Posted on 07/30/2009 9:54:55 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Obama to give Kennedy Medal of Freedom @ 12:30 pm by Hill Staff
President Obama will award Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) next month with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.
In announcing the award for Kennedy, a nine-term senator who is fighting brain cancer, the White House called him "one of the greatest lawmakers — and leaders — of our time."
The award comes as Democrats in Congress and Obama are pushing for healthcare reform legislation, which has long been Kennedy's top issue, the White House noted in its release.
"He has called health care reform the 'cause of his life,' and has championed nearly every health care bill enacted by Congress over the course of the last five decades," the White House said.
The medals will be awarded to Kennedy and 15 others during a White House ceremony August 12, when the Senate is expected to away for its August recess. Kennedy's office has yet to say whether he will attend.
Kennedy, in a statement, said he is "profoundly grateful" to receive the honor, first given to non-World War II veterans by his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
"My life has been committed to the ideal of public service which President Kennedy wanted the Medal of Freedom to represent," Sen. Kennedy said. "To receive it from another president who prizes that same ideal of service and inspires so many to serve is a great privilege that moves me deeply."
Kennedy, who continues to undergo cancer treatment, last voted in April and has been outside of Washington during negotiations on a healthcare reform bill. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) filled in for Kennedy as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which was the first committee to begin marking up health reform legislation this year. The Senate Finance Committee, the other panel with jurisdiction over health reform in the upper chamber, has yet to take up a bill.
The other recipients of the medal this year are: late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.); actor Sidney Poitier; tennis player Billie Jean King; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; physicist Stephen Hawking; former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery; cure for cancer advocate Nancy Goodman Brinker; late gay rights advocate Harvey Milk; former Ireland President Mary Robinson; Miami physician Pedro Jose Greer Jr.; Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief; human geneticist Janet Davison Rowley; anti-poverty activist Muhammad Yunus; and actress Chita Rivera.
"Each saw an imperfect world and set about improving it, often overcoming great obstacles along the way," Obama said.
Does the medal of freedom mean freedom from the health care plan the rest of the seniors will have to die along to?
You beat me to it.Darn it.
Mary Jo gets a headstone...
from one murderer to anoather murderer... ironic, isn’t it.
it should be a rope hanging from the gallows instead.
Gold plated scuba gear?
The Hero of Chappaquiddick gets a medal. How wonderful.
Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.
The Nobel Peace Prize, the Medal of Freedom— meaningless.
Kennedy's only obstacal was Mary Jo Kopechne.
I’m sure the medal will have “Commie Red Ribbon, wet with the sweat of American Workers. The actual medal will be a hubcap from an Oldsmobile.
He doesn’t have a fever, its the impending fires of Hell are nipping at his butte.
If the media will praise a drug addict pedophile, I can imagine how much praise this drunkard murderer will receive.
From one would-be totalitarian to another...
Medal of Freedom...for what exactly? Allowing our country to be overrun with people who are now bankrupting us with their demands for “free” services? Trying to pass off zerocare so the treasury won’t have to be burdened with sickly people anymore?
Our current government is a sick joke. I really miss Bush.
When it counted most of all he ran, and left a woman to die.
That’s uhh, quite a list there. Kind of speaks for itself.
At least it’s not the Red Cross Life Saving Badge.
The medal of freedom for not going to jail.
After all the Kennedys have historically been tight with the Chicago mob.
Shouldn't zer0 prove he IS President first by releasing his birth documents?
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