Ted Kennedy Is No Hypocrite By at Least a Month

Via AtlanticBlog comes a link to this Wash Times story about Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) grilling President Bush's nominee to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Oklahoma lawyer Jerome A. Holmes. Holmes, it turns out, belonged to the Men's Dinner Club of Oklahoma City, which banned women from joining; the nominee only ditched his membership in February of this year:

Documents provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obtained by The Washington Times show that Mr. Holmes belonged to the Men's Dinner Club of Oklahoma City but quit after expressing interest in becoming a federal judge.

Mr. Holmes told the committee in writing that he never perceived the dining club to harbor any bias toward women but he resigned to clear up any appearances of impropriety…."I recognized in February 2006 that some might perceive the Men's Dinner Club as being an improper organization of the kind discussed above. That was unacceptable to me."

If Holmes is a craven opportunist, the Wash Times gets in a good laugh or three at Teddy K's expense too. From the same story:

Just six months after quitting the all-male social club to which he belonged for 50 years, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is questioning one of President Bush's nominees to the federal bench about his membership in an all-male dining club….

In January, Mr. Kennedy quit the Owl Club after The Washington Times revealed his continued membership in the fraternitylike organization for Harvard University's select male students and alumni.

Mr. Kennedy's ties to the Owl Club came to light after he interrogated Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. over his association with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group founded to combat campus liberalism at Princeton University.

Judge Alito's affiliation "with an organization that fought the admission of women into Princeton calls into question his appreciation of the need for full equality in this country," the Massachusetts Democrat said during the January hearings.

Mr. Kennedy's Owl Club was booted off Harvard's campus in 1984 for its refusal to allow women to join.

Whole bit here.

Kennedy devolution documented here.

Can Teddy blame his hypocrisy on Ambien? Or at least his moidalizing of Barack Obama's name in January? Paging Zad Rust!