Harry Reid, Bless His Heart

Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader and the current senior Senator from Nevada, has announced he will not run for reelection in 2016. And won't we all miss him dearly? Statesmanship, fairplay and integrity characterize his years as Senate Majority Leader, his suporters claim. Lets look back at a few career "highlights" shall we?
Throughout his years as Senate Leader, he consistently refused to present a budget for the Federal Government. That this was directly contrary to his legally mandated duties under the Budget Control Act of 1974 was apparently unimportant to him and the press. Afterall, presenting a budget would force him to disclose his spending priorities and focus the public on the massive amount of debt added each year. Inconvenient, messy and really nobody's business outside the Beltway, is it? Where will we be without your couragous leadership?
Energy and climate policy demonstrated his statesmanship. His signature contributions to American energy independence have been his absolute stonewalling of the Yucca Mountain Nevada nuclear waste repositor and the Keystone Pipeline. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on site at over 100 nuclear powered electric generating stations across the country. Since 1987 statues, billions have been spent preparing the site as our long term solution to the serious problem of nuclear waste. The failure to remove waste from nuclear generating facilities creates opportunities for terrorism and forcloses opportunites to expeditiously bring new carbon free energy online.  NIMBY to the extreme detriment of America. His refusal to bring the Keystone project to the Senate floor, where it would have received bipartisan support was shameful, but typical. He decries wars in the Middle East, yet stonewalls a significant step to deliver secure Canadian oil to the doorstep of our refineries and make America less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Harry, your statesmanship will be irreplaceable.
His last hurrah as Majority Leader saw him receive the nomination of Loretta Lynch to become Attorney General. A Presidential nomination from a fellow Democrat. He had the majority for one more month before the Republicans would swear in the newly elected Senators January 2nd 2015 and take control. He had the unquestioned power to confirm Loretta Lynch in December 2014. But Harry had other priorities. He had a backlog of Federal Court nomimations. He burned his remaining weeks pushing the judges through the confirmation procesa and let Loretta Lynch twist in the wind. Of course, once the Republicans seated their majority selected by the folks in 2014 midterm election, Harry decried their delay in holding the confirmation vote as racism and sexism. Harry, what will we do without your sense of fairplay?
And finally, there was Harry during the 2012 Presidential campaign. On the Senate floor, Harry stated that Mitt Romney had npt paid taxes for the last ten years. Asked to back up this slander, he said "the word is out". Later, he had it on "extremely credible sources". The Washington Post gave him four Pinnochoes and even Huffpost cried enough. And as Harry enters his mellow pre-retirement period, you know, the curmudginly period, he was asked if he would like to recant his slander of Romney. No way, says Harry "he lost, didn't he?" Ah Harry, we will miss your overriding integrity. Just don't let the door hit you on the way out.