And Now, Let's Begin to Take a Close and Penetrating Look at Joe Biden

Here's an astonishingly relevant piece at National Review Online:  Who Broke Politics?   The name is Joe.  Joe Biden.

Barack Obama didn’t hang around the Senate cloakroom long enough to pick up the word on Joe Biden. He didn’t realize that Biden is something of a joke in the Senate. Isn’t it curious that in 36 years, Biden’s never even been mentioned for Majority Leader, or even for Majority Whip? Obama’s claim to be a “post partisan” candidate is belied by his choice of the vicious, knee-groining Biden as his running mate. Barack Obama, in his electric acceptance speech, claimed that “politics is broken.” A reasonable question then is: Who broke politics? Much of the credit for the brokenness of politics must go to that political leg-breaker, Joe Biden. One leading example of how our politics is broken is the judicial-confirmation process. Judicial confirmations used to be civil affairs. They used to be honorable contests in which both sides sought to review the record of the distinguished jurists who sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Joe Biden can claim the lion’s share of credit for turning judicial confirmations into lions’ dens. As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden presided over the “Borking” of Judge Robert Bork. He was the chief Kleagle for the “high tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas. He tried to go after Roberts and Alito as well. He is not known as the “smiling barracuda” for nothing. Ironically, not one of the men and women who have come before his committee would have survived one day if they had been proven to have plagiarized major speeches and law review articles — as Biden has been found to have done. Perhaps because of his own shady past, Biden has seemed determined to impugn the integrity, intelligence, and the competence of all those with whom he disagrees. Read the rest here.