Part one of a series.  Find parts two here and three here.

In researching the ever-intensifying Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, it only takes a few keystrokes to unearth her ongoing history of questionable judgment and puzzling prosecutorial decisions.  Even though the election has been effectively nationalized, with some polls showing the underdog Brown within two points or so of the colorless Coakley, she remains largely unknown outside New England.

So as a public service to the voters of the Bay State, during the run-up to the special election on Jan. 19, Big Journalism will be offering some of the Martha’s Greatest Hits, so that they can fully make up their minds whether she would make a suitable successor to the late Edward Moore Kennedy – who, as you recall, began his illustrious career by being expelled from Harvard for cheating, went on to drown Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and then turned to a life of drinking and debauchery, including the infamous “waitress sandwich” with soon-to-be-retired Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, before attempting to inflict “universal health care” on the country shortly before his death last year.

You can read all about Ted here in this classic profile of the last and worst of the Kennedy brothers by the late Michael Kelly.  Be sure to read the whole thing, just to get a flavor of the kind of candidate Massachusetts voters seem to like.

Homework done?  Good.  Because Martha Coakley, the current Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus its top law enforcement officer, is shaping up as a worthy heir to the Lion of the Senate. (more…)

The president of the United States is a “light-skinned” man “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”  That, at least, is the carefully considered opinion of soon-to-be-former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, quoted in a forthcoming book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change, about the 2008 election of Barack Obama.  The thing is, Hapless Harry meant it in a good way.

At least he did until now, when the news of the explosive statement found its way into The Washington Post and Politico.  Already reeling in his hopeless, doomed-as-Chris-Dodd campaign for re-election this fall, the Sage of Searchlight no doubt thought he was being complimentary in his usual clueless, white-guy-of-a-certain-age way.  After all, when Harry was growing up, “Negro” was the polite term you used to show you weren’t a racist, and as for light-skinned, well, we all knew what that meant.  Why, the next thing you know, Unhorsed Harry will be describing Obama as “a credit to his race.”

The authors write: “Reid was convinced, in fact, in fact,that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.”  Gee, that sounds a lot like what Geraldine Ferraro said, and her reward was practically being drummed out of the Democrat Party.

This isn’t the first time the scrappy little Mormon boxer has found himself on his keister over race.  He had some ‘splainin’ to do when the seat-warming, monument-building senator from Illinois, Roland Burris, explicitly charged him with racism for trying to block indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich from appointing an African-American to replace Obama in the senate.  Watch and listen to Harry dance as David Gregory grills him on Meet the Press:

But there’s bigger game afoot than one pathetic little man’s attempt to cling to his rapidly diminishing power.  With Dodd and Byron Dorgan having defenestrated themselves, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, two of the nastier people in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, are busily greasing the skids for obvious Democrat losers like Reid, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and other endangered-species types. (more…)