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Bay State Republicans yesterday all but dared Gov. Deval Patrick to name former Gov. Michael Dukakis as an interim senator - saying the move would yoke the plummeting incumbent to the disastrous Democratic regime of the bad old Taxachusetts era. “Go ahead - make my day,” said Christy Mihos, a GOP businessman challenging Patrick for the Corner Office. “Politically I hope they do this. It will give us another arrow in our quiver to show them for what they are.” Beacon Hill lawmakers are expected to pass a measure allowing Patrick to choose a temporary replacement for the late U.S....

ORALANDO, September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In addition to his announcement that he is considering a run for President in 2012, former US Senator Rick Santorum gave his assessment of the controversy around the Ted Kennedy funeral during his speech to the Catholic Leadership Conference last week. Santorum's talk focused on rejuvenating the Catholic Church in the United States.During his speech Santorum lamented "what the Church allowed to happen" with the Kennedy funeral, referring to it as a "deification" of Kennedy.  "The damage done" to the Church, he said, "is profound.""We have Catholic politicians who have led this country astray, have led...

The Kennedy Funeral: Boston's Latest Scandal t | t | t | t by Phil Lawler, September 3, 2009   A week after the death of Ted Kennedy, the relevant question is not whether the Massachusetts Senator deserved a Catholic funeral, but whether he deserved a ceremony of public acclamation so grand and sweeping that it might, to the untutored observer, have seemed more like an informal canonization. We cannot know the state of Ted Kennedy's soul when he finally succumbed to brain cancer. We are told that he was visited regularly by a priest in his last days; we...

TORONTO, September 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The decision to permit a grandiose public funeral celebrating the life of  pro-abortion extremist Senator Ted Kennedy has caused a rift in the Catholic Church in North America.  Several prominent Catholic priests in the pro-life movement as well as other Catholic pro-life leaders criticized the decision, and advocated a more subdued private funeral instead.  Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley shot back Wednesday defending his actions with some fairly strong words for his critics.However, the war of words has escalated to new heights with the latest blogpost of Fr. Thomas Rosica, the President and CEO of...

Perhaps the most fitting tribute to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy came not from President Obama, who correctly called him one of the greatest senators in U.S. history, but from the man who lost last year's election: John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who was often the political polar opposite of his colleague from Massachusetts. Hours after Senator Kennedy lost his battle with a brain tumor late Tuesday, a tearful Mr. McCain called him the most effective member of the Senate - and nobody spoke to disagree. Both Mr. McCain and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) agreed that health-care reform would be...

NEW YORK - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy wrote in a memoir being published this month that he made terrible decisions after the 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, but said he was never romantically involved with her

<p>NEW YORK — In a posthumous memoir, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy writes of fear and remorse surrounding the fateful events on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, when his car accident left a woman dead.</p> <p>"True Compass" is to be published Sept. 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group. The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times.</p>

In case you missed it, Mark Steyn delivered a brilliant monologue at the beginning of the second hour of the Rush Limbaugh Show today (he was subbing while Rush is on vacation). The essence of which was that the leftist (and mainstream media) arguments that Teddy Kennedy's sins should be forgiven because he did so much for the common man was, essentially, a monarchical argument with no place in American society. (more)

You can bet your grandma's iron lung that under ObamaCare neither she nor you nor I will receive the end-of-life care provided to Kennedy... Democrats have proposed that health care reform legislation be named after Kennedy, to memorialize his voluminous efforts for nationalized health care. If so, conservatives should take note of another, darkly appropriate chapter of Kennedy's life and demand that any end-of-life provisions be called the Mary Jo Kopechne Rider.

EDGARTOWN, Mass. – Just a week after the death of semi-permanent Senate fixture Ted Kennedy, the so-called Lion of the Senate has garnered a touching posthumous honor in his home state. Chappaquiddick’s picturesque Dike Bridge, where, in a less-than-lionhearted moment in 1969, Kennedy drove a young courtesan to her watery death, is to be rechristened in his name, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) confirmed today ...

FOX25’s video that purportedly shows JFK’s granddaughter Rose Kennedy Schlossberg flipping off the media during the Ted Kennedy motorcade has hit YouTube. The 38-second clip shows a 20-something girl, who appears to be Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg’s daughter Rose, giving the middle finger to the media as she drives by them in a limo during the procession from the Cape to the Kennedy Library. Apparently, the young lady believed the not-so-subtle salute would be invisible from behind the car’s tinted window. Very classy. . . .

There are consequences when we forgive the depraved. America has duly performed its solemn rituals to mark the passing of Ted Kennedy -- the pompous displays, the airy speeches, the pseudo-dignified deference to the dead. What we ought to reflect upon, with equal solemnity, is what America's legitimization and ultimate acceptance of such a man portends for ourselves. The tale of Chappaquiddick has, of course, been told and retold. But what Ted Kennedy did to Mary Jo Kopechne that summer night in 1969 is so depraved that the story bears repetition. Put aside the debauchery of the party Kennedy attended...

If we'd had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months. Special programs every night devoted to nothing but pundits bickering over the depths of the 37-year-old Kennedy's responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, 28. Town-hall-style chat shows every afternoon in which ordinary Americans issued their verdicts and sentences before the evidence was in.

The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known. What is known is that at the end of the evening, Mary Jo Kopechne was found dead in a car that Edward (Ted) Kennedy had been driving. Was her death the result of a tragic accident or due to gross negligence on the part of Ted Kennedy? Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne attended the same party on the evening of July 18, 1969. Kennedy left the party with Kopechne as a passenger in his car and accidentally drove off the road...

It was just one line at the end of a segment. But it spoke volumes about the way a media willing to look the other way saved Ted Kennedy's political career at the time of Chappaquiddick. Jim Pinkerton made the observation on yesterday's Fox News Watch at the very end of the segment on the media's treatment of Kennedy's death. View video here.

In all the obits published and specials aired this week, Chappaquiddick gets a few paragraphs, a few minutes, a tidy recapping of the events of July 19, 1969: The married Ted Kennedy, driving late at night with young campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne, pitches off a bridge and into the water below. He escapes; she drowns. He does not report the accident for 10 hours. He pleads guilty and gets a suspended sentence, two months in jail. In most of these narratives, Chappaquiddick is told as Ted's tragedy, the thing that kept him from ever becoming president. And in these...

After Ted Kennedy was elected for the first time, at age 30, his home state sent him back to the Senate eight times, all but once by unassailable margins. Here in Massachusetts, people understood him and wanted him on their side – and it wasn't just because of his the name. It was the accent that was as much Boston as Brahmin. It was his collection of imperfections and failings trumped most of the time by his stubbornness, real passion and just plain will. And there was something else about him that made him an untouchable here: He came from...

Click on link to watch; actually mostly audio. From 1994, Howie Carr, then with WHDH AM 850 talks with John Farrar who discovered Mary Jo Kopechne's body. He was pressured not to talk about his discoveries. excerpt: Howie Carr: John let me just get this straight..your belief is that while Ted Kennedy was walking past all these houses back towards the "party house" where we're broadcasting from now, Mary Jo was still alive. Farrar: Uh, that is correct. Carr: And she would have been alive probably for about an hour, do you think. Farrar: I think that's most reasonable--an hour...

Mark Steyn: Things only a Kennedy could get away with And by not calling his bluff on Chappaquiddick, Americans became complicit in it. We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a...

I've made a decision. After thoughtful reflection I've come to the conclusion that my life can have no greater purpose than to sacrifice it for the sake of another. But this sacrifice cannot be for some Jack Nobody. No, I am looking to lay my life down for a very specific type of person. If you are a young person of privilege, perhaps the black sheep of your family, and have an alarming drinking problem and been thrown out of an ivy league university, you might be the person I am looking for! Oh, quick question, were you a legacy...

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...

Two kinds of people reacted to news of Ted Kennedy’s death last week. The first — not all liberals, either — spoke of Kennedy’s hard work in the United States Senate, his dream of universal healthcare, his commitment to working people, civil rights and equality. This “most imperfect man,” wrote analyst William Bradley, was also a powerful advocate for progressive principles. Barack Obama predictably (though accurately) observed that “for America, he was a defender of a dream.” In another variation on the visionary theme, Joe Biden said of his old friend, “He was never small.” The other kind of reaction...

The late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) had requested that he be buried at sea. While such requests normally are honored, this one was vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The key sticking point was the Senators request that his “coffin” be a “1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.” Those familiar with the Chappaquiddick incident may recognize this as the car that the Senator drove off a bridge in 1969 on the way to an extramarital tryst with a young campaign volunteer named Mary Jo Kopechne in the car with him. Ms. Kopechne was trapped in the submerged car for several hours...

I finally figured out why Ted Kennedy wants to have Governor Devoid Patrickakis appoint someone to replace him - Ted is staying in Florida. Ted has been in Florida since he collapsed at an Obama inauguration dinner many months ago. Like his dear mother Rose, Teddy wants to establish Florida as his primary residence in order to avoid those massive estate taxes and dreaded Massachusetts income taxes. This is important because Teddy has a new book coming out and he wants the income from that book to be declared tax free in Florida - not Taxachusetts. The same way we...

Didn't see this.

Reviewer: "One has to feel amazed, reading this book, at how PROUD the people of Massachusetts must be of their esteemed senior US senator. First, he was eminently generous to host a party for six young women who had all toiled so hard to assist with his family's politics. You have to know that lower-level campaign workers of their age rarely receive attention from the more powerful folks in the political apparatus. The girls must have been utterly thrilled, to have been asked to a cook-out and get to mingle with all of those seasoned, powerful men. Edward Kennedy was...

There are some of you out there who don’t understand why we’ve detested Senator Edward Moore Kennedy since childhood — even though we grew up in Democratic households, where our families always voted the party line, and pictures of Jack and Jackie, Franklin and Eleanor, and Bill and Hillary hung proudly on our walls (Jimmy Carter was always a known anti-semite embarrassment to us, whose single term was best forgotten). But, whenever Ted Kennedy’s name was said by anyone on television, or Heaven forbid someone in the house, the room would grow quiet and more than one of the older...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation — or, at any rate, its “mainstream” media culture — declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s passing, America’s TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there’s a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it. In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo...

What the heck, let's start with a limerick from my top five. This was the most difficult one to compose that I ever did. Scary choices, on that you can bank To not face them, your Lord you can thank Would you rather be stuck On a bridge in Ted's truck Or a closet with Congressman Frank? YOUTUBE - Ted Kennedy, Chappaquiddick Lifeguard Skip to comments.DFU SONG: Surrey with the Fringe on Top (Ted Kennedy, happy Chappaquiddick anniversary)DFU SONGS | 7-2004 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland Posted on 07/03/2004 5:00:40 PM PDT by doug from upland MIDI - SURREY WITH...

Somehow, the fact that she recognizes Chappaquiddick as “unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable” only makes it worse. It’s come to this: Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts”...

We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy's life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a...

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 dont 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. Its not that he didnt 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,...

On the day of Senator Kennedy's death, this site published an article about the Democrats exploiting the Senator's death to push Obamacare. The title of the article, "Lets Kill Grandma for Teddy Kennedy," was met with some derision as some readers felt that it did not pay proper respect for the dead. The gallows humor sometimes displayed on this site is nothing compared to what the Senator used himself. Apparently one of his favorite humor subjects was Chappaquiddick, the incident 40 years ago where the Senator drove off a bridge, saved himself and allowed a young woman to die in...

Kennedy Friend Recalls How Much He Loved to Joke About Chappaquiddick http://www.breitbart.tv/kennedy-friend-recalls-how-much-he-loved-to-joke-about-chappaquiddick/

From Kennedy’s close friend Ed Klein: 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. Hear audio here

Ed Klein, former editor for Newsweek and New York Times Magazine, was a close personal friend of Ted Kennedy and decided to share some memories of the late Senator on The Diane Rehm Show. KLEIN: 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...

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end. He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived. Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne. Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969...

As long as we’re on the subject of humor this morning, what kind of jokes did the late Ted Kennedy like to tell his closest friends? One of Kennedy’s close friends, former editor of Newsweek and New York Times Magazine Ed Klein, tells the Diane Rehm Show that Chappaquiddick jokes were high up on the list

New York Times Magazine's Ed Klein: "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."

"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."

Here are two poll questions about Ted Kennedy the swimmer.What is your overall feeling about Kennedy?How important is Chappaquiddick to Kennedy's legacy?(Aug. 26) He looks bad already, but I sure would like to see him look a lot worse still. The guy deserves as much respect as he gave Mary Jo on that late night in 69 when he allowed her to die instead of trying to rescue her.If obituaries were written based on Google Trends results, Chappaquiddick would be in the first paragraph of Sen. Ted Kennedy's obituary. "Chappaquiddick" and other search terms related to the car accident on...

Political figures are said to be remembered in one line. George Washington was the father of his country. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot. Ted Kennedy let a woman die at Chappaquiddick and tried to cover it up. If obituaries rightly remember the Massachusetts solon as America's third longest serving senator, they do history a disservice by downplaying why he served so long in the Senate and not a day in the White House.

The real-life Mayor Quimby and America’s answer to Boris Yeltsin, Senator Edward “Ted”, “Teddy”, “Somebody Tell That Drunk Guy To Put Some Clothes On and Get Out of My Restaurant”, Kennedy is dead. Edward Moore Kennedy’s place in the hierarchy of great Kennedy men might have been foreshadowed at his birth when his father chose to name him after the family chauffeur, and he most likely would not have risen as fast in politics or remained out of incarceration for as long had he not been to the oyster house born. That said, what he lacked in the ability to...

On this message board a poster started this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529543 and was threatened with being suspended from the message board for posting it. Then she went to discuss this in the section dedicated to discussing moderator actions and she was threatened with being banned. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529547 Then after that another poster defended her: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529549 and a bunch of posters complained they rescinded the warning violation order but said that her thread wouldn't be reopened and not allowed to be posted because it was posted in the wrong subcategory. So she posted it into a different subcategory: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529558 and a bunch of...

The following is an edited and abbreviated transcript of Edward Kennedy's statement following the Chappaquiddick controversy: There is no truth, no truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or any other occasion — and the same is true of the other girls at that party — that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character. Nor was I driving under...

...evidence from the inquest suggested that she survived for hours due to a air pocket. If only Teddy would have called the police, had called for any kind of help, she might have survived...

Vote on Lower left

Forty years ago last month, Sen Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge in Chappaquiddick after a day's sailing and hard drinking with a group of married friends and young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign. As the car turned over and sank in Pocha Pond, a tidal lagoon, its driver managed to swim to the surface, leaving his 28-year-old companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown in the car.

Ailing Senator Robert Byrd, one of only two to have served longer than Kennedy, suggests in an emotional statement renaming the pending health care legislation for the late Massachusetts Senator: "In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American."

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