesty to 12-million is not the way to do it. Border security is as much a part of the overall WOT strategy as is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By joining with Ted Kennedy on this bill, the president has ensured a perpetual Democratic majority in the House and Senate. To add insult to injury, the illegals now living here will not have to pay billions of dollars in back taxes at the insistence of the President. Thanks for nothing, Mr. President.

An MSNBC/Wall Street Journal report confirms that the immigration issue is poison to both President Bush and the Democratic-led congress:

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, argues that these numbers have crossed below the political "Mendoza line," referring to the feeble .200 batting-average mark in baseball. "With the mood of the country dropping below 20, and the president's approval below 30, both are candidates for a sort of political Mendoza line," he says.

Congress is below the president but that may change as his politically tin ear has come into play again. Bush is still trying to revive a bill that has been shot, stabbed, hung and run over. It's the Rasputin of bills. Bush fails to see that the American people as a whole and the vast majority of his party in particular will never support the contents of the bill.

By teaming with Ted Kennedy, and with John McCain sucked into this political black hole, who knows what the lowest polling number will be. Can Congress and Bush actually break the single digit plateau? One would hope so if the keep pushing this sham of a bill that allows those who are criminals to be granted amnesty.

The question is, why on Earth would you? If history is a guide, Mr. Romney seems to show a propensity for changing his mind and going back on the promises he makes while campaigning. Whenever I've written about Romney's chameleon-like tendency--be it on his flip-flop on abortion, or his relationship with Ted Kennedy--Mitt's supporters cry foul. What's so wrong with changing your mind? they ask, as if they'd never vilified John Kerry for his own evolving mind-set.

Sure, a person, over time can have a change-of-heart on a host of issues and still claim to be intellectually honest. Such an argument is harder to make, however, if that person happens to be courting the conservative wing of the Republican party, and seems to be embracing a new-found strictness on matters such as immigration, abortion, and homosexual marriage. Why? Because the same man, Romney, sounded a whole lot different when he was campaigning for the votes of a constituency that was a lot more liberal back in 2002.

Mitt Romney seemed comfortable as a group of gay Republicans quizzed him over breakfast one morning in 2002. Running for governor of Massachusetts, he was at a gay bar in Boston to court members of Log Cabin Republicans.

Mr. Romney explained to the group that his perspective on gay rights had been largely shaped by his experience in the private sector, where, he said, discrimination was frowned upon.

Mitt Romney promised the group of gay Republicans that he'd "keep his head low" on the issue of gay marriage. He'd adhere to whatever the state court decided on the matter. Then, after Romney was elected and the Massachusetts supreme court later handed down its verdict legalizing same-sex marriage, Mitt promptly broke his word and began calling for a constitutional amendment that would ban the unions.

I guess if you are really conservative, you can console yourself with the notion that Romney finally saw the light. But what evidence do you have the Mitt won't turn around and do to you what he did to those log cabin Republicans at the bar.

Sometime on Thursday, as most of us now know, GOP presidential candidate John McCain stopped by D.C. in a now-rare appearance at the Capitol to help put the finishing touches on the immigration deal. Impatient with some of the final deliberations, he cursed at fellow Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Scott Johnson at Powerline has put together some context and background around what happened there. It has deep implications for those of us considering who can best lead the GOP in 2008. As Scott notes:

The eruption of Senator John McCain at fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn (TX) is an incident that reverberates on several levels. It renews lingering doubts about whether Senator McCain possesses the proper temperament to be president. It also raises serious questions about the substance of the "grand bargain" immigration bill that Senators Kennedy, Specter, McCain and others are attempting to rush through the Senate.

As to the substance, the problem is that Senator Cornyn was attempting to make sure there was an infrastructure to deal with those who didn't comply with the new immigration law. Kennedy said that was a deal breaker and McCain, impatient and with a flight to catch agreed and pushed on.

For many years, Senator Ted Kennedy has been the Democrat that Republicans love to hate. However, throughout his 45 year career, he has been willing to work together with top Republicans to pass laws that are in the best interest of this country. Recently, Trent Lott complimented Ted Kennedy for his involvement in domestic legislation. This was done before a meeting in Mississippi where the Kennedy name is hated. The comments made say a lot about Senator Lott and Senator Kennedy. They are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum but they are willing to work together for what they think is in the best interests of the United States of America.

Most recently, Kennedy has worked with President Bush and John McCain on the immigration bill. As the Republicans attack him for his efforts, one should note that Senator Kennedy is also being attacked by unions for his support for the same bill. The Senator has made a decision that he is not beholden to any one group, which is a sign of good leadership.

On October 6, 2006, Jeb Bush faced an angry crowd of anti-Republican demonstrators. The press reported that Governor Bush hid in a closet. He has now clarified this by saying that he hid in a boiler room. The story reminded me of how things were for Senator Ted Kennedy during the stormy days of busing in Boston.

I had lived in Boston and opposed busing. I still think that it didn't resolve the need to integrate the Boston school system. Having said that, the day I saw Ted Kennedy face a crowd that wanted to harm him, was the day my respect for him began to grow.

In researching, I tried to find the news article about the day that I went to a Communion Breakfast sponsored by the Knights of Columbus in Quincy. This was about thirty years ago.

It would seem that the Democrats will be launching a series of "pre-emptive" strikes prior to General David Petraeus' report on the progress of the Iraq war. The International Herald Tribune has pointed out that a number of top Democratic leaders such as Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. Joe Biden have reached out to the media to dispute the report.

Such a strategy looks like it will backfire on the Democrats considering that a recent CBSNYT's poll shows that the public holds its faith in the military command and neither congress nor the president in terms of who knows how to run the war. Attacking Petraeus could prove disastrous for the Democrats and should be avoided at all costs. If the Democrats start to push a hard anti-military attitude, they will be in DEEP trouble with the public which can accept anti-war, but NOT anti-military posturing.

Will Petraeus become the modern day version of Gen. MacArthur or Gen. Eisenhower? Perhaps. He will be appearing in an exclusive interview with Brit Hume on Fox News right after his report to congress in what is about as hard of a slap in the face to the mainstream media and the left wing establishment as he could muster. If Petraeus' comes off a media darling after his interview, the war will take a unique dynamic as the public will have a new hero to rally behind.

Shays Invokes Chappaquiddick

This is NOT about the person Mark Foley -- homosexual transmuted into a alcohol soused Internet stalker. It's NOT about Gary Hart. Or Wild Bill Clinton. And it's certainly NOT about Sen. Ted Kennedy, contrary to GOP Rep. Christopher Shays' malicious miscast of Kennedy's tragedy at Chappaquiddick.

It's about this: Shays is facing the loss of his congressional seat to Democrat Diane Farrell.