Legal Commentary

Teddy Kennedy's death will be used to rekindle the old argument that we need to shut up and hurry up about health care reform.

But now the Democrats are short a vote in the Senate, and Democratic Governor Deval Patrick can't just appoint a new Democratic Senator for Massachusetts, despite the fact that Kennedy himself, less than a month ago, urged state legislators to change the law of successsion and give Patrick the power to appoint a Senator, because back in 2004, anticipating that John Kerry would win the presidency, Kennedy was instrumental in getting state legislative change designed to wrest the power from the Massachusetts governor, when the governor was the Republican Mitt Romney.

So there are 2 questions: 1. Is the death of Teddy Kennedy a sufficiently powerful event to counter the opposition to the health care bill? and 2. Is the death of Teddy Kennedy a sufficiently powerful event to overcome the embarrassment of changing the Massachusetts law back to what it was before it was changed to thwart a Republican?

Full post as published by Althouse on August 26, 2009 (boomark / email).