Jim DiEugenio responds to a recent hit piece which uses Joe Kennedy III's State of the Union reply as a platform from which to launch yet another doctrinaire and uninformed attack on JFK and RFK, claiming that the latter's grandson is just another "false progressive idol" like his great uncle.

During this, the 50th anniversary of Senator Robert Kennedy's assassination, we wish to raise awareness of his life and death. Joseph Palermo is one of the better authors on RFK, and this interview concerning his 2007 book is one way to begin that commemoration.

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The best volume on Robert Kennedy I have read since Arthur Schlesinger’s two volume set in 1978. If you want to know about Bobby Kennedy’s life, the Schlesinger book is your choice. But if you want to know who RFK was in his last years, this is the book to read. No politician I know of ever did or said these kinds of things at home and abroad, writes Jim DiEugenio.

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, at: The San Francisco Examiner; see also the GoFundMe page to make a contribution.

Because of its innumerable textual and sourcing problems, Tye's book is neither worth reading nor buying, concludes Jim DiEugenio, who is prompted to muse:  "Why did the author write the book? Only he can answer that question".

Extralegal assassinations, unwarranted domestic surveillance, interventionist wars at the behest of corporate interests, torture or other activities of that stripe – these all have their roots in the Dulles era in which covert, corporate power developed into a well-oiled and unaccountable machine running roughshod. These dark forces have continued to operate regardless of who is elected president; and the refusal to face them has caused the Democratic Party to lose its way, writes Alex Sill.

By Bryan Bender and Neil Swidey, originally run on November 24, 2013, At:  The Boston Globe

The Democratic Party has become something both JFK and RFK would deplore—the party of war.

By Adam Walinsky, At: Politico

On the occasion of Barack Obama's overture to end the Cuban embargo and reopen diplomatic relations, Jim DiEugenio berates columnist Robert Scheer for recycling discredited stories about RFK's role in the CIA assassination plots against Fidel Castro, and concludes that Obama is finally doing what JFK was preparing to do when he was murdered.

by Eric Levenson

At:  Boston.com