SINS, Laura Bush might well have done jail time for driving drunk and killing her boyfriend when she was young too, had her family's circumstances been different. People who are white and rich, or even middle-class, often get by with "mistakes" that would land a working-class or poor person -- especially a black or other minority -- in the slammer (and maybe ruin them for life).   All I ask with regard to our readiness to condemn or forgive Ted Kennedy for Chappaquiddick is that we use the same 'moral yardstick' that's used for appraising other rich and/or powerful public figures, including politicians.
At least what Kennedy did at Chappaquiddick wasn't deliberate and premeditated killing -- which many other powerful people have engaged in, in one form or another, and survived with their reputations pretty much intact.

It is in Kennedy's work as a US Senator that we see his "social conscience" at work most clearly, and to greatest effect.

In some ways, many, if not most, of our "heroes" have been colossally flawed.

Genie