Some years ago, when I first got involved with the Internet, I researched my father's World War II infantry regiment and discovered that one of his squad sergeants had won the Congressional Medal Honor - posthumously. That was news to my Dad. He was with the regiment for three months, but was wounded in October of 1944 and spent the rest of the war in England. His batallion was later "overwhelmed" in Drusenheim, Germany in January 1945, so my Dad was lucky he got out when he did. After the war ended and he was back home in Massachusetts, the local newspaper listed him as eligible for the Bronze Star. By that point however, my father had put his old regiment out of his mind and was trying to move on with his new life as a graduate student in political science. My research inspired my Dad to find out what had happened to the Bronze Star for which he was eligible, but never got around to claiming. He was approaching the end of his life, after all, and was eager to tie up loose ends. After a year of dealing with veterans' centers and the U.S. government, we eventually got my Dad his Bronze Star. The local veterans' center even arranged a visit from our Congressman, Ed Markey, to do the presentation in the summer of 2003.

So Ed Markey gave my Dad his Bronze Star nearly 60 years after he earned it. We are grateful to Rep. Markey for participating in the presentation. Certainly he cares for the elderly and the "greatest generation" in particular. If you belong to that age cohort, by all means vote for him. Unfortunately, one of the corollaries of respecting the "greatest generation" is an unqualified contempt for their children, those horrifically worthless "baby boomers". It is unprecedented in biological history for one generation of a species to be pure gold, and the next to be sheer excrement - but that is apparently what has happened in this case - at least in the eyes of many opinion leaders, including the media. Forty thousand journalists can't be wrong, can they?

During the presentation, upon learning that I, the son, worked in IT, Markey recounted the experience of a fellow Boston College alumnus who became a physicist and worked at Los Alamos. This good friend of our congressman said that the Chinese he worked with were all smarter than he was, and smarter than all the Americans around. Rep. Markey extrapolated from this to imply that Asians were smarter than Americans technically, and would eventually outperform all us domestic dullards right out of the market. Having been in IT for twenty years, I have worked with people of all nationalities and have never found any one group to possess a monopoly on superior ability. Yet that is what this one congressman clearly thinks. Not only did he think that, but he thought it strongly enough to annoy his constituents with his opinion at an event where that opinion should have had no relevance at all. If you were born in America and you work in IT in the state of Massachusetts - particularly if you are not of Asian descent - please remember that Rep. Markey does not respect your intelligence and is not inclined to protect your livelihood. The next time he runs, do not vote for him.