Lloyd Bentsen, RIP

Man, they're really falling here in Harris County. Former US Senator and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen passes away today at 85. One of the last truly great Texas Democrats ... we've lost one of the best today.

UPDATE: Over the course of the Democratic Party's drift toward modernity, Bentsen remained a rock dedicated toward representing his state first and foremost. That ideological steadiness often imitated a sense of stodginess that, I always felt, was to be admired. One of the last moments I had to remind myself of this was while reading Bill Clinton's "My Life":

The rest of the retreat was devoted to more informal, personal conversations. On Saturday night there was a session, run by a facilitator who was a friend of Al Gore's, in which we were supposed to bond by sitting in a group, taking turns tellling something about ourselves the others didn't know. Though the exercise got mixed reviews, I actually enjoyed it, and managed to confess that, as a child, I was overweight and often ridiculed. Lloyd Bentsen thought the whole exervise was silly and went back to his cabin; if there was something about him the rest of us didn't know, it was intentional.