Senator Ted Kennedy passed away at the age of 77 last night at his home in Massachusetts after his fight with brain cancer.  Check out what President Obama had to say about his passing below via USA Today:

Highlights from President Obama’s brief remarks to reporters on Martha’s Vineyard about the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

9:58 a.m. “Even though we had known this day was coming for some time now, we awaited it with no small amount of dread,” the president said. He says the outpouring of tributes is a testament to Kennedy’s legislative legacy.

9:59 a.m. The president says the senator’s work to expand equal rights benefitted many Americans “including myself.” That’s a reference to the civil rights legislation that Sen. Kennedy worked to pass. Though Kennedy was often “a target of campaign attacks,” Obama said that in the Senate “I can think of no one who engendered greater respect of affection.”

10 a.m. Obama calls Kennedy “one of the greatest senators of all times,” says that though his life is over “the extraordinary good he did lives on” and numbers himself among those “who loved Ted Kennedy.”

Tagged as: 77, Brain Cancer, Dead, President Obama, Ted Kennedy