Yesterday, Ted Kennedy . . . ah, you'll never believe this one no matter how much I explain it. Let's go to the AP:
In a rare personal attack on the Senate floor, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy accused Sen. Rick Santorum on Wednesday of being self-righteous and insensitive for a column he wrote three years ago linking Boston's liberalism to the sex abuse scandal in its Catholic diocese.
Santorum, R-Pa., wrote in the July 2002 column for Catholic Online that promoting alternative lifestyles feeds such aberrant behavior as priests molesting children.
"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."
I searched in vain to find the column in question on Catholic Online (if a GetReligion reader finds it, please post the link in comments). A cynic [That's you! -- ed.] might say that Kennedy took this long to bring up the piece because Santorum wasn't up for reelection in 2002.
The only quibble I would have with the AP's coverage is when the reporter tried to squeeze a comment out of the governor of Massachusetts: "Mitt Romney, a Republican who -- like Santorum -- has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, called the remarks unfortunate but did not ask for an apology, said spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom."