Free Republic

Mr. Schumer, who wants to be the next Senate majority leader, had worked on the 2007 push under his mentor and legendary deal maker, the late Ted Kennedy. “I called Schumer and said ‘Let’s get the band back together,’ ” says Mr. Graham. The Republican invokes the economic and moral arguments for immigration but emphasizes the political one. If the GOP brand with minorities doesn’t improve, the party won’t get out of an “electoral death spiral.” “After the 2012 election,” he says, “my worst fears were being realized.” Of the sponsors, only Mr. Graham faces an imminent election. He says...

EXCLUSIVE - 'She couldn't wait and allowed him to seduce her in a creaky French elevator': Bombshell book reveals Jackie Kennedy's secret lovers, her revenge on JFK with William Holden, her steamy night with Brando and her forbidden affairs with Bobby AND Teddy New book reveals that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a passionate woman who had many men--before, during and after her marriage to JFK Authors say she bedded Hollywood actors Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra, among others Confessed Brando, 'She took matters into her own hands and popped the magic question, ‘Would you like to...

Hillary Rodham Clinton brings a quarter-century of public service to her potential presidential campaign, but it’s her most recent job as secretary of state for President Obama — overseeing relations with Russia, handling the terrorist attack in Benghazi and negotiating over the war on terrorism — that could come back to haunt her. Many of Mr. Obama’s current political problems also could affect Mrs. Clinton, including the handling of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the decision not to slap the terrorist label on Boko Haram, a group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls last month. Even the Keystone XL...

BRANFORD -- There's a new keeper of the Kennedy flame. Ted Kennedy Jr. -- cloaking himself in the legacy of his father and uncles, from their familiar cadence to their crusade for social justice to their wavy hair -- finally acquiesced Tuesday to the overtures of Democrats who have long tried to lure the advocate for the disabled into running for office. The 52-year-old lawyer from Branford launched his candidacy for state Senate during a rally in his hometown, where retiring incumbent Edward Meyer introduced Kennedy as his heir apparent in what could become the most-watched race ever for the...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Ted Kennedy Jr. is planning to run for the state Senate in Connecticut. Two people briefed on the decision say the son of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts will announce Tuesday that he intends to seek the Democratic nomination for the state's 12th District. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Kennedy wants to make the announcement. Kennedy is a 52-year-old health care lawyer who lives in Branford, a coastal town outside New Haven, and has been mentioned as a possible political candidate for years. He had said last month he was considering...

Even for Greenpeace, a group known for turning high-seas drama into political statement, the foray into the Nantucket Sound wind farm debate has played like perfect theater. Take, for instance, the picture-postcard morning of Aug. 17, when a pair of Greenpeace motorboats surrounded a schooner crammed with wind farm opponents, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It was a made-for-TV face-off that, indeed, was reported on the national news that night. But for Greenpeace, a $360 million organization that spends about $3.3 million each year on U.S. campaigns, ongoing efforts for the Cape Wind project transcend interrupting a Kennedy sail. Today,...

January 9, 2014 Understanding the Benghazi/Chappaquiddick connection Chris Adamo On July 18, 1969, while most Americans were feverishly devouring the unfolding events of America's first manned moon landing, the late Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy was doing what cretins typically do. He was tooling around in the backwaters of coastal Massachusetts with Mary Jo Kopechne, a young political aid, who was not his wife. This was after throwing a reunion party for the "Boiler Room Girls" a group of women (including Kopechne) who had participated in the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy. Most of the tragic events that followed are well...

In the early morning hours of July 19, 1969, a black Oldsmobile sedan turned down a narrow dirt road and careened away in a cloud of dust. As the car approached a wooden bridge that sat at an oblique angle to the road, it failed to slow. Too late, the driver realized his error. The car dropped over the side of the bridge, turned over and plunged into the Poucha Pond. The driver escaped the overturned and water-filled car. A 28-year-old female passenger did not. What followed doomed the Presidential aspirations of 37-year-old Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy. Only Kennedy...

It was a wreck so devastating that at first investigators thought two cars had been involved. The gray Infiniti G35 hit a tree in the center median at a speed that split the car in half. It landed in separate pieces on the road. The driver, Abdulrahman Alyahyan, did not have a California license, according to DMV spokesman Artemio Armenta. … Alyahyan visited the DMV twice – most recently in February – and both times was rejected for a learner's permit, the spokesman said…. Alyahyan came from Saudi Arabia four years ago, and was not able to prove he was...

White, non-Hispanic kids will no longer make up the majority of America's youth in just five to six years, according to Census Bureau projections released Wednesday. Those projections, which include four different scenarios for population growth, estimate that today's minority ethnic groups will soon account for at least half of the under-18 population, either in 2018 or 2019. "This is going to start from the bottom of the age distribution and move its way up," said William Frey, demographer and senior fellow for the Brookings Institution. "All of these projections show we're moving to greater diversity in the United States."...

DARTMOUTH — A lawyer and former high-ranking Capitol Hill aide may face criminal charges after police say he left a state rep with a collapsed lung and possible broken ribs in a dust-up outside a youth basketball camp that apparently started over a state job. Dartmouth police say they’ve filed a criminal complaint in New Bedford District Court seeking a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon against David Oliveira, a former lobbyist and aide to the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and former U.S. Rep. John Olver. Oliveira, 44, pushed and “lunged” at state Rep. Christopher...

“This is Scott Brown’s full Palin.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell used his “Rewrite” segment Monday night to pay tribute to Scott Brown‘s political career, which he deemed dead today after the former Massachusetts senator and one-time GOP presidential prospect announced that he would be taking a job with Boston law firm Nixon Peabody. O’Donnell reviewed Brown’s short span in the political spotlight, from his unexpected ascent to Ted Kennedy‘s old Senate seat to his recent loss to Sen. Elizabeth Warren after a hard-fought and very expensive campaign. Since the election, Brown has taken a job as a Fox News contributor and...

Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world on Monday morning by announcing he would resign at the end of February. For Catholics, there was sorrow and there was gratitude for a Holy Father who taught with such distinction and worked with such care to safeguard the church's theological traditions. But there are those people who hate the Catholic Church, and they are ecstatic. Take documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, a man who clearly thinks he is holier than the Pope. He told the Daily Beast that Benedict is a "criminal." This helps explain why he's made a documentary for HBO, the...

As we look forward to a debate this year about immigration reform, I want to share my thoughts and my past experiences on this issue. I particularly want to share my personal experience from the 1980s amnesty law and how we can learn from that debate. But, before I dive into this history, I want to commend the many senators that are working together to forge a consensus and produce a product on this terribly difficult issue. I commend them for sitting down and agreeing to a set of principles. As Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, I expect to...

Most of us would be honored to have our name become a verb. Especially those of us in public life. But that is not how Judge Robert H. Bork got into the dictionary. He was "borked" when President Reagan nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. No sooner had the announcement been made by the White House on July 1, 1987, than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) raced to the Senate floor to denounce the distinguished judge and former Yale Law Professor. In Robert Bork's America, Kennedy roared, blacks would once again sit in the back of the bus, rogue...

Tucked inside the "fiscal cliff" deal is a provision repealing the CLASS Act, a giant unfunded mandate that was part of President Obama's health care law. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and was designed to create a program for long-term care for the functionally disabled. Mr. Obama halted the program, saying he couldn't find a way to make it cost-effective. But he had objected when Republicans tried to repeal it outright, saying he wanted to keep it on the books and try to amend it...

Judge Robert H. Bork, one of the the greatest jurists this country has ever produced, died early this morning from heart complications in a Virginia hospital near his home. He was 84. Bork was a national celebrity. Several years ago, my wife and I visited the Borks in Maine where they had taken a summer house off Somes Sound. I cannot count the times that total strangers would approach us at a lobster shack or park asking to shake the Judge’s hand and to assure him of their admiration and support. Bork’s celebrity was only partly conferred upon him by...

Law: A quarter of a century ago, a good and great man was slandered to maintain liberal judicial power. It was Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator, led the injustices committed against Judge Robert Bork. The Wednesday morning death of Bork, Ronald Reagan´s failed 1987 Supreme Court nominee, should make us think how much freer and better this country would be if Bork´s intellectual power and constitutional integrity had been present within the justices´ deliberations over the past 25 years. Had Reagan nominated Bork to replace retiring Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1986, when Republicans

No worries. She’ll only be a placeholder until someone from the next generation of Kennedy sub-mediocrity is ready to serve. The President has not made a choice on his next nominee for Secretary of State yet, but Governor Deval Patrick is already making plans to fill presumptive SecState nominee John Kerry’s Senate seat. Knowledgeable sources tell me Governor Patrick has already had a discussion with one potential replacement for Senator Kerry: Vicki Kennedy. The sources say the governor talked to Kennedy, the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy, about the possibility of replacing Kerry in the Senate and that she did...

I know that most of you fear that our nation is on the wrong course. But I pledge to you today that in my second term I'll stay the course and stick to the plan. There is no hope in change. During the 2008 election John McCain warned the nation (as many of us did) that a Barack Obama presidency would be the second term of Jimmy Carter; that it would be a rudderless administration unable to govern or lead misdirecting the country into economic distress, military and strategic decline and international turmoil. And so it has been. With 23...