Craig, I wasn't aware that the Republicans had been accused of stealing votes in southern Illinois. But if they did, I have the same opinion of them. My opinion doesn't change across party lines. They belonged in prison. Our acceptance of this kind of behavior from either side of the aisle is mind boggling. Kennedy bought votes, as anecdotally repeated by friends and colleagues who said he openly joked and laughed about it, and should not have been lionized as an American icon. He was a criminal. And if Richard Nixon did the same thing I am of the same opinion. It may have been going on since the first Presidential election, but that shouldn't make it acceptable. Are we expected to look over somebody's bad deeds and see only the good in them? After all, Hitler liked dogs. Looking the other way and accepting this kind of behavior makes Camelot a lie and, in effect, makes American democracy a lie. It places America under the yoke of criminals who have already proven that in their minds the ends justify the means. Then a society devolves into a cesspool.

H.L. Mencken said, and I may be paraphrasing here, "The downfall of society occurred when the middle class found out what the upper class and lower class were getting away with."

And I didn't say that the prescription for the theft was assassination. I said that the prescription for the theft was prison. But Kennedy's story is a bit Karmic, isn't it? And Karma isn't prescribed, it is bought and paid for by one's own deeds. That's where I employed the phrase poetic irony. His theft did nothing but purchase his Karmic fate. I certainly was not romanticizing the idea of a man's murder. The thing about poetic irony is that it is often tragic.