This tribute from Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, is a particularly moving one and seemed worth posting in full:

As the head of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition in Boston before coming to the Forum, I witnessed the deep personal commitment Senator Kennedy felt for immigrants and for fixing America’s immigration laws. After a devastating raid in New Bedford in 2007, Senator Kennedy and other leaders met with family members who gathered in the basement of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church as hundreds streamed in. The families huddled around Senator Kennedy asking him for help finding parents and loved ones who had been taken away by armed federal officers.

Senator Kennedy did not want to leave that church basement. These were his people, these were the people he wanted to help, and these were the people impacted most directly by our broken immigration system. I saw in his concern for these terrified and shattered families Senator Kennedy’s personal commitment to righting wrongs when he saw them.

That afternoon, and in the days and months ahead, Senator Kennedy led yet another push for comprehensive immigration reform on the floor of the United States Senate. Each time he spoke, he went back to that moment in New Bedford to remind our country why we need to fix our out-dated immigration system. Fighting for the dignity and safety of immigrants who give their work and their sweat to this country was not an abstract policy matter for Senator Kennedy.

The great-grandson of eight immigrants to America, the brother of two of America’s most visionary leaders on fighting for a fair and just immigration system, Senator Kennedy was in his own right the architect of the modern struggle to honor America’s legacy as nation built by, populated by, and defined by immigrants from around the world.

We will miss his humor, his strategic sensibility, and his ability to keep us moving forward whatever the obstacles. He taught us that the fate and possibilities of all of us are fully intertwined with the fate and possibilities of the least of us. Both political parties and every American, regardless of status or station, can honor Senator Kennedy’s life and legacy by recommitting ourselves to making the United States of America the most welcoming, free, egalitarian, and successful nation on earth.

I guess Thiessen didn’t read the same CIA inspector general report that so many of us have been scrutinizing in the last few days. That report repeatedly made the point that the CIA guidelines governing what was permissible or impermissible interrogation conduct were so unclear that, while “an improvement over the absence of such [Department of Central Intelligence] Guidelines in the past, they still leave substantial room for misinterpretation and do not cover all Agency detention and interrogation activities.”

Sure, lawyers and senior officials were involved in interrogations every step of the way, which is why their actions ought to be scrutinized in any criminal investigation. But unfortunately, that did not lead CIA interrogators to abide by the law.

Take, for example, the fact that the redacted information in the reports we now have been told included information about detainees who were brutally killed in custody. The supposedly “safe” techniques approved by CIA officials and Justice Department lawyers weren’t supposed to lead to that, but they did.

And then there’s the problem that of 100 supposedly high-level al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody, a bunch of them — we don’t know how many — were simply “lost.” That’s right, this “well-run, highly disciplined” program that had custody of 100 people now can’t account for what happened to some untold number of them. Did they escape? Were they killed and buried to hide the evidence? We have no idea — and apparently the CIA Inspector General wasn’t able to find out, either.

There are all sorts of reports today about the “legal hurdles and complex political dynamics”, as Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston at The New York Times put it,  that will stand in the way of prosecuting these cases. Establishing criminal intent and digging up evidence in faraway places of crimes that occurred years ago is all very difficult, say the experts. In fact, those are the very reasons the Bush administration’s Justice Department gave Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) years ago when he pressed former attorneys general about why they hadn’t prosecuted the deaths of detainees in U.S. custody: “insufficient evidence of criminal conduct, insufficient evidence of the subject’s involvement, insufficient evidence of criminal intent, and low probability of conviction.”

That didn’t ring true to current Attorney General Eric Holder when he read the CIA report, though, and it didn’t sound ethical to the Office of Professional Responsibility inside the Justice Department that has recommended re-opening these cases for investigation. The OPR’s analysis, in fact, suggests that it was the Eastern District of Virginia, then under the direction U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, who appeared to be playing politics with what should have been a straightforward prosecution.

McNulty,  you may recall, is the U.S. attorney who was elevated to deputy attorney general and went on to lie to Congress when he said the White House played almost no role in the controversial firing of nine U.S. attorneys on what appears to have been largely political grounds. That was later contradicted by subsequent testimony and documents.

Thiessen, in the Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, writes that it was “career prosecutors” who decided not to pursue the cases in the Virginia office. Or, it was the U.S. attorney whose career was elevated for making that politically astute decision and then resigned in disgrace a few years later.

The concern about opening this investigation is the politics. Is it unseemly for one attorney general to re-visit the work of a previous one? And will it be politically embarrassing to the Department of Justice and the CIA if it turns out that prosecutors refused to prosecute violations of the federal anti-torture statute by CIA officials? And, as so many commentators are asking this week, won’t this all be a big unwelcome distraction for President Obama from passing national health care legislation?

The late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), one of the great champions of universal health care who is being mourned today, surely would not have seen it that way. Two years ago, he stood up to say clearly that “waterboarding is torture” and opposed the nomination of Attorney General Michael Mukasey because Mukasey refused to admit that. Kennedy also urged the Senate to pass legislation explicitly stating that waterboarding is a war crime. Politics prevailed, and his colleagues rejected the idea.

But Kennedy would probably not suggest that we ought to sacrifice justice to achieve his dream of universal health care. One has nothing to do with the other, except in the sense that, as Kennedy believed, both ought to be basic rights in a civilized society.

The Kennedy family released a statement via Kennedy’s Senate office at around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. From Playbook:

‘Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port. We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever. We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all. He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him.’

The White House released the following statement from President Obama:

Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy.

For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.

I valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of events, he always had time for a new colleague.  I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the Presidency.  And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I’ve profited as President from his encouragement and wisdom.

An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.

And the Kennedy family has lost their patriarch, a tower of strength and support through good times and bad.

Our hearts and prayers go out to them today–to his wonderful wife, Vicki, his children Ted Jr., Patrick and Kara, his grandchildren and his extended family.

It’s worth noting that on health care, Hatch has no history of being oppositionist for the sake of being oppositionist. He’s a conservative, to be sure, but he’s also shown a rare willingness to cross aisles to accomplish shared goals. Famously, Hatch says he came to Washington to fight the liberal activism of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Later, he become one of Kennedy’s closest friends and sometime-legislative allies. Indeed, it was Hatch and Kennedy who united a dozen years ago to create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.

In fact, Hatch says the current health reform debate is suffering for the absence of Kennedy, who’s being treated for brain cancer.

Ted Kennedy would never have come up with a bill like that. His staff did. But the first thing he would have done is called people like me and said, “Hey, can we get together, can we resolve these problems?” And then he would, I think, work to resolve them.

And he’s the only guy on the Democrats’ side that can bring together the — you know, the unions, the trial lawyers, et cetera, the five or six major groups that are major funders of Democrats in America. He’s the only one that can tell them, “This is the way we’re going to go.” Nobody else has that kind of authority.

On that, few would disagree.

How, observers wondered, would the two committees reach a compromise on the issue of a government-backed plan — an option that Kennedy clearly wants but Baucus, working closely with public-plan opponent Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), has been more skeptical about?

Yesterday evening, the Finance Committee released a draft version of their bill that omits the public plan altogether. Instead, it proposes to create cooperatives offering consumers new coverage options that would be run by neither private insurers nor the government. The Washington Post explains:

The absence of a “public option” marks perhaps the most significant omission. Obama and many Democrats had sought a public option to ensure affordable, universal coverage, but as many as 10 Senate Democrats have protested the idea as unfair to private insurers. In its place, the draft circulated yesterday outlines a co-op approach modeled after rural electricity and telecom providers, subject to government oversight and funded with federal seed money.

Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman  Max Baucus (D-Mont.) met with four Republicans, including  Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the ranking GOP member on the panel, along with two Democratic colleagues in an attempt to find bipartisan consensus. Baucus dubbed the group “the coalition of the willing.”

This might answer the question of how the Finance panel intends to approach the thorny private-plan issue. The question remains, of course, how Baucus and Kennedy would combine their efforts.

Good luck.

With the arrival earlier this week of the Congressional Budget Office’s grim analysis of Kennedy’s bill, Democratic leaders are scrambling to tweak (overhaul?) their bills to get more folks covered and cut costs.

Indeed, Baucus’ Finance Committee, which had scheduled a markup on its version of the bill today, has postponed even the unveiling of the bill indefinitely. Roll Call (subscription) is reporting that the markup has been pushed until after the Fourth of July recess, which ends July 6.

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s health committee, led for the moment by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), is a few steps ahead, having begun the markup of its reform bill this morning. Still, there seems no end to the process. One analyst reports that more than 460 amendments have been submitted by committee members alone.

Draft health reform legislation introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) — leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — would cost $1 trillion over the next decade while reducing the number of uninsured by only 16 million, CBO found. It’s hardly the dramatic improvement to the health care system that Kennedy — a long-time health reform advocate — had in mind as a legacy.

In a letter to Kennedy and Dodd, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf was quick to emphasize that those numbers will likely change as the bill language becomes more specific. Democrats on the HELP panel, for example, had excluded in their draft earlier plans to expand Medicaid and offer a government-backed insurance option — provisions that might surface later in the debate and increase the numbers of the newly-insured.

Yet, depending on how the legislation evolves, the numbers could also get worse for the Democrats. CBO, for example, scored the HELP proposal under the assumption that it will eventually include an individual mandate for health coverage — something it doesn’t currently do.

On the basis of our discussions with the committee staff, we understand that it was the committee’s intent to impose a clear requirement for individuals to have health insurance, and this analysis reflects that intent. However, the current draft is not clear on this point, and if the language remains ambiguous, that would affect our estimate of its impact on federal costs and insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, reports are emerging that the White House is already distancing itself from the HELP proposal.

The decision had nothing to do with the health of the legendary Democratic lawmaker, who is battling an aggressive brain tumor, the source said. Kennedy is determined to return to the Senate in January and wants to commit his efforts full-time to achieving the universal health care coverage he has been seeking for most of his 46-year career in the Senate, the Democratic source said.

The nine-term Kennedy is the number two Democrat on the committee, behind Chairman Pat Leahy (Vt.). People for the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert issued a statement Friday evening summarizing Kennedy’s time on the panel:

During his years on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Kennedy proved himself to be one of the Constitution’s staunchest defenders. His passion for justice and his deep commitment to equality under the law have helped to better our nation in countless ways.

If he’s successful in pushing though comprehensive health reforms, though, the decision will have been well worth it.