Ted Still Paying

Senator Kennedy was probably just sitting down with a scotch and soda back on February 12th. He was probably just minding his own business, wondering how he might stick-it to some conservative or some Republican sometime, somewhere... and then Cheney goes and has a hunting accident.

Ted's liberal pals do what liberals do when they think there is Republican blood in the water... they pounce on the Vice President. Ted smiles. Ted feels good.

But hold on Ted. As Roy Hobbs said in The Natural, "I guess there's some mistakes that we never stop paying for."

When the press and the Dems started questioning how long it took Cheney to report the accident, Ted surely lost his smile. Surely at that point Ted saw it coming.

It has to be that way, Ted. You get drunk and drive a young woman off a bridge... You step on her, freeing yourself from the sedan... you know you're too drunk to get her out... but instead of going to the nearby house (the one with the porch light on) to get a sober person to help you, you think of yourself (as you've done all your life) and you start walking the other way... you go back to your room and start trying to figure out how in the world you're going to get out of this one.

The next day you're cleaned up, sobered up, and in your sailing outfit... having a conversation with some of the locals... and you still haven't called the police.

In the meantime, the car has been found. The young woman is found with her head arched upwards into a pocket of air in one of the sedan's footwells. How long did it take her to suffocate, Ted? If you had gone to the house for help would she have survived?

Well... You didn't go to jail. You didn't even lose your Senate seat. But you'll be paying as long as you have breath. It has to be that way, Ted.