Pam, now I’m even MORE jealous that you get to sit on a panel with John Aravosis. From AMERICAblog:

Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, by Martin Luther King, Jr. on Sept 18, 1963 in Birmingham, Ala. This was the eulogy for three of the four children killed in attack, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley. From DKos:

This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God….

They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death.

They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows.

They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.

They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak)

They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.

They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution.

They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream […]

And there you have it. Martin Luther King using the funeral of small children to criticize the existing members of Congress and the federal government overall. And this is exactly what Coretta Scott King’s mourners did yesterday at her funeral. Something the Republican party blowhards flipped out over. Something Coretta and MLK would have likely WANTED, as clearly shown by their own actions.

So, come on, Ken [Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee]. You know you want to blast Martin Luther King for what you view as angrily exploiting the deaths of children, just as you Republicans blasted Democrats for saying the exact same things at Coretta’s funeral yesterday. Your fingers are just itching to hit the keys and type out a blistering press release about that “angry” black man MLK and the way he politicizes the funerals of CHILDREN, no less!

Come on, Ken. Tell the black man his real place in America. Tell him how his church is supposed to be run, how his funerals are supposed to look and act and sound and feel like white folk’s funerals.

Almost absolutely perfect, John. I would’ve substituted “Michael” for “Ken”, but, hey, that’s just me…

[UPDATE] From Senator John McCain’s eulogy of Senator Barry Goldwater [hat tip to Kos commentor Alkibiadesdog]:

Barry Goldwater put his country and our founding ideals before himself, and we never had a better champion. He believed we all have a duty to the country, a concept that once was as common to our political lexicon as “soundbite” and “spin control” are today. And he performed his duty magnificently — tirelessly, forcefully, effectively, and with a style as honest and wide open as the state he loved so dearly.

American politics is awash in pledges today; pledges to cut taxes; to soak the rich; to create wealth; to redistribute wealth; to end welfare; to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the homeless; to fight for the middle class, the working class, the underclass, and the entrepreneurial class.

…In politics, a profession he loved despite his frequent frank assessments of its less admirable practitioners, he risked his career to give the country “a choice, not an echo.” No one knew better than Barry that he was unlikely to win the Presidency in 1964. But he felt the Republican Party and the country needed some straight talk about old values, and he figured he was the man to give it to them the loudest. So he did, knowing the slings and arrows he would suffer, but confident that his course was honorable. And he ended that campaign, as he ended his political career twenty-two years later, his personal integrity unblemished, his honor unassailable.

From VP Cheney’s eulogy of Senator Strom Thurmond, delivered during the fifth month of the Iraq War:

Strom was a man of deep convictions. And no issue mattered more greatly to him than the security of our nation. [nah, that’s not a political statement at a time two months after “Mission Accomplished” when we were having a bitter political debate about whether invading Iraq really was beneficial to the security of the nation]… I remember from my time as Secretary of Defense that we could always count on Senator Thurmond to stand up for a well trained and well equipped military. [As opposed to those awful Democrats who must hate the military because they want to reign in its funding.] And in this time of challenge for our country, when we have had to call upon the skill and bravery of our people in uniform, we’ve seen the quality force that Strom Thurmond helped to build. All Americans are grateful to our military, and I know that all branches of the service are grateful to their faithful advocate from South Carolina.

And the hits just keep on a-comin’.