Free Republic

Six years after she was deemed cancer-free, Kara Kennedy accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of her father, just days before Sen. Edward Kennedy died while battling a brain tumor. However, her own lung cancer treatment -- surgery and grueling chemotherapy and radiation -- left her physically weakened, her brother Patrick Kennedy said. She died Friday at age 51 after her daily workout at a Washington-area health club. "Her heart gave out," said Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island. "She's with dad." Kennedy was a member of the Sport & Health fitness center, though spokeswoman Nancy...

Kara Kennedy, the oldest child of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, died after battling lung cancer. She was 51. Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island, said his sister died Friday at a Washington-area health club.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated in court filings that he does not want to pay Maria Shriver spousal support or her attorney's fees in their divorce case. ... The issues of whether Shriver will receive spousal support and who will pay her attorney's fees are the only differences in their initial filings to end their 25-year marriage.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy and his fiancee plan to be married this week at a private wedding ceremony at the Kennedy family’s Cape Cod compound. The 43-year-old Kennedy will wed New Jersey school teacher Amy Petitgout on Friday at what Kennedy’s spokeswoman says will be a small, intimate event. Kennedy is the son of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. He represented Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District as a Democrat for 16 years. Since leaving Congress in January Kennedy has been named a visiting fellow at Brown University and has campaigned to improve brain research....

Patrick Kennedy, the 43-year-old former Rhode Island congressman and son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, is engaged to be married to a New Jersey middle school teacher. Kennedy, a lifelong bachelor, got engaged Saturday in Rhode Island to Amy Petitgout, former aide Sean Richardson said Monday. No wedding date has been set.

Another round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released. Fittingly, in Kennedy’s case, they once again raise all sorts of questions, from the moral to the political to issues of national security.

A California parole board has denied parole for Robert F. Kennedy’s convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. The decision came Wednesday after a hearing before a California parole board at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.

The late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s son, Ted Jr., is among the names being floated as potential candidates for Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s seat in 2012. Kennedy, the middle child of the late senator and his former wife, Joan, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Lieberman’s seat, which the 23-year senator is giving up when his term ends next year. One Kennedy family friend called the 49-year-old attorney, who lives in Connecticut, a “great candidate.” “No one knew Lieberman would be getting out. I think Teddy would be the odds-on favorite were he to enter the...

The departure of Patrick Kennedy, Congressman for Rhode Island, will leave the capital without a Kennedy for the first time in 64 years. The dynasty's sole remaining political office is held by Bobby Shriver, John F. Kennedy's nephew, who has a part-time city council seat in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kennedys have held congressional seats, the presidency and the public's imagination for more than 60 years. That era ends when Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island vacates his U.S. House seat next month, leaving a City Council post in California as Camelot's sole remaining political holding.

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable that both seats held by Kennedys could go Republican. But Scott Brown's January election in Mass paved the way for the GOP who are hoping state Rep. John J. Loughlin II will win the race for Patrick's House seat. "There is extreme voter unrest about the liberal, big-government, agenda that is bankrupting our nation," said Eric Fehrnstrom, the architect of Mr. Brown's win--now a strategist with Loughlin's campaign. "People are beginning to wake up to the fact that our country is on the brink of financial ruin and RI...

VINALHAVEN, Maine — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on. “In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.” Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. In one case in DeKalb County, Ill., at least 38 families...

It may not make for good conspiracy theory fodder, but a sunken Kennedy boat sure has a certain ring to it. River Maiden, a 59-foot steel boat registered to Max Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, sank into the north slip of Lake Michigan between Rainbow Beach and the Calumet River on June 12, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. It's still there.

The widow of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is being urged by prominent Democrats to run for the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Scott Brown. They believe that Victoria Reggie Kennedy has the best chance of any candidate to win the seat back in 2012, according to a report in The Washington Post. Though she has seemed to bat down the idea, Kennedy has been in some ways acting the part of a candidate. She has raised her public profile by campaigning for other politicians and appearing at events across the country.

The U.S. housing bust is hitting Camelot. The Barnstable Board of Assessors has cut this year’s taxable value of the Kennedy family’s famed Hyannisport compound to about $11.5 million - a $2.2 million drop from 2009. The 16 percent decline stems from a lower assessed value for the compound’s crown jewel: late family patriarch Joe Kennedy’s waterfront mansion, later occupied by late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Local officials cut the 7,400-square-foot home’s assessed value to $6.2 million, down from $9.6 million a year earlier. Values actually rose at the compound’s two other houses, which once belonged to John and Robert...

Top Secret Sen. Ted Kennedy Files To Be Released Family Given Permission To Review Files First BOSTON (CBS) ― The FBI kept a top secret file on the late Senator Ted Kennedy. There are thousands of pages in it. There could be a lot of material in there that would make tabloid editors salivate. The files are being released after media requests under the Freedom of Information Act, reports CBS station WBZ-TV. The FBI is ready to make 3,000 of those pages public, but before they do, the Kennedy family will see them first. The Globe reports that while the...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel lost his bid for a new trial in the 1975 slaying of his 15-year-old neighbor when the state Supreme Court on Monday rejected his appeal that cited a claim implicating two other men. The court ruled 4-1 against Skakel's request. Skakel - a nephew of Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel - was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison in 2002 for fatally beating Martha Moxley with a golf club in 1975 in a wealthy Connecticut suburb

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...

Vicki Reggie Kennedy said she felt "great joy" when House members passed the health care reform bill late Sunday night, and that it was a vote she knew her husband, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would have loved to have seen. "I think he would've been exhilarated. You know he was always a person about moving forward. You know, he would be thrilled and move forward," Kennedy said this morning on "Good Morning America." She also said that he knew President Obama would be the one to make it happen. "When he endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, it was...

<p>Washington (CNN) – As the House was debating the controversial health care bill Sunday, Vicki Kennedy visited Arlington National Cemetery where she said she "spent some time" with her husband. Arlington is the final resting place for Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who made health care reform his passion and lifelong goal.</p>