Speaking of Senators...

Are Maria and Patty a latter day Scoop and Maggie? Well, not really, or at least not yet, but it's not really a fair question. For many years Washington enjoyed a Senatorial one-two combination that's really beyond fair comparison. While Henry Jackson may have been the better known of the pair, largely thanks to his Presidential campaigns, there's a case to be made that Warren Magnuson was the more formidable.

A good reason to think so popped up in Joel Connelly's reminiscience about JFK. The tale Kennedy told was apocraphyl, but the political potency of the man he described was accurate.

"At an Olympic Hotel party feting Sen. Warren Magnuson," Connelly relates, "Kennedy rose and described the malaprop-prone pork barreler:

"He (Magnuson) speaks on the Senate floor so quietly that few can hear him. He looks down at his desk ... he comes into the Senate late in the afternoon ... he is hesitant about interrupting other senators. When he rises up to speak most other senators have left. He sends a message up to the chair and everyone says, 'What was it?' and Maggie says, 'It's nothing important.' And the Grand Coulee Dam is built."

Maybe this is a week to remember JFK, but I'll never forget Maggie.