We were driving to Cape Cod a few weeks ago when the toll booths arrived in Massachusetts. The lines into the tolls were long, but for one lane, the cars were zipping merrily through. I joked that that booth was for the Kennedy family.

This was a few weeks before Ted Kennedy died. Ted Kennedy was Massachusetts, New England accent and all. I always thought that when he died, all the attention would focus on Chappaquiddick, the small island off Martha's Vinyard where Teddy in 1969 drove his car off a bridge, leading to the drowning death of a young woman who worked for the 1968 campaign of Teddy's slain brother, Robert.

While Chappaquiddick was a focus in the obituaries, the media also talked about Kennedy's legislative achievements. Teddy entered the U.S. Senate in 1962, at 30 probably too young for the position. After his brothers were murdered, he got serious and played a role in enacting nearly every progressive piece of legislation over the last 40 years, including labor laws, workplace safety laws, employment discrimination laws and education laws. In terms of his achievements, he is probably the best U.S. Senator this country ever had.

But let's talk about Chappaquiddick for a moment. No one defends what happened that night. Known for his drinking and womanizing, the idea that Teddy drove a car off a bridge and swam to safety while a woman drowned in the car obviously brings to mind all the worst stereotypes of the drunken womanizer. Teddy did not call the police right away, and the case will go down as one of the great shams in American history. People argue to this day that Teddy got off easy. It cost him the presidency, for sure. My guess is he would have won in 1976.

Kennedy's recent death brings to mind one of the great debates of our time. Can you redeem yourself after doing something horrible? Most people say the answer is yes. Teddy worked harder after Chappaquiddick to establish himself as a serious Senator. But if you scratch beneath the surface, something else hits you: that old adage really is true. Killing one person is murder. Killing 10,000 is foreign policy.

Teddy's memoirs are being released ahead of time. In his autobiography, he writes convincingly that the death of Mary Jo Kopechne has haunted him every day for 40 years. I believe it. I have read books about Teddy and it seems his compassion was not an act. He personally called family members of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the victims were surprised and comforted to know that a U.S. Senator actually called them to offer his condolences. Conservative Senators loved the guy like a brother. Biographies of Teddy include these and other examples of his compassion. Makes sense in light of the progressive legislation that he promoted over the course of his career. This does not change what happened at Chappaquiddick, and it does not bring Mary Jo Kopechne back to life. Teddy was 36 years old when that incident happened; he was no kid.

Remember what I said about murder and foreign policy? Another man who inflicted great damage over the course of his life and began to second-guess his decisions was Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, which raged through the 1960's through the early 1970's. I don't forgive McNamara for fighting the war long after he thought the war was lost; the war never should have been started. But at least he made some attempt to reconsider his decisions. If George W. Bush was paying attention in the mid-1990's when McNamara went public with his mea culpa, the war in Iraq may not have happened.

Now take a look at a man who is totally beyond contempt, a killer who has no remorse at all. Henry Kissinger, statesman, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Kissinger was Secretary of State during the Nixon administration in the early 1970's, when the Vietnam War was raging and over one million people died at the other end of the war (in addition to nearly 60,000 American soldiers). If you think the Iraq war was bogus, take a look at Vietnam. In the Nation magazine a few weeks ago, a letter was published which blew my brains:

I am of a '60s antiwar movement that can never forgive Robert McNamara for his central role in the Vietnam War, though of course he had the decency to acknwledge many years later that the war was wrong. No so Henry Kissinger, who took up where McNamara left off.

I interviewed both men in 2001 for a PBS documentary, The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation. McNamara told me that he'd come to realize the war was a tragedy that could have been avoided. He said his "greatest regret" was urging President Johnson in 1965 to commit American troops to a land war in Asia.

But Kissinger was unreconstructed, unapologetic. "If you are going to ask I feel guilty about Vietnam, the interview is over," Kissinger said before I asked my first question. "I'll walk out."

I told him that I had just interviewed McNamara. That got his attention. And then he did something I'll never forget: he began to cry. Actually, he pretended to cry.

"Boohoo, boohoo," Kissinger blubbered, rubbing his eyes. "He's still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty." He spoke in a mocking, singsong voice and patted his heart for emphasis.

It was one of those private moment, before the camera rolls, when you get a rare glimpse into someone's character and it's even darker than you ever dreamed.

Redemption for Teddy. None for Henry.

One of the reasons I stopped being a Democrat 20 years is that the Democrats were soft on Reagan, refusing to take seriously his high crimes and misdemeanors in the Iran-contra scandal in which the President sent arms to the terrorist government of Iran and diverted the profits to pay for a terrorist army trying to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua, all in violation of American law. If the Democrats were not going to stand up for American ideals, then screw them.

They are doing it again. The health care debate in this country has devolved into a shouting match organized by six year olds fighting in the schoolyard over who father can kick your ass. No one seems to care that millions of Americans have no health care at all and the "public option" would have the government extend public health insurance to them the way it does under Medicare for older people. The papers this morning suggest the Democrats are willing to let this issue go to waste. The column below by New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristoff summarizes the issue for me, and I have nothing to add:

The Body Count at Home

Nikki White died at the age of 32. She had lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was untreated because she could not afford health insurance.

Nikki was a slim and athletic college graduate who had health insurance, had worked in health care and knew the system. But she had systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was diagnosed when she was 21 and gradually left her too sick to work. And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance.

In any other rich country, Nikki probably would have been fine, notes T. R. Reid in his important and powerful new book, “The Healing of America.” Some 80 percent of lupus patients in the United States live a normal life span. Under a doctor’s care, lupus should be manageable. Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.

As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried everything to get medical care, but no insurance company would accept someone with her pre-existing condition. She spent months painfully writing letters to anyone she thought might be able to help. She fought tenaciously for her life.

Finally, Nikki collapsed at her home in Tennessee and was rushed to a hospital emergency room, which was then required to treat her without payment until her condition stabilized. Since money was no longer an issue, the hospital performed 25 emergency surgeries on Nikki, and she spent six months in critical care.

“When Nikki showed up at the emergency room, she received the best of care, and the hospital spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her,” her step-father, Tony Deal, told me. “But that’s not when she needed the care.”

By then it was too late. In 2006, Nikki White died at age 32. “Nikki didn’t die from lupus,” her doctor, Amylyn Crawford, told Mr. Reid. “Nikki died from complications of the failing American health care system.”

“She fell through the cracks,” Nikki’s mother, Gail Deal, told me grimly. “When you bury a child, it’s the worst thing in the world. You never recover.”

We now have a chance to reform this cruel and capricious system. If we let that chance slip away, there will be another Nikki dying every half-hour.

That’s how often someone dies in America because of a lack of insurance, according to a study by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a year, that amounts to 18,000 American deaths.

After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans, eight years ago on Friday, we went to war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars ensuring that this would not happen again. Yet every two months, that many people die because of our failure to provide universal insurance — and yet many members of Congress want us to do nothing?

Mr. Reid’s book is a rich tour of health care around the world. Because he has a bum shoulder, he asked doctors in many countries to examine it and make recommendations. His American orthopedist recommended a titanium shoulder replacement that would cost tens of thousands of dollars and might or might not help. Specialists in other countries warned that a sore shoulder didn’t justify the risks of such major surgery, although some said it would be available free if Mr. Reid insisted. Instead, they offered physical therapy, acupuncture and other cheap and noninvasive alternatives, some of which worked pretty well.

That’s a window into the flaws in our health care system: we offer titanium shoulder replacements for those who don’t really need them, but we let 32-year-old women die if they lose their health insurance. No wonder we spend so much on medical care, and yet have some health care statistics that are worse than Slovenia’s.

My suggestion for anyone in Nikki’s situation: commit a crime and get locked up. In Washington State, a 20-year-old inmate named Melissa Matthews chose to turn down parole and stay in prison because that was the only way she could get treatment for her cervical cancer. “If I’m out, I’m going to die from this cancer,” she told a television station.

Mr. and Mrs. Deal say they are speaking out because Nikki wouldn’t want anyone to endure what she did. “Nikki was a college-educated, middle-class woman, and if it could happen to her, it can happen to anyone,” Mr. Deal said. “This should not be happening in our country.”

Struggling to get out the words, Mrs. Deal added: “The loss of a child is the greatest hurt anyone will ever suffer. Because of the circumstances she endured with the health care system, I lost my daughter.”

Complex arguments are being batted around in this health care debate, but the central issue isn’t technical but moral. The first question is simply this: Do we wish to be the only rich nation in the world that lets a 32-year-old woman die because she can’t get health insurance? Is that really us?

Are you allowed to give the police the middle finger? The answer is yes. Giving someone the finger is protected under the First Amendment. This issue surfaces from time to time, and it was confimed again by a federal court in Pennsylvania in March 2009.

Here is what happened in Hackbart v. City of Pittsburgh. Hackbart was trying to park his car in Pittsburgh when someone blocked his entry into the parking space and would not back up. As the court put it, "frustrated, Hackbart extended his left arm out the window of his vehicle and extended his middle finger to the driver." An officer, Elledge, saw this gesture and told Hackbart to watch it. The court says, "Hackbart responded by directing the same gesture toward Elledge." That did it. Elledge pulled him over and charged him with disorderly conduct. The district attorney's office dropped the charge, and Hackbart sued the police officer.

Most people will not give the police the finger. But you have to admit that you've always wondered what would happen if you did. Hackbart did. The federal court says he has a case. In fact, he wins the case without a trial. Here's why.

The Supreme Court has said that even non-verbal gestures and symbols may constitute speech. The Pennsylvania federal court adds, "several courts ... have found that the expressive use of the middle finger is protected speech under the First Amendment." For example, the federal appeals court in Cincinnatti ruled that the First Amendment allowed a driver to give the finger and tell protesters "fuck you." An appeals court in California said that directing a series of expletives and an obscene gesture at a police officer represented an expression of approval toward the officer and was therefore protected under the First Amendment.

Under these precedents, the court finds that "Hackbart ... was expressing his frustration and anger when he gestured with his middle finger to both the driver behind him and to Elledge." The officer made no secret of the reason why he arrested Hackbart for disorderly conduct. He wrote on the police report: "Driver made an obscene gesture towards me. Flipped me off while driving by. Also flipped off another driver." In writing this, the officer gave Hackbart a lawsuit. The officer admits that he arrested Hackbart in violation of the First Amendment.

This case reminds us that the First Amendment protects even obnoxious conduct. One of the cases cited in the Hackbart decision is Texas v. Johnson, the 1989 Supreme Court ruling that said flag burning is protected activity under the First Amendment. Flag burning and middle fingers push the boundaries of First Amendment activity, for sure. But this case is not that unusual. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Vietnam War protester who walked through a courthouse wearing a jacket that said "Fuck the Draft." That case, Cohen v. California, is among the favorite cases of First Amendment mavens for any number of reasons. My reason is Justice Harlan's observation that "One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric."