Senator Kit Bond Says Goodbye

Republican senator Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri surely gave more farewell addresses – a half dozen, by my count – than anyone else who departed from Congress in 2010. He called them “legacy speeches.” They got little media attention, but his address on national security and intelligence should have. It was brimming with important advice.

Bond, first elected to the Senate in 1986, also gave a number of interviews, including one with me during the lame duck session of Congress just before Christmas. Among other things, he confirmed for the first time that Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York had punched him on the Senate floor when he opposed a new courthouse in Brooklyn, a pet project of Moynihan’s.