Here Lie the Fossils of Young John Kerry

It's possible that the only interesting thing John Kerry has done in his government career was to chair the Senate's 1987 hearings on narco-corruption, particularly when the topic turned to the intersection between drug trafficking and U.S. intelligence. Now The Memory Hole is putting the transcripts of those hearings online.

Between that episode, his subsequent investigation of the BCCI scandal, and his early days with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, it was easy to mistake the young senator for a throwback to the post-Watergate Congress of 1974: disillusioned, somewhat anti-authoritarian, and eager to investigate the national security state. I even remember commenting, around 1991 or so, that I may disagree with most of Kerry's policy prescriptions but that it was nice to have folks like him around, stirring up trouble and exposing official misdeeds. Then the BCCI probe petered out, Kerry seemed to lose interest in turning over rocks, and we were left with nothing but yet another northeastern corporate liberal.

I guess that's a throwback of sorts too, but it's not a kind I'm particularly interested in conserving.