Ted Kennedy's manslaughter, 40 years in

Today is the 40th anniversary of the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne by Ted Kennedy. Via Powerline:

I thought I would take a moment to bother you all, ladies included, to remind everyone that this is the 40th anniversary of the infamous Chappaquiddick incident in which an inebriated Senator Ted Kennedy marked a reunion of his brother Bobbie's [sic] "Boiler Room" girls by driving one to her death off the Dyke Road bridge.

This manslaughter might have been forgiven if Kennedy hadn't decided to evade responsibility for the accident and cover it up by failing to report it, trying to co-opt one of his aides to cop to being the driver, and then leaving them to try and fix it for him for over seven hours.

Worse, Mary Jo Kopechne, whose drowned body was found in a position trying to eke out the last molecules of air within the submerged car, was left to drown by the self-involved Senator, who chose not to seek immediate help.

After proceedings by a Kennedy-friendly judicial system in Massachusetts, Kennedy was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and had his driver's license suspended. But perhaps the crowning event was Kennedy's appalling nationally-televised apologia, which I remember viewing on TV, and which still reigns as probably the worst and most self-indulgent political pitch ever.

He may be "the Lion of the Senate", but I will never forget Chappaquiddick. For the uninitiated, a must read is Leo Damore's excellent book Senatorial Privilege.

Yes, Ted Kennedy not only managed to kill the girl in what is now known as vehicular homicide, but he deliberately failed to take the opportunity to rescue her, instead allowing her to die as a live witness would have made the incident even more of a political liability.

And that is the very essence of Ted Kennedy, the man and the politician. May he meet his maker soon, the world will be a better place when he's gone.