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FALL RIVER, MA, September 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Father Roger J. Landry, editor at The Anchor, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River (the diocese where the late Senator Edward Kennedy resided), has written extensively on the passing of Senator Kennedy and his funeral. Fr. Landry himself was ordained by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the presider at Kennedy's funeral. In his latest column, to be published in the September 18 edition of The Anchor, Fr. Landry writes that the funeral with all of its extravagances created a "controversy that was totally avoidable." "The overall tone of the funeral liturgy...

Even though one doesn't want to run. A poll shows Joe Kennedy remains the favorite for his uncle's Senate seat despite his decision to remain at Citizens Energy. Republican prospects look predictably bleak.

Bishop Rene Henry Gracida, retired Roman Catholic Bishop of Corpus Christi, Texas, has denounced the "scandal" of Ted Kennedy’s funeral. He wrote, "There was so much wrong with the funeral liturgy celebrated in Boston . . . for Senator Edward Moore Kennedy that I hardly know where to begin."He added, "Aside from the impropriety of such a grandiose celebration for one of the country’s most notorious dissident Catholics, the ‘celebration’ was filled with liturgical errors and transgressions against the General Instruction of the Roman Missal which governs every celebration of the Church’s liturgy."Bishop Gracida concluded, "It is not unreasonable to...

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...

Police say that DNA material found at hotel after killing matches that of Cesar Gomez,34. A man arrested and charged with murdering a prostitute at a Garden Grove hotel is a gang member who has been deported to Mexico three times in the last decade, Garden Grove police said at a press conference this morning. Cesar Gomez, 34,of El Monte,is scheduled to be arraigned on a murder charge Monday at West Justice Center. He is accused of strangling Ashley Lilly, 24, of Inglewood, to death at the Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort on Harbor Boulevard some time late Aug. 20 or...

State Senator Scott Brown, the Republican frontrunner for the late Edward Kennedy's US Senate seat, is asking Governor Deval Patrick to investigate whether state employees on state time researched whether Brown could run for Congress while serving in the National Guard. Brown says he was alerted that an employee of the Executive Office of Public Safety had called the adjutant general's office asking whether Brown were disqualified from running because of his position in the Guard.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry is making personal calls to on-the-fence lawmakers today asking them to support an interim U.S. Senator as national Democrats ramp up pressure for the measure. State Rep. Martin Walsh (D-Dorchester) spoke to Kerry on his cell phone this morning. “He made some good points. He talked about how constituent services would be hurt,” Walsh said. “I’m still uncommitted.” Many state legislators are leery of the bill, which would allow Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint a temporary senator, because they voted to strip the governor of appointing powers in 2004 to prevent Gov. Mitt Romney from appointing...

Liberals have an amazing ability to commit almost any foible and come out unscathed. The corruption is usually deemed a lapse in judgment by the Watch Dogs of Democracy (more accurately known to Conservatives as The State Controlled Media) The guilty Democrat usually goes on to bigger and better things. Take Charlie Rangel, who has admitted to incorrectly filing his taxes by forgetting to mention hundreds of thousands in revenue. Instead of being reprimanded, Mr. Rangel gets a promotion to Head of the House Ways and Means Committee (the group of house members that actually write the tax code) Mr....

A poll of Massachusetts voters showed a hefty majority (56%) opposed to a bid by former Red Sox pitcher and World Series hero Curt Schilling for the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy. Only 21% said they favored a run by Schilling. “He’s not a Kennedy,” said one poll respondent. “Nor is he a Democrat. He doesn’t even have a DUI or sex scandal to his name. He just doesn’t seem to have the kind of life experience we look for in a senator for our state. Maybe if it could be shown that he used...

The bulletproof vests the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy kept in his closet during his ill-fated chase for the Oval Office left his three children trembling in fear for their father’s life, a new interview reveals. In a “60 Minutes” segment set to air Sunday, Edward M. Kennedy Jr. tells of the anxiety he felt every time he passed the closet where the vests were kept. “Most people keep coats and umbrellas in their coat closet. My father kept bulletproof vests in his coat closet,” he said. “Believe me, we would walk past that coat closet every day, fearful...

On Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 9, Gardner Auditorium in the Massachusetts State House was filled to capacity as the Joint Committee on Election Laws heard testimony on Bill H656 which would give the Governor of Massachusetts the ability to quickly appoint an interim successor to Ted Kennedy to serve in the US Senate, until a replacement is elected, overturning a law passed in 2004 by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

BOSTON -- Citing needed support for health care reform, President Barack Obama said Thursday that Gov. Deval Patrick should have the power to appoint an interim senator to fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat. Following up on his congressional address Wednesday night, Obama said he supports rewriting a 2004 election law to allow Patrick to appoint an interim senator to fill the seat. The move would require many Massachusetts lawmakers to reverse the stances they took five years ago, when they stripped Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of appointment power. Obama's Organizing for America committee said in an e-mail that...

Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card will address members of the state GOP at a committee meeting tonight in Newton, potentially signaling his intention to run for the Senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Herald has learned. Card, 62, a Holbrook native, will attend the meeting at the Newton Marriott, according to a Republican source with knowledge of the logistics. Card’s appearance follows an announcement by GOP gubernatorial hopeful Christy Mihos this morning that he will not quit his quest to unseat Gov. Deval Patrick and make a bid for the Senate. Mihos...

On Wednesday, Sept 9 at 1:00 pm at the State House there will be a public hearing on a Massachusetts bill that could change all of America. Bill H656 [see text here] would give the Governor of Massachusetts the ability to quickly appoint an interim successor to Ted Kennedy to serve in the US Senate, until a replacement is elected. The election is scheduled for Jan. 19, 2010. This would effectively reverse the law that many of these same politicians passed in 2004, when the Governor was a Republican instead of a Democrat.

2:32 PM 9/8/2009 — It’s been a week since the Dead Kennedy Show aired on TV; and, since Father Venditti has already dealt with the canonical and spiritual aspects of the whole thing, your PP would like to reflect a little on what it might mean in the whole spectrum of the development of Catholicism in the United States. As distastefull and scandalous as we all know the Dead Kennedy Show was, it has, inadvertently, betrayed some rather encouraging signs. As little as thirty years ago, the outrage that exploded among ordinary Catholics in the wake of the Show would...

A word of advice to liberals who wish to pay tribute to Ted Kennedy: don't mention his name in the same sentence as the word "bridge" since it will undermine whatever else you wrote. Unfortunately for Alec Baldwin, that is exactly what he did in his Huffington Post tribute to the deceased senator: Don't name a bridge after Ted. Yes, Baldwin did write a lot more about Ted Kennedy in his tribute but that one sentence alone pretty much overwhelms whatever else he wrote. However, to be fair to Alec, let us look at some of the rest of his...

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification. The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a...

"To call a spade a spade," a phrase whose origin can be traced back to Plutarch, is defined by Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable as to be "outspoken, blunt, even to the point of rudeness." The question of when Catholics should be outspoken, in this sense, has arisen over the heated reactions to the funeral of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.   A number of commentators took issue with the funeral, specifically over the participation of Sean Cardinal O'Malley of Boston and Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, retired, from Washington, D.C., who read from the letter written by Kennedy to...

Joseph P. Kennedy II said today he will not make a bid for the senate seat held by his late uncle Edward M. Kennedy, in a bombshell announcement expected to draw candidates-in-waiting out from the wings. “Given all that my uncle accomplished, it was only natural to consider getting back involved in public office, and I appreciate all the calls of support and friendship that have poured in,” Kennedy said in a statement posted on the web site of Citizens Energy, of which he is the founder. “My father called politics an honorable profession, and I have profound respect for...

Public doubts ‘official’ account of Kennedy death By Editors, The Skunk • on August 30, 2009 • BOSTON — Over 68% of Americans don’t believe the official government story that Senator Edward Kennedy died from a brain tumor, according to a survey released today.

Luke 16:24 (King James Version) 24And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

BOSTON, Mass. (CNN) - She was called "the littlest refusenik," one of the many Soviet Jews denied permission to leave the Soviet Union because her father had been exposed to government secrets. But the case of Jessica Katz was special because she was a baby born with a nutritional deficiency that stopped her from growing. She was a tiny baby dying in a Moscow hospital, getting weaker by the day. It was U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy who, her parents say, eventually saved her life. Jessica was born in Moscow in 1977 with malabsorption syndrome, which prevented her from digesting food...

The main point that probably deserves further mention about last week's Dead Kennedy Funeral Parade was the behavior of the press, which wept and moaned and gnashed its collective teeth with hardly a dissenting soul to say, "Enough, already," as though the corpse of a pharaoh was headed for its final hoedown with the sun god. I'm surprised they didn't decide to embalm the guy so people could troop past and touch the yellowed cadaver like they've been doing with Vlad "The Impaler" Lenin in Moscow for the past 70 years. It was all further evidence that statism has now...

Since the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, we've witnessed his canonization as a kind of political saint. Media tributes have taken Kennedy's selfless defense of the poor and downtrodden as a matter of course -- and as iconic for our age. The New York Times' worshipful praise was typical. Kennedy, the Times assured its readers, "used his privileged life to give consistent, passionate voice to the underprivileged for nearly a half-century." Was Edward Moore Kennedy, in fact, "one of the greatest senators of our time," as President Obama has declared? No doubt, Kennedy's efforts regarding the poor were unique and...

Many Republicans have great affection for Sarah Palin for her style, grit, charisma, tenacity and cool shoes. But now we find that she also has a certain self-assured political demeanor — an intangible — that grants her power. The former Alaska governor is "head of the table" material, a quality shared by such heavyweights as Winston Churchill and Sen. Edward Kennedy, says Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator. "Wherever I sit is the head of the table," Mr. Churchill once remarked to a hostess concerned about seating arrangements. "A year after her emergence on the national scene, it is crystal...

It is being reported that the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) apologized for his role in the Chappaquiddick “incident” in his memoir. In the book, Kennedy acknowledged that “in some small way not entirely clear to me even 40 years later, I may have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.” The memoir defended the late Senator’s “deferral of admission of responsibility” as “a necessary sacrifice for the national interest. My political enemies would have gladly used it to divert me from my mission to succor the indigent, the improvident, and the irresponsible during my long career of public...

Over the last week-and-a-half I’ve gotten an overwhelming number of inquiries relating to the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. Why me? Because of my report back in 2006 of Kennedy’s confidential offer to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov. That offer was evident in a fascinating May 14, 1983 memo written by KGB head Victor Chebrikov to Andropov, simply titled, “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” I published the document in its entirety in my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. When Senator Kennedy passed away, I got...

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...

(CNSNews.com) - Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, wrote on Thursday that he confronted President Barack Obama on the question of abortion in the health care reform plan now before Congress when he spoke to Obama in a Boston church at Sen. Ted Kennedy’s funeral. O’Malley made the revelation in a long blog posting on his archdiocesan Web site responding to Catholics who were distressed that he had taken part in a very public funeral Mass celebrating the life of Sen. Kennedy. Kennedy supported legalized abortion (including legalized partial-birth abortion), federal funding for research that kills human...

Saturday was the 39th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, at St. Augustine’s Church in Pittsburgh by Bishop John B. McDowell, who is still going strong today. In the Church’s calendar, the feast day for August 29 is the Beheading of John the Baptist. People usually take note when I tell them that I was professed to religious life on Bastille Day, July 14, and ordained on the feast of the Beheading. Not that I am superstitious. On Saturday morning I attended the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Father Donald Monan, S.J., former president of Boston College,...

Daily Newser Dave Saltonstall gets an advance copy of Ted Kennedy's posthumously-released memoir "True Compass" -- in which the Massachusetts senator used the platform to defend his inexplicable decision to abandon Mary Jo Kopechne after his car plunged off the bridge. Among the other revelations: A nine-year-old Teddy hid under the bunk at a private school in the Bronx because he was afraid of being sexually abused by the dorm master -- and the senator claims he was cajoled into cheating on a Spanish test at Harvard by a buddy and didn't hatch the scheme that resulted in his expulsion....

The US White House has released a photograph of President Barack Obama's daughter Sasha sneaking up on her father as he works in the Oval Office. The image has drawn comparisons with the famous 1963 image of John F Kennedy Jnr playing underneath the Oval Office desk as his father reads documents. That picture helped create the image of "Camelot" associated with the Kennedys. Mr Obama has said being able to work and live at home is "one of the huge benefits of being president". The photograph, taken in early August and released through the official White House Flickr website,...

The passing of the 'great' senator from Massachusetts has prompted me to compose the following chart. Please feel free to suggest additions: THINGS DEMOCRATS CAN GET AWAY WITH Vehicular homicide -- Sen Edward Kennedy Tax evasion -- most Democrats in Congress, most of Bambi's cabinet Perjury, sex in the oval office, Filegate, Travelgate, Memogate, "suicide" of Vince Foster (to name a few) -- the Clintons Burning people alive because of quirky religious beliefs -- AG Janet Reno Stealing from the National Archives -- Sandy Berger Firing Justice Dept attorneys -- AG Eric Holder THINGS REPUBLICANS CANNOT GET AWAY WITH Saying...

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

Who should take Kennedy's Senate seat? Possible Kennedy successorsPrev 12 of 12 First Who should take Kennedy's Senate seat? Joe Kennedy II 26.0% Curt Schilling 22.8% Martha Coakley 21.2% Victoria Kennedy 6.2% Someone else 5.4% Michael Capuano 4.5% Stephen Lynch 4.4% Scott Brown 3.5% Kerry Healey 2.7% Marty Meehan 2.0% Michael Sullivan 1.2%

The day his brother was shot in Dallas, Ted Kennedy had to tell his father the news, and wondered who was behind it. Case Closed: Oswald and the Assassination of JFK author Gerald Posner reports.It was 12:45 in Washington D.C. on November 22, 1963. Teddy Kennedy, who had been a senator for less than a year, was presiding over the Senate, a thankless clerical job assigned to junior members. The chambers were almost deserted, but a few senators were debating a mind-numbing bill about federal library services. It was nearly time to break for lunch when the Senate’s press liaison...

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley last night issued a forceful defense of his decision to participate in the funeral of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, an appearance that has drawn sharp criticism from some conservative Catholics because of Kennedy’s ardent support for abortion rights. O’Malley, writing in his blog, also revealed the substance of a conversation he had with President Obama near the altar of the Mission Church as the congregation assembled for Saturday’s funeral. He said he told Obama that the Catholic bishops are “anxious to support a plan for universal health care, but we will not support a plan that...

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. ~Article I, Section 3 of the United States Constitution ~ Through the chance of history and some political maneuvering, the fate of ObamaCare could fall upon the decision of a single man who has never been elected to national office. If the circumstances weren't so serious it would be a comedy of errors that leads us to where we are today. On Monday, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced that on...

Joe Kennedy’s business ties to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, through Citizens Energy Corp., will likely become a major issue if the former congressman decides to run for the Senate seat held until last week by his late uncle. Joe Kennedy yesterday hadn’t even made a decision on a run when he came under blistering attack by Republican gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos and a Mihos spokesman. “It should be an issue,” said Mihos of the nonprofit Citizens Energy’s acceptance of oil from Venezuela to help needy residents heat their homes. Mihos described Chavez as a “communist dictator and avowed enemy of...

<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>

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Help us out here in MA, we need all we can get! Freep the poll about half way down on the right hand side of the page about whether Joe Kennedy should run for his uncle's seat. Thanks in advance!

Curt Schilling, best known for his bloody-sock pitching heroics, may step up to the plate and run for U.S. Senate. The retired Red Sox [team stats] ace said today in a telephone interview with NECN that even though his “plate is full,” he’s been contacted to consider a run for the open seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy. A Jan. 19 special election has been set by the governor to fill the post.

Add another name to the growing list of pols and would-be pols eyeing a run for Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat: Former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling. That's right, Mr. Bloody Sock himself apparently told NECN's Brad Puffer in an interview today that he, too, was considering running for the seat. Schilling would presumably run as a Republican -- he supported President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, and he campaigned for Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.

With the passing of Ted Kennedy, it is tempting to consider the end of the era of Camelot. Surely, the height of the Kennedy “dynasty” has come and gone. But the legacy of Kennedy’s era lives on in the form of the unprecedented expansion of our government. Consider the following: Ted Kennedy was auspiciously born in 1932. Of course, that was the year that FDR was elected to office. Believe it or not, FDR campaigned on a platform of reduced spending. Instead of keeping that promise, FDR drove up spending from $4 billion to nearly $40 billion to combat the...

Monday August 31, 2009 Reflections on the Kennedy Funeral Commentary By Steve Jalsevac August 31, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - I am not dismayed or downhearted, just amazed at the depth of human weakness and self delusion revealed by the Kennedy funeral. Let me explain, and also urge what should be the attitude of pro-life people be to this event.It was a fascinating funeral with many touching moments and fine speeches. Ted Kennedy was shown to have presented in many ways a very attractive image - an exceptionally generous person, a good father, a faithful friend to many, an accomplished man of the...

Monday August 31, 2009 Priest: Imagine the Funeral if Kennedy was an Anti-Semite Rather Than Pro-Abortion The following is adapted from an email from U.S. priest, Fr. Brian Harrison , O.S. from the Oblates of Wisdom Study Center, St. Louis, Missouri written on August 29, following the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy.August 31, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As a Roman Catholic priest, I feel a duty in conscience today to register my emphatic dissent from a message that was projected around the nation and the globe this morning to millions of viewers and listeners by certain other members of the Roman...

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.

Liberals have a penchant for revising history, but some of their recent rewrites are especially alarming. Look at the sanctification of Sen. Edward Kennedy, which is moving beyond whitewash and into fantastic territories. Modern liberalism strikes again in blogger Melissa Lafsky’s Huffington Post article, “The Footnote Speaks: What Would Mary Jo Kopechne Have Thought of Ted’s Career?” (8/27/09). Incredibly, Lafsky wonders what Kopechne, the young woman Teddy left to drown in Chappaquiddick, would think about Kennedy’s life and career. Lafsky’s conclusion: “Who Knows – Maybe She’d Feel It Was Worth It” (The Huffington Post, August 27, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-lafsky/the-footnote-speaks-what_b_270298.html). You read...