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WASHINGTON – In an era of bitter political division, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death silenced a singular voice of bipartisanship at a time when colleagues are struggling with angry constituents and each other over an elusive plan to overhaul the nation's health care system.
Some lawmakers said Tuesday the current stalemate is the result of Kennedy's absence for the past few, crucial months. Some hope to rescue the embattled legislation as his legacy.
It's not clear that the post-Kennedy Senate includes anyone with the credibility among ideological opponents, the dealmaking skills or the inside knowledge to strike a quick agreement.
"There is nobody else like him," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who alternated with Kennedy over the years as chairman and ranking minority-party member of the health committee. "If he had been physically up to it and been engaged on this, we probably would have an agreement by now."
"Teddy was the only Democrat who could move their whole base," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said. "If he finally agreed, the whole base would come along even if they didn't like it."
Kennedy lost the fight he couldn't win Tuesday, to brain cancer at 77. But he had won countless others by embodying an increasingly rare type of bipartisanship — the kind perceived not as a threat to ideology or fundraising prowess, but as a way of getting something done, however imperfect.
"Bipartisanship takes a person that has leadership and personal charm, quite frankly, and a desire to get a result," said former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. "He didn't try to destroy you. That's what's happening in Washington now. It's gotten so mean."
Over 47 years in the Senate, Kennedy evolved into an institution himself, equal parts liberal icon and dealmaker who combined those skills to forge agreement on some of the most sweeping and controversial social legislation of his time.
Kennedy worked out an agreement with President George W. Bush on the No Child Left Behind Act. He regularly worked with Hatch, notably on a federally funded program for those with HIV/AIDS, health insurance for lower-income children and tax breaks to encourage the development of medicines for rare diseases.
When he compromised, Kennedy's base may have grumbled but did not question his fidelity to liberal principles. Republicans trusted him to be straight with them in tough negotiations and not make it personal. And no one questioned his knowledge of Senate procedure, rivaling even West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd, who no longer plays a big role in Senate business.
Without Kennedy, the 99-member chamber lacks anyone playing precisely his role doling out the goodwill and procedural expertise necessary to make the Senate wheels spin through controversial legislation. The Democratic caucus falls from an effective supermajority of 60, enough to kill Republican filibusters, to 59, including two independents.
No one is irreplaceable in the Senate, or so a popular saying goes. But John McCain, R-Ariz., called Kennedy just that in a statement Wednesday. McCain, last year the GOP presidential nominee, was even clearer over the weekend.
"He had a way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations," McCain said on ABC's "This Week."
"It's huge that he's absent," McCain added. If Kennedy had been engaged in the debate past June, when he handed his committee chairmanship duties to Chris Dodd, D-Conn., "I think the health care reform might be in a very different place today."
Democrats widely mourned Kennedy's passing on personal and political grounds and urged their colleagues to adopt Kennedy's big-picture view of the world generally and health care specifically. There was talk Wednesday of honoring Kennedy within the Capitol, possibly by posting his portrait in the Senate Reception Room with the likenesses of other senators hailed for their bipartisan accomplishments.
"My hope is that this will maybe cause people to take a breath, step back and start talking with each other again in more civil tones about what needs to be done, because that's what Teddy would do," said Dodd, Kennedy's close friend who has taken a lead role on health care negotiations and is, himself, battling prostate cancer.
"We all share the same principles. How you get there is complicated, but that's what Senator Kennedy dedicated his life to," Dodd added. "In his memory, I will do everything I can as long as I can stand in the United States Senate to help us achieve that goal."
Vice President Joe Biden, in a tearful salute to his friend, said Kennedy raised the level of discourse and senatorial behavior and in the course of rising from dark chapters of his own life embodied the most selfless human qualities.

"It was never about him ... he never was petty," Biden told reporters, recalling how Kennedy stood by him when the former senator's wife and child were killed in a car accident.

"I just hope we remember how he treated other people and how he made other people look at themselves and look at one another," Biden added. "That will be the truly fundamental, unifying legacy of Teddy Kennedy's life if that happens, and it will for a while at least in the Senate."

WASHINGTON — Securing universal health care coverage for Americans was a decades-long quest that eluded Sen. Edward Kennedy . In the wake of his death, however, several key Democrats on Wednesday saw a chance to break what's become this year's stalemate by invoking his legacy and last wishes.

"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform, which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American," Sen. Robert Byrd , D- W.Va. , said in a statement.

"The passion of his life was health care reform," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey , D- Wis. , said. "Above all else he would want us to redouble our efforts to achieve it."

However, it was also likely that without Kennedy, a deal would be even harder to get.

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio , the House Republican leader, who worked closely with Kennedy on education legislation in 2001, said last month that "the thing I got to learn about Ted Kennedy is that he's a legislator. . . . He wants to sit down and work out the details."

Boehner said there was "no question" Kennedy's absence had affected the health care debate in Congress . "He would have been a big help, I think, to the president."

Sen. Orrin Hatch , R- Utah , who worked with Kennedy to expand children's health coverage and who's broken with his own party on stem-cell research issues, similarly recalled recently how he thought Kennedy would've handled the health care impasse.

"The first thing he would have done would have been to call me and say, 'Let's work this out, and we would work it out so that the best of both worlds would work," Hatch said.

The biggest impact of Kennedy's death, however, could be on his fellow Democrats who are divided over whether to create a public option to compete with private insurance, expand regional health insurance cooperatives, resist both because of concerns about spending and the impact on the private sector or hold out for a single-payer system that Obama himself doesn't support.

"The message will be we're doing it for the American people, which is why he wanted to get this done," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen , D- Md. , the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "In my view, he would not want this to be about him, it never was. It was about getting it done for the American people."

There was no universal agreement that a healthy Kennedy could've brought about a health-care compromise where the gulf between rival positions is enormous.

" Ted Kennedy over the years was never able to dominate that difficult issue," said Steven Schier , a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Schier recalled that Kennedy had failed in his push for President Bill Clinton's health care overhaul in 1993 and 1994.

President Barack Obama , in the immediate hours after Kennedy's death, chose not to speak publicly about the political next steps. White House aides declined to discuss any of the strategizing now going on within the president's inner circle or the Democratic Party .

Congressional Democrats said it wasn't yet clear whether there'd be a coordinated effort to invoke Kennedy or what, if any, role the Kennedy family would play in calling for unity and action on health care. However, a senior House aide, who wasn't authorized to discuss strategy and spoke anonymously, predicted that Kennedy would be a big part of efforts to win approval of some kind of health care legislation.

"You'll hear his name invoked quite a bit," the aide said.

It's no secret that health care had been a priority for Kennedy during his nearly five decades in the Senate . One of Kennedy's last public appearances was at a March town hall meeting Obama held on the topic, and Obama had consulted with Kennedy as recently as June on legislation.

Kennedy was open about his regrets that he defeated rather than found a way to work with President Richard Nixon's efforts to expand health coverage in the early 1970s.

At the time, Kennedy accused Nixon of partnering with insurance companies more than with doctors, patching a broken system rather than establishing a better one, and perpetuating a two-tiered system of the care, one for the poor and the other for the rich.

This time around, however, Kennedy's staff has engaged a working group that's included representatives from consumer groups, business, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and insurance industry officials.

Sen. Christopher Dodd , D- Conn. , a close Kennedy friend who took over the leadership responsibilities of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee when Kennedy was too ill to fulfill his chairman's duties, said he wanted others to heed a key Kennedy legislative lesson: Remember that you were elected to get things done, not simply offer your point of view.

Kennedy, Dodd recalled, had a history of working out compromises with Republicans — with Sen. Nancy Kassebaum , R- Kan. , on legislation to make health insurance more portable, and with President George W. Bush on the No Child Left Behind education plan.

One of those lessons, Dodd said, was don't give up.

"One lesson in health care was 'stay,' he would say," Dodd recalled. "Do it. Don't stop. Be polite; let everyone have their say, but stay with it."

( William Douglas contributed to this article.)

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Planet Washington

Check out McClatchy's expanded politics coverage at Planet Washington

Eastleigh, Kenya –
The streets of Eastleigh, a Somali enclave of Kenya's capital, Nairobi, are crowded and dirty. Sewage and rotting garbage flow through gullies. Police are virtually nonexistent; restaurants are locked, even when open, for safety reasons; and guns are readily available for sale at the market.
No one ever said "Little Mogadishu" was paradise, but now the sprawling neighborhood has become a hub of financing and recruiting for militant Islamists waging holy war in neighboring Somalia, according to residents, security analysts, and diplomats.
"Those who kill people in Somalia are also here – scattered all over the place," says an elderly Sufi Muslim sheikh matter-of-factly. "This is the hotspot of the Somali fundamentalism.... They are recruiting right here in Nairobi."
In the latest chapter in a civil war that has raged since 1991, Somalia's radical insurgents this week rejected the Western-backed transitional government's call for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Militant and moderate Islamists are battling for control of the rubble-strewn streets of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, fighting that has forced more than 1.4 million people to flee their homes and caused what the United Nations on Wednesday called the country's worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years of war.
But here in Eastleigh, the war takes a different form. Little Mogadishu has become a port through which Somali insurgents raise money and recruit fighters, especially for the militant group, Al Shabab, which has been labeled an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization by the US government.
"What we know is that Al Shabab is very popular in Eastleigh," says Roland Marchal, senior research fellow at the Paris-based National Center for Scientific Research. "Al Shabab has been able at different moments to bring a number of people in Eastleigh to fight in Somalia. It's very likely that a number of economic operators in Eastleigh try to collect money and support this organization."
Why young Somali-Kenyans join militantsOutside a small green-gated home in Eastleigh, the elderly sheikh – who declined to be named due to the grave threat to anyone talking about Somali militant operations – says agents of Somali insurgents have recruited from across the country dozens of Somali-Kenyans, most in their early 20s, who are missing and presumed dead in Somalia. Though their parents were moderate, a lack of employment or alternatives led them to become students of madrassas (religious schools), where they adopted more extreme ideologies, he says. (Read our in-depth story: How one youth was drawn to jihad in Somalia.)
Estimates of the number of recruited Kenyans range from dozens to thousands, most – but not all – Somali-Kenyans. The insurgency benefits from an effective recruitment network that works out of Eastleigh. Diplomats say recruiters use a combination of money and brainwashing to pull in the youths, many of them from refugee camps and areas along the Somali border.
"These young men have no ID papers, no future," says the sheikh. "The only future they see is blowing themselves up and going to heaven." Insurgents in Somalia are increasingly relying on suicide bomb attacks in their offensives.
One woman, the sheikh says, lost her 12-year-old son. She went looking for him in Somalia's southern port town of Kismayo, under insurgent control, and found him training to be a suicide bomber. She returned home emptyhanded. "If she'd tried to bring him, she'd be killed," the sheikh says.
In Somalia, moderate Sufis, belonging to a traditionally peaceful group called Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama'a, have taken up arms to defend their vision of Islam against militant groups, like Al Shabab, that are not only fighting the government, but also desecrating Sufi graves and attacking their more moderate views.
In Kenya, Sufis are also fighting back, but not with guns. Instead, they are trying to keep their children alive through a "counterjihad."
"We are trying to teach our children at home. We don't even send them to madrassas.... We don't trust [the madrassas] with our children," says the sheikh. "If they knew you were writing this, you'd go back without a head."
How money flows through EastleighAccording to a regional analyst who has studied Somalia for nearly two decades but cannot be named because his work is too politically and diplomatically sensitive, up to $3 million passes through Eastleigh to Somalia every year.
The money comes from businessmen who support the insurgency, from mosques that fundraise, and from foreign donors who sometimes funnel it through Eastleigh. Using an informal money transfer system called hawala, Somalis in any part of the world can make money available in Eastleigh within minutes.
From there, it can be carried north to the porous and badly guarded Kenya-Somalia border. The cash funds anything from guns to fuel to uniforms.
The transfers are hard to track, Mr. Marchal says, because they are generally small payments that do not attract much attention.

But money also gets to Somalia in other ways. He lays out an example: Sympathizers of insurgents knowingly buy sugar from certain vendors in Kenya. They send that sugar to Somalia, where it is resold. None of these activities are illegal, but "then the money disappears," Marchal says. "It's very efficient.... There is no profit, no fee. [All the money] goes to the organization. This is untraceable for anybody."

No entity in Eastleigh has been under more suspicion than the Sixth Street mosque, a small, unimposing building on top of a FedEx shop, hidden among laundry-cluttered balconies.

The mosque is among Al Shabab's main fundraisers in Eastleigh, according to a Nairobi-based official of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia who spoke anonymously because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

"Sixth Street mosque has a history of supporting militant Islamist causes in Somalia since 1991," says the regional analyst. Its leader, Sheikh Umall, has called the Somali government an "infidel government" and a "puppet of foreign interests," he says. But knowing he is a person of interest to the US, Kenya, the AU, and the UN, Umall has sung a more moderate tune in recent months.

Fighters without bordersUnconfirmed numbers gathered by the Institute for Security Studies in Kenya suggest that as many as 1 in every 10 refugees crossing the border from Somalia into Kenya are members of Al Shabab, which has used severe forms of sharia, or Islamic law, such as amputating the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery.

Al Shabab uses Eastleigh to treat its wounded and run madrassas, from which children often disappear, says the AU official.

"They have agents who are here, who brainwash these kids, who end up going there [to Somalia to fight]," he says. "It has become problematic."

The AU and UN say Somali-Kenyan recruits are joined by others from Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, even the United States and Europe – many of whom enter Somalia through Nairobi, according to analysts. Until recently, you could get a fake Somali passport in Eastleigh's Garisa Lodge mall in minutes.

Government plays down Eastleigh concernsIn June, the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation reported that a Kenyan named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan leads a group of 180 foreigners in Somalia, called al-Muhajirun, fighting alongside the Somali insurgents and connected to the global terrorist group Al Qaeda.

But the Kenyan government denies there is much of a problem.

"We don't believe Kenyans have gone to Somalia or have been recruited to go to Somalia," says Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government spokesman. "We received reports of attempted recruitment, [but] ... because of our security apparatus, we've made it impossible for them."

In late 2006, when Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to overthrow Islamists who had taken over, Kenya took precautionary measures, he says. It closed its border with Somalia, allowing only aid workers to enter Somalia from Kenya. The border is heavily patrolled by police, military, and helicopters 24 hours a day, and the government is using satellite technology to monitor vehicles crossing it, says Mr. Mutua.

Reports of recruitment are "mere speculation," he adds, as Kenya has used "very high intelligence" to infiltrate the Somali community and disband any recruiting circles.

Kenyan police spokesman Erick Kirathe says Eastleigh is under high surveillance – both overt and covert – because it is a poorer, more-crowded neighborhood where crime is more likely.

"It is much better policed than is apparent," he says. "Even visibly, there is much more police presence than in other areas."

Because the attention it has received makes it unappealing to terrorists, he argues, Eastleigh is not as threatening as people think.

Mr. Kirathe says no one has been arrested for supporting the Somali insurgency, and "we really don't consider Eastleigh a major risk as of yet."

"It's a point of concern," Mutua adds, "but we feel that we've got the situation under control."

Others beg to differSome observers strongly disagree. They say recruitment in Kenya is longstanding and widespread.

"We all know it's happening," one diplomat in Nairobi says, adding that the Kenyan government is unable or unwilling to stop it. The border may be officially closed, but even Mutua admits people are able to sneak through.

But sources say the Kenyan government is beginning to take the threat more seriously. "They are panicking," the diplomat says. "They were not doing their best. Now the threat to Kenya is higher than ever. They have to do something."

It seems the government is starting to feel that way, too. But it remains divided. Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula have called for sending in troops, as Ethiopia had done, to defend the Somali government.

"It will be most inappropriate and inadvisable to do nothing when our national security and regional stability is threatened," Mr. Wetangula said recently.

Authorities fear a backlashBut with hundreds of thousands of Somalis living in Kenya, strong involvement by the government and any taking of sides could expose Kenya to a big risk. Insurgents have already threatened to retaliate within Kenya if attacked.

"There's a reluctance to really mess with the Somalis," the regional analyst says.

The fear is not only on the political level. Insurgents are perceived to have such a presence in Kenya that even average citizens are wary of providing authorities with information on their operations. In Nairobi, activists who speak out against Somali extremists are threatened.

"Because I'm not one of them, then I'm on the other side," says a Somali civil society activist who goes by the name Madobe. He calls the Somali Islamist movement a "cancer spreading very fast," and the insurgents "sub-human." He believes they are tapping his phone and e-mail. "Anytime, I expect a very big knife in my back."

Mac OS X 10.6, known as Snow Leopard, is picking up buzz as Friday's release date nears. An upgrade to the OS was the top seller on Amazon this week as pre-orders remained strong.

Close behind in sales on Amazon was the Snow Leopard Family Pack upgrade with five licenses for $49. The single-user upgrade for Snow Leopard costs $29, or $169 if purchased with upgrades for iWork and iLife. The Family Pack is $229 with iWork and iLife upgrades.

The new OS X reportedly includes anti-malware features to detect two Mac Trojans, RSPlug and iServices, if they were downloaded from the Internet. News reports have indicated the pop-up warnings don't appear if the Trojans are on DVDs or thumb drives.

CS4 Compatibility Issues

Photoshop product manager John Nack wrote in his blog that Snow Leopard has some compatibility issues with Adobe System's Creative Suite 4. The four CS4 versions include Adobe graphics programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver.

Nack wrote, "As for CS4, everything is good with the exception of auto-updates to Flash panels (which I guarantee you're not using) and Adobe Drive/Version Cue (which doesn't work at the moment on 10.6)."

Apple posted some documentation for the OS on its Web site this week. The Getting Started document says that with Snow Leopard Server, which lists for $499, "small organizations and work groups without an IT department can take full advantage of the benefits of a server. Even a non-technical user can set up and manage Snow Leopard Server for a group."

On Monday, Piper Jaffray financial analyst Gene Munster predicted Apple will sell five million copies of Mac OS X 10.6 through the end of the current quarter.

Apple said Snow Leopard will make existing features run faster and more efficiently. It promised a more responsive Finder, a faster-loading Mail, and 80 percent faster initial backup from Time Machine.

Support for Exchange and 64 Bits

Apple also said Snow Leopard is the only desktop OS with built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. The company said Exchange works with Mac OS X-only features like Spotlight searches, Mail, Address Book, and iCal. It also said Snow Leopard needs half as much disk space as the current Mac OS X Leopard.

Snow Leopard provides 64-bit support for Apple's Safari 4 browser as well as the Finder and the Mail, iCal and iChat applications.

Mac OS X 10.6 improves software development for multicore processors through Grand Central Dispatch. In addition, the open-standard OpenCL gives developers better access to graphics processing.

On its Web site, Apple said Snow Leopard blocks malware through "the highest level of security through the adoption of industry standards, open software development, and wise architectural decisions." But not all observers agree.

Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, who has demonstrated vulnerabilities in Mac OS X at Black Hat conferences, told MacNewsWorld that "Apple security's mostly worse than Windows Vista because it doesn't have full ASLR and DEP." He said if Snow Leopard has those standards, it would be "at least comparable to Vista."