Posted on 03/23/2010 3:49:45 PM PDT by mdittmar
Before signing his landmark health care legislation today, President Obama took a moment to remember the late Sen. Ted Kenney (D-Mass.), a lifelong champion for universal health care.
"He was confident that we would do the right thing," the president said.
And so, after signing the comprehensive health care overhaul, Mr. Obama gave Kennedy's widow, Vicki Kennedy, one of the pens with which he signed the historic legislation.
In all, Mr. Obama used 22 pens to sign the bill into law. It is standard procedure for the president to use multiple pens for such legislation and give them as keepsakes to the people he wants to thank.
Two of the pens used today will go to the National Archives. Besides Kennedy and Mr. Obama himself, those who received a pen include: Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Max Baucus, Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Reps. Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn, George Miller, Henry Waxman, Sander Levin, John Dingell and Charles Rangell; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle; the president's legislative affairs assistant Phil Schiliro; and Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association.
The president also showed special thanks to the late Ted Kennedy by wearing a blue "Tedstrong" bracelet (visible in the picture above), similar to cyclist Lance Armstrong's yellow "LiveStrong" bracelets, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs noted on Twitter.
On Monday morning, Kennedy's youngest son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), visited his father's gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery and left a hand-written note that read: "Dad, the unfinished business is done," the Washington Post reports.
Ted who?
>>Ted Kennedy Remembered on Day of Health Care Bill Signing,
Me too...I “remember” him as a drunk, traitor and a POS SCUMBAG.
Ted Kennedy (D-HELL) was remembered by me today in the same fashion as I always remember him...
Pants on the Ground,
Pants on the Ground,
drunken killer,
Pants on the Ground.
Who’s Ted?
We offer prayers for Mary Jo.
Do you mean Christopher Dodd and a Kennedy went to a resturant and sandwiched a waitress for Ted?
A lack of socialized medicine didn’t kill Mary Jo.
Wouldn’t the day prohibition ended be more appropriate? Or perhaps St Patty’s Day?
If there’s a more appropriate six-foot-under symbol for the end of freedom in the United States of America, I don’t know who it would be.
Kudos Teddy .. you’ve been alcohol free for 7 months now.
Maybe he could have used it for drawing pictures of murdered babies.
Mary Jo Kopechne
Birth: Jul. 26, 1940
Death: Jul. 19, 1969
Teacher and Administrator, she is most remembered for her controversial death in an automobile accident with Senator Edward Kennedy; the resulting political scandal caused Kennedy to reverse his decision to run for the US Presidency. Born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, she was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph and Gwen Kopechne. After graduating from Caldwell College, New Jersey, she taught at Montgomery Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and then moved to Washington DC to work as a secretary for Florida Senator George Smathers. Shortly afterwards, she went to work as a secretary for New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his election in 1964. After Senator Robert F. Kennedy's death in 1968, she moved to Matt Reese Associates, a Washington DC firm that helped politicians establish campaign headquarters, and it was there she met Senator Edward Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's younger brother.
On the evening of July 18, 1969, she attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in honor of the "Boiler Room Girls," a name given to the six young women who had helped the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign, and who had closed up his files after his assassination in June 1968. All six of the women were single, and the six men in attendance were all married but present without their wives, and the attendees gathered for a late night party at the Lawrence Cottage, rented by Joe Gargan for the occasion.
Late that evening (the exact time is in dispute), Kennedy offered to drive Kopechne back to her hotel at the Katama Shores Motor Inn in Edgartown, and later claimed that he mistakenly took a wrong, right turn onto Dyke Road, a dirt road leading to a beach about a mile down the road, instead of turning left onto the paved Chappaquiddick Road leading to the ferryboat which they would need to use to go to Kopechne's motel.
A half-mile down Dyke Road, Kennedy drove off the side of the Dyke Bridge, and the car overturned into Poucha Pond. Kennedy got out of the overturned car, but Kopechne failed to exit the car and died. Kopechne's body was recovered later that morning; the diver reporting that Kopechne had positioned herself near the back seat wheel well where an air pocket had formed, and had apparently suffocated rather than drowned. Her parents ruled out an autopsy, so the cause of death was never officially determined.
Senator Kennedy later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, for which he received a two-month suspended sentence and one year probation. Kopechne's death and Kennedy's failure to properly deal with the accident, along with numerous discrepancies in his account of what happened, damaged his reputation and is regarded by many as the major reason that he decided to cancel his run for the presidency in 1972 and subsequent years.
Kopechne's funeral was held on July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and she was buried in the parish cemetery there.
(bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson)
Burial:
Saint Vincents Cemetery
Larksville
Luzerne County
Pennsylvania, USA
The new family tombstone, erected after the death of Mary Jo's mother in December, 2007.
Added by: Geoff Wilson, 9/04/2008
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4569
______________________________________________
Chappaquiddick:
"On Friday night July 18, 1969 around midnight a married man, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was driving his oldsmobile on the island of Chappaquiddick with a single woman named Mary Jo Kopechne aboard when he, allegedly drunk, drove the car off a bridge and into a pond. He was leaving a party attended only by five married men and six unmarried women. Kennedy escaped the car and swam to shore. Mary Jo Kopechne was not quite so lucky. She died in the car, in the water.
Kennedy failed to even contact the police for a full nine hours, after he was told the car and body had been found.
The Kennedy family chartered a plane to immediately fly the victim's body to her hometown, Wilkes-Barre. No autopsy was conducted.
http://www.politicaldogs.org/2005/09/moral-compass.htm
_____________________________________________________
Ted "Water Dog" Kennedy...
Kennedy 'joked about Chappaquiddick'
Biographer reveals deadly incident was a 'favorite topic of humor'
August 28, 2009
"Edward Klein, speaking to WAMU guest host Katty Kay, said one of Kennedy's 'favorite topics of humor was, indeed, Chappaquiddick.'
"He would ask people, 'Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?' said Klein, a former Newsweek foreign editor and former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine."
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108256
_____________________________________________________
YouTube video: Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick?
"This isn't an accusation from Ted Kennedy's political opponents, but a nostalgic remembrance by one of his friends. Ed Klein, former Newsweek editor, tells the Diane Rehm Show:
"I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick? That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too."
Thank you for your PERFECT collage - it was just exactly what I was thinking of.
teddy denied mary jo ANY health care.....thus ensuring her death.
What did they do to remind people that Teddy’s watching? Roast a pig on a spit in the basement?
Ded Kennedy (D-Hell)
Ted would be denied treatment if he was a normal citizen under Zer0care. His Quality-Adjusted Life Years score would bee too low for sch expensive treatment. Which brings up my question: If you can be denied treatment, what good is the insurance?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.