December 25, 2008 C-SPAN
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust celebrated Kennedy’s 46 years of “passion and compassion” in the Senate, fighting for improvement of the well-being of those in need by advocating better health coverage for workers, parity for the disabled, a higher minimum wage, reduction in the voting age to 18, better veterans’ benefits, and more funding for education. She quoted Kennedy as having lived by his maxim that, “The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs.” Faust lauded Kennedy’s dedication to the funding of education and biomedical research and elicited a laugh from the Senator and the crowd by stating that his greatest acheivement was quite possibly having scored a touchdown in the 1955 Harvard-Yale game.

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There's no other word than "dumbass" that adequately describes Arizona State University's decision not to award President Obama an honorary degree when he addresses the school's commencement today.

Sure, you can cook up lame excuses, such as that the school instead decided to name a scholarship program after him. That's nice. It's still an insult. A dumbass insult.

The Daily Show's Jason Jones visited Tempe to get some of the flavor of local sentiments. That same word kept coming to mind as we watched ASU students try to explain why Obama didn't deserve an honorary degree. My favorite:

"We're trying to be like the Cambridges, where they don't give out any, uh, honorary degrees. Make them so, uh, prestigious. To give them to, like, important people. Heads of state and stuff like that."

Runner-up:

"Wull, I've been at ASU for three or four years, and I don't have a degree yet. Why does he deserve one for being in office for 100 days?"

May 08, 2009 News Corp.:

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, on Fox News, discussing President Obama's speech at Notre Dame:

To give him an honorary degree would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics.

Dave N.: Now this is one that will make your head spin, Linda-Blair like, right off your shoulders if you think about it too much:

Bill Donohue, the man who virulently defended Mel Gibson against charges of anti-Semitism for his The Jews Killed Jesus Movie (accusing the ADL, one of Gibson's critics, of "threatening to poison Jewish-Catholic relations") -- all this before that unfortunate DUI thing kind of put a dent in Donohue's claim that "Mel Gibson represents the mainstream of America" -- while himself indulging in theories about the Jews controlling Hollywood (on multiple occasions) and who has made a career out of rhetorical thuggery against anyone who stands up to him ...

That guy is actually comparing the nation's first African-American president to the country's most notorious white supremacist, a man who recently did prison time for ripping off his donors to feed his gambling addiction, and more recently has been traveling to faraway places to spread the Jew-bashing white-supremacist gospel.

You can't make this s--t up.