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January 10, 2006

I know exactly how he feels

leahy.jpg

Sen. Pat Leahy, a politician whose avuncular disingenuousness makes me want to kill myself after a mere 60 seconds of his speechifying, sits next to the founding member of the Chappaquiddick Swim Team as Sen. Joseph Biden blathers in the background today.

Biden is a real piece of work, a one-man argument for term limits. The senators on the Judiciary Committee had thirty minutes apiece to question Judge Alito; Biden spoke for almost 13 minutes before he asked a question. By the time his 30 minutes were gone, Biden has spoken more than 3,000 words; the judge, a little more than 1,000.

The best part of this was Biden's ever-so-delightful expression of his distaste for Princeton University, relevant (I guess) because Alito belonged to a Princeton Alumni group that was against pedophile serial killers matriculating, or something like that.

Biden: This is just by way of ... you know, why some of us are puzzled, because if I was aware of it, and I didn't even like Princeton ... No, I mean I really didn't like Princeton (laughing).

Yeah, I was an Irish-Catholic kid who thought it hadn't changed like you concluded it had. I mean, I admit. I have little ... you know, one of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my grandfather, Finnegan, will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen.

But all kidding aside, I wasn't a big Princeton fan.

All delivered with Biden's weird smirks and inappropriate giggles.

The inscrutable Alito looked at the senator as if he were receiving the law from Hammurabi himself. I do not want to play cards with this judge; that's an amazing pokerface.

Anyhow, thanks to the marvels of the internet, within a matter of minutes, someone had dug up evidence that the tenuously-tethered-to-the-truth senator (or should that be the marvelously-malleable pol?) had said the polar opposite in a speech he gave at Princeton last February.

Lyin' Joe "My son's not gay" Biden: It's an honor to be here. It would have even been a greater honor to have gone here. I have three children who have mercifully have all finally completed undergraduate and graduate school, and I tried to get all three of them to apply here ...

I committed a serious mistake, Dean. I've learned now, any advice I give ... when you become parents, whatever school you want your child to go to, don't mention it.

And so I had been pushing Princeton, and this magnificently attractive, intellectually and physically, beautiful young girl, was a sophomore, was showing us around, and I figured we've got a lock now. My son is going to really be interested, and I know Senators aren't supposed to say things like that, but if he hadn't been interested, I would have been worried ....

Joe Biden: Senatese for Ted Baxter.

Radioblogger has links to the actual audio, if you can stand it. But why would you listen to Blusterin' Biden if you didn't have to?

Posted by Mike Lief at January 10, 2006 09:23 PM

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