Free Republic

Despite copious evidence to back up the connection, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney has yet to admit the link between the Massachusetts health care overhaul he signed into law as governor and the federal overhaul President Obama passed last year. You can understand why he's declined: Given that Romney is running as an establishment conservative for the Republican nomination, the friendly connection to the rival party's leader and his most prominent policy achievement would be, well, kind of awkward. But when the Massachusetts law first took effect, Romney did praise a different prominent liberal collaborator as one of the law's "parents"...

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...

The tea party's terrorist tactics By: William Yeomans July 29, 2011 08:22 AM EDT It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House “hostage takers.” But they have now become full-blown terrorists. They have joined the villains of American history who have been sufficiently craven to inflict massive harm on innocent victims to achieve their political goals. A strong America has always stood firm in the face of terrorism. That tradition is in jeopardy, as Congress and President Barack careen toward an uncertain outcome in the tea party- manufactured debt crisis. As we stumble closer to...

The Kennedys fought with the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Hoffa, and Robert Bork over the duration of thirteen presidential administrations. Now that no Kennedy holds political office in Washington, they're fighting each other. The family feud involves two iconic landmarks: the Kennedy Cape Cod compound and the John F. Kennedy Library overlooking Dorchester Bay. In Hyannis Port, Ted Kennedy's heirs prepare to transform the waterfront mansion the family has owned for 85 years into a retreat for thinkers and politicians contemplating public policy. The compound where early movie-mogul Joe Kennedy screened films for starlet Gloria Swanson, where the brood...

History: President Salvador Allende of Chile really did commit suicide in 1973, an inquest concluded on Tuesday. Now will the Left stop saying the U.S. and Chile's army did him in? Except perhaps for Che Guevara, no one has quite been the heroic totem to the global left than the late Marxist president of Chile, whose death in 1973 made him a martyr to socialism. Allende seemingly legitimized socialism as a democratically elected leader, the first Marxist who in 1970 didn't shoot his way to power.That gave the left hope for more. Elected with just 36% of the vote in...

DEVELOPING: NEW CASTLE, Del. -- Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner. Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl's home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl's mother about the daughter's contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later. A FoxNews.com reporter was at the home when the police arrived. The girl, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, told FoxNews.com, "I'm...

Sen. Chuck Schumer refused to answer questions Monday evening about the Twitter scandal that has ensnared Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), his one-time congressional aide. But in a statement, the powerful Democratic senator said he was "deeply pained and saddened" about the married congressman's admission at a New York news conference Monday that he carried on lewd online conversations with at least half a dozen women. "By fully explaining himself, apologizing to all he hurt and taking full responsibility for his wrongful actions, Anthony did the right thing," Schumer said. "He remains a talented and committed public servant, and I pray...

Candidates lob shots during convention Open season on Scott Brown officially kicked off yesterday with five of the six Democratic candidates seeking to reclaim the “people’s seat” training their sights and barbs squarely on the freshman U.S. senator during speeches at their party’s state convention in Lowell. “When Ted Kennedy went behind closed doors with lawmakers and lobbyists, he always fought for us,” Bob Massie, the nonprofit executive who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1994, told some 3,000 Democratic delegates gathered on the floor of Tsongas Center. “When Scott Brown goes behind closed door with lawmakers and lobbyists and...

"I swear that I am not making this up." Dave Barry

A groundbreaking ceremony has been slated for early next month for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Dorchester. The ceremony is to be held at the future site of the institute, next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, a statement from the institute said.

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

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 federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals. Edwin Wilson was convicted in Houston in 1983 of smuggling arms to Libya at a time when the threat of Libyan terrorism was major news. Congress was mounting investigations into controversial CIA activities around the globe, and CIA administrators were actively trying to deflect criticism. Wilson, now 75, has been in prison ever since, serving a 52-year sentence. His...

Last week at American Thinker (click here), I wrote on the latest declassified FBI files on Ted Kennedy. I looked at several intriguing claims, mainly based on Kennedy's July-August 1961 "familiarization tour" of Latin America. According to the file, Kennedy familiarized himself not only with the political/social life of the region -- reportedly attempting to "rent" an entire brothel -- but also with one of the most suspicious, notorious Cold War figures, Lauchlin Currie, FDR adviser and alleged Soviet agent. One item I didn't note, but want to deal with here, is an eye-opening March 2, 1967 memo. Written by...

An FBI file contends that a young Edward M. Kennedy arranged to rent a brothel for a night while visiting Chile in 1961, a year before he was elected to the Senate. The previously redacted State Department memo, dated Dec. 28, 1961, was released by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based organization that said it obtained it through a Freedom of Information lawsuit....

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy arranged to "rent" a brothel for a night while on a visit to Chile and other Latin American countries decades ago, according to a 1961 State Department memo obtained and published by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch released several documents said to be from Kennedy's FBI file. The group said it obtained a cleaner copy of the State Department memo after a mostly redacted version was made public earlier. The Dec. 28, 1961, memo described a tour of several Latin American countries Kennedy made while he was an assistant prosecutor with Suffolk County,...

After repeated attempts, Judicial Watch has managed to pry loose certain documents relating to Teddy Kennedy from the FBI. The FBI's original redactions plainly had nothing to do with national security, so the agency apparently was trying to protect Kennedy's reputation. The most entertaining documents relate to a trip Kennedy took to Latin America in 1961. He visited a number of countries, accompanied by his "political counselor." In each country, Kennedy met with prominent Communists or other left-wing leaders. The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico was outraged that Kennedy wanted to bring such people to the embassy--this was the heart of...

Late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy has been accused of renting an entire Chilean brothel and seeking meetings with communists who had left-wing views. The information came to light after a Freedom of Information request by Judicial Watch - the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption - who put pressure on the FBI to release the material. Their file on the late senator, who died from brain cancer in August 2009, was released but contained a large amount of blacked out information - until now. The statements previously withheld include accusations that during a tour of several Latin...

An explosive FBI file on the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy now reportedly reveals he “made arrangements to rent a brothel” in Chile in 1961 while on a swing through South America, according to newly released documents obtained by Judicial Watch. The documents in question, part of an expansive FBI file on the late Bay State senator, were originally redacted when released last year until Judicial Watch objected under the Freedom of Information Act, the organization stated in a press release. The new passages allege Kennedy was on a tour of Chile, Mexico and other surrounding countries while serving...