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Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has a malignant brain tumor, according to reports.

A cancerous brain tumor caused the seizure Sen. Edward M. Kennedy suffered over the weekend, doctors said Tuesday in a grim diagnosis for one of American politics' most enduring figures.

"He remains in good spirits and full of energy," the doctors for the 76-year-old Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement.

They said tests conducted after the seizure showed a tumor in Kennedy's left parietal lobe. Preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma, they said.

His treatment will be decided after more tests but the usual course includes combinations of radiation and chemotherapy.

Kennedy's Senate colleagues reacted with grief and worry for their friend.

“I want to take a moment to say how distraught and terribly shaken I am over the news of my dear friend, my dear, dear friend, Ted Kennedy," [Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.)] said. "Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you, and I miss you."

“We just don't feel like going on,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). “He is the center of the Senate, the heart, mind and soul. Just pray.” ...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) delivered the news of the diagnosis at the Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. The usually boisterous session fell into “stunned silence,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said.

At the Republicans’ lunch, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) said, “We immediately all bowed our heads and said a prayer.”

Walking out of the Democratic lunch, a visibly shaken Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said: "I am having a hard time remembering a day in my 34 years here when I felt this badly."

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illi., frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in this year's presidential primary and the candidate endorsed by Kennedy, called the news "heartbreaking."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., called Kennedy the "most effective" senator ever and said he was a "fighter" whose "courage and resolve are unmatched."

Let's keep the Kennedy family patriarch in our thoughts and prayers tonight.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in an email to supporters that the House of Representatives, under her direction, passed a bill that

requires redeployment of U.S. troops beginning within 120 days of enactment and ending by April 1, 2008. It also requires the President to publicly justify the post-redeployment missions for the U.S. military in Iraq and the number of troops necessary to carry out those missions.

As she notes, this is a responsible way to end the war. Pulling out immediately could prove disastrous, and would be unfair to the Iraqi people. Even though they may prefer an immediate troop withdrawal, it would be extremely irresponsible to begin a full-fledged conflict on their soil and then leave them to pick up the pieces by themselves.

However, the Iraqis are not going to meet any of the set benchmarks. And we can't commit to staying over there forever. So this new resolution gives the best solution: have the troops out by this time next year. Bush has nearly a year to redeploy the troops. But will he do it? Or will he pick up his newly-found veto stamp and reject this responsible legislation should it come to his desk?

In a rare Saturday session, the Senate failed once again to advance a nonbinding resolution to the floor for a vote that would have condemned the President's Iraq escalation. The latest proposal floated in the Senate was identical in wording to the House resolution that passed earlier in the week.

The measure picked up several Republican Senators who deferred to pressure from Republican leadership in the last debate - including Snowe, Hagel and Warner. Of course, both Texas Senators voted against advancing the resolution. Senator John Cornyn has been especially strident in his support of the administration, sticking like glue to Bush's failed war policies. Despite falling poll numbers, Cornyn hasn't softened one whit on his stance on the war - whatever George Bush wants, George Bush gets.

Stay until the job is done....can someone please define what that means? Because it sure sounds as though he's advocating for an indefinite stay.

That might have been a good question to ask a few years ago, when there was still hope of avoiding the hard choices brought on by civil war. But it ignores the reality on the ground, which is that Iraq is already one of the most dangerous places on earth, and it happened on our watch. As stated in a previous post...

And as for the overwhelming public disapproval on the conduct of the war, Cornyn seems not to notice.

Those of us who are passionately opposed to the continuation of the Iraq war have mixed feelings about the upcoming debate over the Iraq war resolution in the Senate. Yes, it's good to oppose escalation of the troops, but a non-binding resolution containing watered down language which will certainly be ignored by the White House anyway, hardly seems worth the time. Still, one could argue that something is better than nothing, so when Sen. John Warner, R- Virginia, joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to announce his opposition to Bush's plan to escalate the war, that seemed to be a positive sign.

But now comes the news that all 49 Republican Senators are prepared to filibuster next week if the Democrats don't agree to debate additional resolutions introduced on the war. Yes, all those "principled" Republicans - Snowe, Hagel ("go sell shoes"), even John Warner, who is prepared to vote against cloture even if it delays a vote on his own resolution.

Our Texas senators are split, taking different tactics in this debate. Sen. Cornyn, as we know, is an unapologetic supporter of Bush's war. Cornyn explains why he thinks blocking a vote on the resolution is a good thing.

Cornyn said the Biden resolution and another resolution prepared by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., also opposing the troop buildup, “are fraught with meaning, and the meaning is all bad.”

There, that was illuminating, wasn't it? But Cornyn wants debate on his own resolution, one that supports the buildup.

Republicans including John McCain of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas have drafted alternative resolutions supporting the president's plan. McConnell didn't say which Republican alternatives should be considered.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on the other hand, wants to appear moderate while doing nothing to alienate any of the powers that be. Here is her position before the elections last year on whether she regretted her vote to authorize the Iraq war:

The list of those who say they would vote differently is a bipartisan group whose ranks include former and current Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Here are her comments from last month regarding the nonbinding resolution opposing troop escalation.

Some Republicans worried that it would undermine Bush's diplomatic efforts on Iraq. "The worst thing we can do as a Congress is to undercut the president internationally," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, said Wednesday on CNN television.

Sometimes it's hard to decide which stance on the war is more contemptible - Cornyn's pigheaded support for the administration's ruinous policies, or Hutchison's "We can have our cake and eat it, too" political posturing.

Meanwhile, the latest NIE (National Intelligence Report) casts serious doubt on our ability to stabilize Iraq.

In the bleakest terms yet, a new U.S. government intelligence assessment warned Friday that Iraq's sectarian violence is now self-sustaining and that the country's forces will be "hard pressed" to assume responsibility for security before mid-2008, despite accelerated U.S. training.

And yet in the midst of this chaos, Bush is asking for another $245 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which would bring the totals to a staggering three-quarters of a trillion dollars. But the President also promised us a balanced budget in five years, so something's gotta give.

"Controlling spending also requires us to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Bush said. "Spending for these programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than our economy, and faster than our ability to pay for it."

Funny, the same logic doesn't seem to apply when he's asking for a 10.5 percent increase for the Pentagon budget.