Free Republic

NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- There's only one question Rep. Patrick Kennedy really answers this campaign. It came up at an ice cream social. It's raised on the street. He even hears it in bedrock Democratic neighborhoods. "How are you feeling?" asked a white-haired woman at a high-rise for the elderly. "I've never felt better," he said. "One day at a time." It's an answer some people - let alone politicians under intense media scrutiny - couldn't give after the year he's had: checking himself into a rehabilitation center, crashing his car at 3 a.m. into a security barrier outside the...

How, I wonder, did it come to pass that we’ve become a tabloid society? I’m not just referring to those junky scandal sheets they peddle at supermarket checkout stands. They’re just a small part of it, the tip of a sleazy iceberg. In the wake of Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s traffic accident, I was reminded once again what a glutton for soap opera melodramas we’ve become. Kennedy, who has a long record of problems with alcohol and cocaine, fesses up to the fact that he was stoned out of his skull when he got behind the wheel of his car, and...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy said Monday he was feeling good after nearly a month in drug rehabilitation and was looking forward to getting back to work. "I can tell you today, I feel confident about my health, positive about my future, and passionate about my work representing the people of Rhode Island," the Rhode Island Democrat said in a speech at Brown University on the future of mental health care and addiction treatment. It was his first public appearance since being released Friday from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The six-term congressman checked into the clinic...