A refund is due

The Boston Herald thinks that the Bush campaign landed a “solid blow” by criticizing John Kerry’s serial absenteeism from the Senate Intelligence Committee:

We don't normally get too worked up about an elected official's attendance record at congressional committee meetings. The real work of legislating often gets done elsewhere. But given the weight Kerry himself has given his congressional experience with intelligence oversight and his stated desire to ``reform the intelligence system,'' his record of missing 76 percent of public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings - and every one in the year after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center - is surely fair game.

Once again, I need to ask: Why is Kerry drawing a salary?