Posted on 07/30/2009 11:30:39 AM PDT by SkyPilot
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 Aug. 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," 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
And Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
I guess he’s getting the medal because he’s seriously ill, but it’s an outrage toward those who deserve it and those who have done so much to receive one.
Getting to be like the Academy Awards.
Just as Hollywood passes out awards to one another to honor the garbage they produce, politicians pass out awards to one another for the same reason. Thanks for the 12 trillion of debt Mr. Kennedy. You did a wonderful job.
It was Kennedy who, with Kerry, first broached the idea of obama running for president, almost immediately after his election to the senate. They saw him as a credible threat to the Clintons, whom Kennedy and Kerry despise. This is simple payback; there’s nothing else obama can give Kennedy, since he already has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Money won’t keep him alive; there are no political favors he can give him, so just make him a hero of the state.
These medals of freedom have never been worth much and have always been devalued through handing them out like candy from all of the administrations.
” The other recipients of the medal this year are: the 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; the 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.”
Lets see. Kennedy used Senator Tunney as a backchannel to the KGB in the early nineteen eighties to tell his Kremlin buddies that he and the Democrats could take care of Reagan. Kennedy supported the Marxists in Central America; was a Castro acolyte. Didn’t care if the Vietnamese were overrun by the Communists. Paid little attention to the Solidarity movement in Poland; supported and served as fundraiser for the IRA terrorists. Fought every major military development in the USA; tried to block “Star Wars”. Need I continue?
The total damage Ted Kennedy has done to America is worse than Osama bin Laden’s. I’d give him an award all right - a free pass to a Federal Penitentiary and a cell from which I’d lose the key in the river.
Ooops - I meant to throw this stone in the river and what do you know? - it was the key to Edeard Kennedy’s cell.
Oh well.
Is that his real name? Edeard?
If the recipients had never existed, would the world have noticed?
The shadow of corruption even manages to dim the luster of so great an award. Another prize tarnished by the politics around it.
(Edeard)
He was close. ‘w’ is just a slip of the finger away from ‘e’.
What a joke! He should be awarded a Medal of Entitlement.
That’s what happened. Maybe my fingers need a retrwad.
If only they would have given him the gold medal for swimming in the 1969 Chappaquiddickolympics this wouldn’t have been needed.
Did he buy this award too?
He bought the bullshit award he received from Harvard for $10 million. Harvard, the university he was expelled from for cheating in his Spanish class I believe.
When he kicks (excuse me “passes on”) expect a national period of mourning by the democrats and media.
Obama is starting the festivities early.
BTW I’ve still heard no confirmation that he’s paralyzed. Tight lid or false. He’s not been in the Senate I don’t think so it could very well be true.
And joy from the Right as this commie turd traitor meets God, Mary Jo and then Satan in that order. The Medal Of Freedom has just become completely meaningless, like the Nobel Prize.
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