Imagine what the blogosphere would be saying today if a Democratic majority leader went down in a plane crash after openly criticizing the head of the F.B.I.!
Cokie Roberts’s father:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs
Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. (born February 15, 1914; presumed to have died on October 16, 1972 but not declared dead until January 3, 1973) was an American Democratic politician and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the House majority leader and a member of the Warren Commission.
SNIP
In April 1971 he made a speech on the floor of the House in which he strongly attacked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the whole of the FBI. This led to a conversation on April 6, 1971, between then-President Richard M. Nixon and the Republican minority leader, Gerald R. Ford, Jr., in which Nixon said that he could no longer take counsel from Boggs as a senior member of Congress. In the recording of this call, Nixon is heard to ask Ford to arrange for the House delegation to include an alternative to Boggs. Ford speculates that Boggs is on pills as well as alcohol.[4]
Disappearance and search
As Majority Leader, Boggs often campaigned for others. On October 16, 1972, he was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 with Representative Nick Begich of Alaska, who was facing a possible tight race in the November 1972 general election against the Republican candidate, Don Young, when it disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. The only others on board were Begich’s aide Russell Brown and the pilot, Don Jonz;[5] the four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich. (Begich won the 1972 election posthumously with 56 percent to Young's 44 percent, though Young would win the special election to replace Begich and won every subsequent election through and including 2012.)
Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force planes searched for the party. On November 24, 1972, after thirty-nine days, the search was abandoned. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found. The accident prompted Congress to pass a law mandating Emergency Locator Transmitters in all U.S. civil aircraft.
Her mother:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Boggs
Lindy Boggs ran successfully as a Democrat for her husband's vacated seat in Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, based about New Orleans.
Boggs was elected to a full term in 1974 with 82 percent of the vote and was reelected seven times thereafter until she vacated her office in January 1991. In 1980, she faced her closest challenge from the Republican Rob Couhig, an attorney-businessman who raised some $200,000 for the race, a large amount at that time for a challenger in a difficult district. Lindy Boggs still prevailed, 45,091 votes (63.8 percent) to Couhig's 25,512 (36.2 percent).[7] Otherwise, Boggs polled more than 80 percent in her contested races. In her four final campaigns, she ran without opposition even though the district had been redrawn with an African American majority following the 1980 United States Census.
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