Why is there an impulse to excuse a crime just because the perpetrator has suffered in his own life, or has extraordinary professional achievements?

Ted Kennedy as feminist icon.

Will the text of the bill Obama signs meet the standard Ted Kennedy would have wanted to hold it to?

What lies ahead for Ted Kennedy's 55-year-old widow?

Maybe there's something valuable in the spectacle of a bunch of strangers sharing a loss, even an idealized loss, with one another.

There’s a slim hope in articles about Ted Kennedy that his death might help the prospects of health care reform. But his own end-of-life decisions hardly seem like an advertisement for overhauling a system that makes such options possible.

Hanna, I was taken aback by your celebration of the end of the Kennedy women. I remembered the Kennedy women, Jackie in particular, quite differently.

While the papers are full of words like “dynasty” and “legacy,” Mary Jo Kopechne, according to Google Trends, is uppermost in our thoughts.

In his 77 years, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was many things to many people, from baby of an enormous political family to eminence gris of an enormous political party.

One thing we have lost with the passing of Edward Kennedy is a certain generational model of the proper role for the family women in public life—the mother, wife, mistress, and daughter. It’s not a model I will miss.