Is There Actually a Use for Teddy Kennedy After All?

I might have to start thinking so:

Late last night, to the amazement of refugee advocates, the Senate approved by unanimous consent an amendment by Senator Kennedy to a defense bill that will make it easier for America’s Iraqi friends to be admitted as refugees to the United States. The Administration lobbied against it this week—the talking points included complaints about infringement on executive-branch authority—but Kennedy’s office agreed to a number of compromises, and won the support of holdout Republican senators.

The amendment raises the number of Iraqi interpreters and U.S. government employees (with at least one year of service) who can be admitted under a special immigrant visa program from five hundred to five thousand each year for the next five years. It creates a special category (“Priority 2”) of persecuted Iraqis—including U.S. employees, people working for American news and nongovernmental organizations, contractors, and members of religious minorities, and their families—whose refugee applications can be heard directly by the U.S. government without a United Nations referral, which should speed up and streamline an extremely sluggish process. And the bill allows for these applications to be reviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, so that Iraqis don’t need to flee the country and become refugees elsewhere first (though the language on this point is vague, and there will have to be continuous pressure to make it happen).

But then it\’s not exactly been a difficult moral decision to make now has it? Even the US Senate, not known anywhere outside its own hallowed halls as a centre of wise reasoning and moral decision making was able to see the correct path here: unanimously indeed.

So, what\’s your excuse, and what\’s yours?

Look, if the rum soaked bloviate can get it, why can\’t you? Or do you really want to go down in history as having less moral sensibility than Teddy Kennedy?

To repeat, less than Teddy "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy!

Relatedly, the meeting at Parliament is next week.