No need to change the tune

Grace wonders if Senator Kennedy's Appropriations Committee assignment will have any bearing on his insufferable rhetoric.

As for Kennedy, he ran for election as a wise-cracking critic of exactly the sort of tightly targeted expenditures that Appropriations members often try to land for their own constituents — things like research into Swedish bunny massage, which was actually aimed at improving injury recovery for humans. We'll see if he changes his tune now that he'll be the guy doing the appropriating.

But, really, there's no need. Kennedy can keep up the folksy bromides against medical research or public art or whatever other thing he wants to misrepresent as wasteful simply because it doesn't benefit anyone he depends on.   Meanwhile he can go right on making sure the Bollingers, for example, get whatever they might want out of the next Water Development bill and nobody will notice.

The thing to remember about "the tune," though, is that the song is about you. It isn't about them.