Free Republic

For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for. Meanwhile, real or alleged “conservative” misdeeds — say McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight “hard enough” for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for historic misdeeds because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events...

Police in Alexandria, Va., said Sunday that the Idaho Republican was pulled over after his vehicle ran a red light. Police spokesman Jody Donaldson said Crapo failed field sobriety tests and was arrested at about 12:45 a.m. He was transported to the Alexandria jail and released on an unsecured $1,000 bond at about 5 a.m.... Police said Crapo, who was alone in his vehicle, registered a blood alcohol content of .110. The legal limit in Virginia, which has strict drunken driving laws, is .08.

Regarding the DNC Convention.. How dare the Democrats honor a creep who plunged his car into a channel at Chappaquiddick then departed the scene out of concern only for himself, while his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne drown in his car. What kind of 'compassionate man' does this? What are they smoking at the DNC convention? Is Ted Kennedy's behavior that night simply erased from history along with Barack Obama's close ties to a man who attempted to bomb our Pentagon (Bill Ayers)?SENATOR KENNEDY WAITED 10 HOURS TO REPORT HIS ACCIDENT, without any regard to the well-being of the woman in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Snerdley is yelling at me: "Are you gonna get rid of Akin now?" Before I give my two cents on all this, folks, let me first say I have two natural tendencies. One is to avoid the pack, to avoid the conventional wisdom. When everybody seems to be uttering, voicing, doing the same thing, that's when I put on the brakes and say, "Do I want to join this mob?" And I also have, as you well know, a tendency to want to support conservatives who come under fire. It doesn't happen enough. You know, the Democrats...

I see that the stalwarts of Reform Politics throughout the city of New York have been given reason for hope and change. It is reported that former congressman Anthony D. Weiner (pronounced as you might expect) is testing the waters for a return to public life. He is mulling over a run for the mayor's mansion or perhaps a campaign for "public advocate." I am not really sure what a public advocate does, but Weiner has done things in public that are very daring, so I have no doubt he could handle the duties of a public advocate. You will...

‘Star Wars’ actress: Date with Sen. Dodd brought wild questions from Sen. Kennedy Holy Obi-Wan Kenobi! “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher claims the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked her some pretty frank questions while dining out with the star and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). According to published excerpts from Fisher’s new book, “Shockaholic,” the entertainer, best known for her role as Princess Leia, was fresh out of her first stint in rehab and on a date with a then single Dodd back in 1985. Kennedy joined the pair at dinner in D.C.. Fisher writes, “Suddenly, Senator Kennedy, seated...

How evil was Ted Kennedy? Shocking new details have emerged, now that the man himself is dead. While many conservatives realized that Ted Kennedy's was a morally compromised man (his record of walking away from Mary Jo Kopechne as she suffocated in an air bubble inside his Oldsmobile clinched the case), America's major media studiously ignored the incident, and many others, in order to preserve the luster of the Kennedy name, and to aid him in his role as the liberal "lion of the Senate." Now, the son the then-owner of the National Enquirer has provided information which, if true,...

Teddy Kennedy quashed a National Enquirer story alleging Mary Jo Kopechne was pregnant with his child when she died by giving the weekly a fawning article about Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her kids, a new book claims. In Paul Pope's "The Deeds of My Fathers," he claims his father, Generoso (Gene) Pope, who turned the Enquirer into the best-selling tabloid in America, spiked a story that reported Kopechne, the pretty young campaign worker, was pregnant in 1969 when she drowned in the Chappaquiddick River in Kennedy's car. Pope writes that his father sent a reporter to DC in 1980 to...

For many, the name Chappaquiddick conjures images of a drunken Sen. Edward Kennedy hitting on Mary Jo Kopechne in his Oldsmobile, losing control, and plunging into the water of Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, adjacent to Martha's Vineyard where President Obama was vacationing. Kopechne, a family friend, drowned; and Teddy fumbled for excuses about what happened. Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mistress at the time, tells Whispers that the whole July 1969 episode should have been handled as a simple crash, leaving the senator's legacy untainted. "It was...

This is one story that U.S. News & World Report's Washington Whispers might want to keep to a low whisper or risk even more ridicule than what they are already receiving. Paul Bedard, writing in Washington Whispers, quotes Kennedy's biographer and former girlfriend who claim that Ted was really an innocent victim of the Chappaquiddick accident. Here is Kennedy biographer Burton Hersh making the case for Kennedy as merely a lousy driver: Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mistress at the time, tells Whispers that the whole July 1969...

The political odyssey of health care reform in many ways is the story of Ted Kennedy, and as President Obama signed the historic bill into law Tuesday, Kennedy's gravesite was a place of quiet celebration and poignant reflection. The late senator's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, spent hours Sunday at the simple white cross at Arlington National Cemetery marking where her husband was laid to rest only seven months ago. Ted Kennedy's youngest son, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.), visited on Monday morning and left a hand-written note that read: "Dad, the unfinished business is done." And on a dreary...

DARTMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- Edmund Dinis (duh-NEEZ'), the former district attorney who oversaw the investigation into the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's involvement in the Chappaquiddick case, has died at age 85. Henry Arruda, general manager of the radio station Dinis owned, says the former prosecutor died Sunday at an assisted-living center in Dartmouth, Mass. Dinis was voted out of office in 1970, the year after Kennedy's car went off a Martha's Vineyard bridge into a pond with campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne inside.

WASHINGTON – A Democratic official says Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election for his seat representing Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress. ... The decision by the eight-term congressman comes less than a month after a stunning Republican upset in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat his late father, Edward Kennedy, held for almost half a century.

Bay State Republicans yesterday all but dared Gov. Deval Patrick to name former Gov. Michael Dukakis as an interim senator - saying the move would yoke the plummeting incumbent to the disastrous Democratic regime of the bad old Taxachusetts era. “Go ahead - make my day,” said Christy Mihos, a GOP businessman challenging Patrick for the Corner Office. “Politically I hope they do this. It will give us another arrow in our quiver to show them for what they are.” Beacon Hill lawmakers are expected to pass a measure allowing Patrick to choose a temporary replacement for the late U.S....

ORALANDO, September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In addition to his announcement that he is considering a run for President in 2012, former US Senator Rick Santorum gave his assessment of the controversy around the Ted Kennedy funeral during his speech to the Catholic Leadership Conference last week. Santorum's talk focused on rejuvenating the Catholic Church in the United States.During his speech Santorum lamented "what the Church allowed to happen" with the Kennedy funeral, referring to it as a "deification" of Kennedy.  "The damage done" to the Church, he said, "is profound.""We have Catholic politicians who have led this country astray, have led...

The Kennedy Funeral: Boston's Latest Scandal t | t | t | t by Phil Lawler, September 3, 2009   A week after the death of Ted Kennedy, the relevant question is not whether the Massachusetts Senator deserved a Catholic funeral, but whether he deserved a ceremony of public acclamation so grand and sweeping that it might, to the untutored observer, have seemed more like an informal canonization. We cannot know the state of Ted Kennedy's soul when he finally succumbed to brain cancer. We are told that he was visited regularly by a priest in his last days; we...

TORONTO, September 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The decision to permit a grandiose public funeral celebrating the life of  pro-abortion extremist Senator Ted Kennedy has caused a rift in the Catholic Church in North America.  Several prominent Catholic priests in the pro-life movement as well as other Catholic pro-life leaders criticized the decision, and advocated a more subdued private funeral instead.  Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley shot back Wednesday defending his actions with some fairly strong words for his critics.However, the war of words has escalated to new heights with the latest blogpost of Fr. Thomas Rosica, the President and CEO of...

Perhaps the most fitting tribute to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy came not from President Obama, who correctly called him one of the greatest senators in U.S. history, but from the man who lost last year's election: John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who was often the political polar opposite of his colleague from Massachusetts. Hours after Senator Kennedy lost his battle with a brain tumor late Tuesday, a tearful Mr. McCain called him the most effective member of the Senate - and nobody spoke to disagree. Both Mr. McCain and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) agreed that health-care reform would be...

NEW YORK - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy wrote in a memoir being published this month that he made terrible decisions after the 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, but said he was never romantically involved with her

<p>NEW YORK — In a posthumous memoir, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy writes of fear and remorse surrounding the fateful events on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, when his car accident left a woman dead.</p> <p>"True Compass" is to be published Sept. 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group. The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times.</p>

In case you missed it, Mark Steyn delivered a brilliant monologue at the beginning of the second hour of the Rush Limbaugh Show today (he was subbing while Rush is on vacation). The essence of which was that the leftist (and mainstream media) arguments that Teddy Kennedy's sins should be forgiven because he did so much for the common man was, essentially, a monarchical argument with no place in American society. (more)

You can bet your grandma's iron lung that under ObamaCare neither she nor you nor I will receive the end-of-life care provided to Kennedy... Democrats have proposed that health care reform legislation be named after Kennedy, to memorialize his voluminous efforts for nationalized health care. If so, conservatives should take note of another, darkly appropriate chapter of Kennedy's life and demand that any end-of-life provisions be called the Mary Jo Kopechne Rider.

EDGARTOWN, Mass. – Just a week after the death of semi-permanent Senate fixture Ted Kennedy, the so-called Lion of the Senate has garnered a touching posthumous honor in his home state. Chappaquiddick’s picturesque Dike Bridge, where, in a less-than-lionhearted moment in 1969, Kennedy drove a young courtesan to her watery death, is to be rechristened in his name, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) confirmed today ...

FOX25’s video that purportedly shows JFK’s granddaughter Rose Kennedy Schlossberg flipping off the media during the Ted Kennedy motorcade has hit YouTube. The 38-second clip shows a 20-something girl, who appears to be Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg’s daughter Rose, giving the middle finger to the media as she drives by them in a limo during the procession from the Cape to the Kennedy Library. Apparently, the young lady believed the not-so-subtle salute would be invisible from behind the car’s tinted window. Very classy. . . .

There are consequences when we forgive the depraved. America has duly performed its solemn rituals to mark the passing of Ted Kennedy -- the pompous displays, the airy speeches, the pseudo-dignified deference to the dead. What we ought to reflect upon, with equal solemnity, is what America's legitimization and ultimate acceptance of such a man portends for ourselves. The tale of Chappaquiddick has, of course, been told and retold. But what Ted Kennedy did to Mary Jo Kopechne that summer night in 1969 is so depraved that the story bears repetition. Put aside the debauchery of the party Kennedy attended...

If we'd had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months. Special programs every night devoted to nothing but pundits bickering over the depths of the 37-year-old Kennedy's responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, 28. Town-hall-style chat shows every afternoon in which ordinary Americans issued their verdicts and sentences before the evidence was in.

The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known. What is known is that at the end of the evening, Mary Jo Kopechne was found dead in a car that Edward (Ted) Kennedy had been driving. Was her death the result of a tragic accident or due to gross negligence on the part of Ted Kennedy? Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne attended the same party on the evening of July 18, 1969. Kennedy left the party with Kopechne as a passenger in his car and accidentally drove off the road...

It was just one line at the end of a segment. But it spoke volumes about the way a media willing to look the other way saved Ted Kennedy's political career at the time of Chappaquiddick. Jim Pinkerton made the observation on yesterday's Fox News Watch at the very end of the segment on the media's treatment of Kennedy's death. View video here.

In all the obits published and specials aired this week, Chappaquiddick gets a few paragraphs, a few minutes, a tidy recapping of the events of July 19, 1969: The married Ted Kennedy, driving late at night with young campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne, pitches off a bridge and into the water below. He escapes; she drowns. He does not report the accident for 10 hours. He pleads guilty and gets a suspended sentence, two months in jail. In most of these narratives, Chappaquiddick is told as Ted's tragedy, the thing that kept him from ever becoming president. And in these...

After Ted Kennedy was elected for the first time, at age 30, his home state sent him back to the Senate eight times, all but once by unassailable margins. Here in Massachusetts, people understood him and wanted him on their side – and it wasn't just because of his the name. It was the accent that was as much Boston as Brahmin. It was his collection of imperfections and failings trumped most of the time by his stubbornness, real passion and just plain will. And there was something else about him that made him an untouchable here: He came from...

Click on link to watch; actually mostly audio. From 1994, Howie Carr, then with WHDH AM 850 talks with John Farrar who discovered Mary Jo Kopechne's body. He was pressured not to talk about his discoveries. excerpt: Howie Carr: John let me just get this straight..your belief is that while Ted Kennedy was walking past all these houses back towards the "party house" where we're broadcasting from now, Mary Jo was still alive. Farrar: Uh, that is correct. Carr: And she would have been alive probably for about an hour, do you think. Farrar: I think that's most reasonable--an hour...

Mark Steyn: Things only a Kennedy could get away with And by not calling his bluff on Chappaquiddick, Americans became complicit in it. We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a...

I've made a decision. After thoughtful reflection I've come to the conclusion that my life can have no greater purpose than to sacrifice it for the sake of another. But this sacrifice cannot be for some Jack Nobody. No, I am looking to lay my life down for a very specific type of person. If you are a young person of privilege, perhaps the black sheep of your family, and have an alarming drinking problem and been thrown out of an ivy league university, you might be the person I am looking for! Oh, quick question, were you a legacy...

Birth: Jul. 26, 1940 Death: Jul. 19, 1969 Teacher and Administrator, she is most remembered for her controversial death in an automobile accident with Senator Edward Kennedy; the resulting political scandal caused Kennedy to reverse his decision to run for the US Presidency. Born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, she was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph and Gwen Kopechne. After graduating from Caldwell College, New Jersey, she taught at Montgomery Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and then moved to Washington DC to work as a secretary for Florida Senator George Smathers. Shortly afterwards, she went to work...

Two kinds of people reacted to news of Ted Kennedy’s death last week. The first — not all liberals, either — spoke of Kennedy’s hard work in the United States Senate, his dream of universal healthcare, his commitment to working people, civil rights and equality. This “most imperfect man,” wrote analyst William Bradley, was also a powerful advocate for progressive principles. Barack Obama predictably (though accurately) observed that “for America, he was a defender of a dream.” In another variation on the visionary theme, Joe Biden said of his old friend, “He was never small.” The other kind of reaction...

The late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) had requested that he be buried at sea. While such requests normally are honored, this one was vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The key sticking point was the Senators request that his “coffin” be a “1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.” Those familiar with the Chappaquiddick incident may recognize this as the car that the Senator drove off a bridge in 1969 on the way to an extramarital tryst with a young campaign volunteer named Mary Jo Kopechne in the car with him. Ms. Kopechne was trapped in the submerged car for several hours...

I finally figured out why Ted Kennedy wants to have Governor Devoid Patrickakis appoint someone to replace him - Ted is staying in Florida. Ted has been in Florida since he collapsed at an Obama inauguration dinner many months ago. Like his dear mother Rose, Teddy wants to establish Florida as his primary residence in order to avoid those massive estate taxes and dreaded Massachusetts income taxes. This is important because Teddy has a new book coming out and he wants the income from that book to be declared tax free in Florida - not Taxachusetts. The same way we...

Didn't see this.

Reviewer: "One has to feel amazed, reading this book, at how PROUD the people of Massachusetts must be of their esteemed senior US senator. First, he was eminently generous to host a party for six young women who had all toiled so hard to assist with his family's politics. You have to know that lower-level campaign workers of their age rarely receive attention from the more powerful folks in the political apparatus. The girls must have been utterly thrilled, to have been asked to a cook-out and get to mingle with all of those seasoned, powerful men. Edward Kennedy was...

There are some of you out there who don’t understand why we’ve detested Senator Edward Moore Kennedy since childhood — even though we grew up in Democratic households, where our families always voted the party line, and pictures of Jack and Jackie, Franklin and Eleanor, and Bill and Hillary hung proudly on our walls (Jimmy Carter was always a known anti-semite embarrassment to us, whose single term was best forgotten). But, whenever Ted Kennedy’s name was said by anyone on television, or Heaven forbid someone in the house, the room would grow quiet and more than one of the older...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation — or, at any rate, its “mainstream” media culture — declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s passing, America’s TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there’s a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it. In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo...

What the heck, let's start with a limerick from my top five. This was the most difficult one to compose that I ever did. Scary choices, on that you can bank To not face them, your Lord you can thank Would you rather be stuck On a bridge in Ted's truck Or a closet with Congressman Frank? YOUTUBE - Ted Kennedy, Chappaquiddick Lifeguard Skip to comments.DFU SONG: Surrey with the Fringe on Top (Ted Kennedy, happy Chappaquiddick anniversary)DFU SONGS | 7-2004 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland Posted on 07/03/2004 5:00:40 PM PDT by doug from upland MIDI - SURREY WITH...

Somehow, the fact that she recognizes Chappaquiddick as “unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable” only makes it worse. It’s come to this: Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts”...

We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy's life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a...

This isn't an accusation from Ted Kennedy's political opponents, but a nostalgic remembrance by one of his friends. Ed Klein, former Newsweek editor, tells the Diane Rehm Show: "I dont know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick? That is just the most amazing thing. Its not that he didnt feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things,...

On the day of Senator Kennedy's death, this site published an article about the Democrats exploiting the Senator's death to push Obamacare. The title of the article, "Lets Kill Grandma for Teddy Kennedy," was met with some derision as some readers felt that it did not pay proper respect for the dead. The gallows humor sometimes displayed on this site is nothing compared to what the Senator used himself. Apparently one of his favorite humor subjects was Chappaquiddick, the incident 40 years ago where the Senator drove off a bridge, saved himself and allowed a young woman to die in...

Kennedy Friend Recalls How Much He Loved to Joke About Chappaquiddick http://www.breitbart.tv/kennedy-friend-recalls-how-much-he-loved-to-joke-about-chappaquiddick/

From Kennedy’s close friend Ed Klein: I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too. Hear audio here

Ed Klein, former editor for Newsweek and New York Times Magazine, was a close personal friend of Ted Kennedy and decided to share some memories of the late Senator on The Diane Rehm Show. KLEIN: I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of...

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end. He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived. Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne. Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969...