Taranto: $32.8 Million In Earmarks Going to Boost Kennedy Legacy

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal found this outrage:  

"More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys," the Associated Press reports from Boston:

The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The funding may also help support an endowment for the institute.

The bill also includes $22 million to expand facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and $5 million more for a new gateway to the Boston Harbor Islands on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy's mother and built on land opened up by the Big Dig highway project.

Taranto added: "We suppose if you can't make history, you might as well buy it with other people's money."

AP reports the earmarker on these grants is Sen. John Kerry. The only dissent in the AP story is a late paragraph noting the generic opposition of pork-buster John McCain. There's no one in there to suggest that a family as rich as the Kennedys could certainly spend their own private millions (or raise it from rich friends) rather than forcing taxpayers to fund their self-aggrandizement.