terms

Many tributes have been paid to Teddy Kennedy in the past few days, by people of diverse political views, intellectual levels and social strata, and they were well deserved. One writer, for example, describes him as "the greatest senator of our age" and as "the liberal conscience of the nation."
Indeed, what other single person can you think of, of any political party or occupation, who has done more in the past 50 years to make things better for women, working people, the poor, the sick, the aged, the disabled, people of color, children, the abandoned, American society in general?
How did he do it? Well, he did it by stifling personal weaknesses, by accepting that he couldn't be president and by buckling down in the Senate for many, many years of gritty, inspired, quietly heroic, highly productive work.
It is important -- it is essential -- to understand one critical thing about Teddy's remarkable career in the Senate: it was very long -- term after term after term. He could not have begun to make the mark he made in six years, 12 years, even 18 years.
So we thank the voters of Massachusetts for Ted Kennedy. And we should. For would you believe that right here among us, right here in Colorado, there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated voters -- a multitude -- who would, if they could, clamp the same obnoxious, arbitrary limit on the number of terms of members of Congress that they have clamped on officials of state and county governments.
Term limits. It's a curse. Ridiculous? Sure. They'd do it. You'd better believe it.