Another round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released (click here and here). Fittingly, in Kennedy's case, they are as troubling as they are amusing, once again raising all sorts of questions, from the moral to the political to issues of national security. And as usual, they are also frustrating, knowing that with Kennedy's death in August 2009, and the lifelong protection of the man by a scandalously biased media, the late senator was able to escape these questions all the way to the grave, never needing to account for them -- at least in this lifetime and this world.

With that strong start, allow me to first pause with a softer, sympathetic touch. Among the documents within Kennedy's 2,200-page FBI file are materials from the mid-1960s on various lunatics threatening to shoot the newly elected senator, who in 1962 had filled the Senate seat vacated by his presidential brother. Reading those pages is a sad process, particularly as they move from not only Ted as target but to his brother Bobby as well. And then, it all strikes home -- like a punch to the gut -- when you suddenly happen upon a June 6, 1968 Western Union telegram, sent directly to J. Edgar Hoover, which states simply: "PLEASE MAKE CERTAIN THAT TED KENNEDY GETS ALL THE PROTECTION HE NEEDS WE ARE DOWN TO ONE KENNEDY THANKS."