Free Republic

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.

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...

Last week came the surprising letter from Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) urging Democratic leaders in the Massachusetts legislature to change state law and permit the governor to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate when and if it arises. Calling for a reversal of the law that Democratic legislators passed in '04 (when they took that very power to appoint from then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and mandated a "snap election" in five months) the ailing Kennedy appeared to recognize his own mortality. What has followed is an onslaught of press speculation of what will happen in the likelihood that Massachusetts...

Kennedy wants the Legislature to upend the succession law it passed in 2004, when - at his urging - it stripped away the governor’s longstanding power to temporarily fill a Senate vacancy. Back then, John Kerry was a presidential candidate and Republican Mitt Romney was governor; Kennedy lobbied state Democrats to change the law so that Romney couldn’t name Kerry’s successor. They followed his advice with gusto. When the final vote took place, the Boston Globe reported, “hooting and hollering broke out on the usually staid House floor,’’ and House Speaker Thomas Finneran acknowledged candidly: “It’s a political deal. It’s...

Let us now consider the State House friends of Teddy Kennedy. OK, so the senior senator’s scheme to keep “his” Senate seat in the family is probably a non-starter. After all, it’s too late for Teddy to provide the customary “gratuities” to the sleazy solons who in 2004 rolled over for him on the bill that took away the then-GOP governor’s ability to fill a vacant Senate seat. You know, the bill that Teddy demanded passage of, but which he now claims “concerns me deeply,” because it’s so, uh, undemocratic. What sort of reprobate reps would vote for such palpably...

Politics: Should the election law in Massachusetts be changed to keep Ted Kennedy's seat filled and get ObamaCare passed? As in Minnesota and Illinois, the voters might lose again.Recognizing his own mortality and waging a valiant battle against brain cancer, Kennedy has written a letter to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, state Senate President Theresa Murray and state House Speaker Robert DeLeo asking them to change the law so his seat might be filled immediately until a special election could be held. His letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Boston Globe, does not specially mention his illness or...

Back in 2004 John Kerry, the Junior Senator from Massachusetts, was the Presidential candidate for the Democratic party. If he were to be elected, Massachusetts law dictates that the governor would appoint someone to fill out the rest of Kerry's term. Back then the Governor was a Republican, Mitt Romney, who would have certainly filled the seat with a Republican. Senator Ted Kennedy did not want that to happen so he urged the state legislature to change the law. The new law leaves the seat vacant empty until a special election is held. But Senator Kennedy, who is losing his...

I have no ill will toward Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. I respect and admire his long service, but is it too indelicate to ask if Kennedy is so concerned about continuity of representation in the U.S. Senate, why hasn’t he resigned to allow an orderly election to take place? The law defines a vacancy as occurring upon the filing of a letter of resignation, including a resignation not effective until a future date. And why, on this important matter of principle, didn’t he stand with Mitt Romney in 2004 when Democrats changed the law to deny the Republican governor the...

No, no, a thousand times no to this last Kennedy play. Here’s what this naked political ploy boils down to: Sen. Ted Kennedy is basically asking the Massachusetts Legislature to repeal a law that he personally pushed through that very same Legislature in 2004. He would gut his own law in order to give a very unpopular governor the right to appoint a rubberstamp who might - might - provide the 60th vote in the Senate to ram through this Obama-care monstrosity that is vehemently opposed by an ever-growing majority of the American people. Democracy in Massachusetts - you can...