Free Republic

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy decided to abandon public office to focus on his personal life and family after watching his father die surrounded by loved ones, the 16-year congressman said in a wide-ranging magazine interview. Kennedy, who announced his decision not to seek re-election in a two-minute video clip, told Rhode Island Monthly he decided to let go of his House seat at Christmas after spending the fall reflecting on the death of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. “It’s pretty simple in this respect: I went through something that caused me a great deal of soul searching and self-reflection,” Kennedy...

Only 13 days separated the passing of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics, from the death of her brother Ted last week. But amid the wall-to-wall coverage and the stream of retrospectives for the senior senator from Massachusetts, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t the only famous Kennedy sibling to enter eternity this month. ... Liberalism’s most important legislator probably merited a more extended send-off than his sister. But there’s a sense in which his life’s work and Eunice’s deserve to be remembered together — for what their legacies had in common, and for what...

It may be months before Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat is filled, but it took only minutes Wednesday for the chatter to start over possible successors - among them his mourning widow, Victoria. The stakes are high. Kennedy's death now deprives Democrats of the 60-vote "supermajority" that the party could theoretically use to push through health care reform and other top item

A FAMILY battle is looming to succeed Edward Kennedy as senator and claim the leadership of America’s foremost political dynasty. While Kennedy, 77, the “liberal lion” of the Senate, is suffering from a brain tumour, jockeying has already begun between supporters of two possible candidates to replace him after his death. His wife Victoria, 55, a lawyer from a political family, is widely expected to run for his seat, which has a special place in family lore because it was held by JohnF Kennedy before he became president in 1961. However, former congressman Joe Kennedy, the eldest son of Robert...

Caroline Kennedy's swipe at a Senate seat in New York ended in debacle last week, and Governor David Paterson bore the brunt of the blame. With some reason: His dithering, ineptitude, and needless dissembling reminded New Yorkers of the squalid circumstances that had brought him to the governorship in the first place. But blame does not rest exclusively, or even primarily, with Paterson: The origins of this embarrassing spectacle may be traced to the influence of the late Joseph P. Kennedy--and to a lesser extent his wife, Rose. For whatever else that successful Boston speculator/whiskey impresario/philanderer/movie magnate and his wife...

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. didn't get the vacant Illinois Senate seat. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't get the Democratic presidential nomination, taking the job of secretary of state as a consolation prize. And Caroline Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo lost out to an obscure two-term upstate congresswoman for the New York Senate seat once held by Mrs. Clinton. Whatever happened to American democracy's traditional deference to political dynasties? Call it Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton fatigue syndrome, or perhaps the new Obama meritocracy, but some of the most famous names in U.S. politics have come up empty-handed in recent days. "I don't know how much...

Joe Kennedy announced yesterday he’s laying off 20 employees and temporarily halting most of his winter fuel-assistance programs due to Citgo yanking $100 million in support for the nonprofit Citizens Energy. Citgo, owned by the Venezuelan government led by leftist loudmouth president Hugo Chavez, recently informed Kennedy that it was “temporarily” suspending its oil donations for the low-income program.

Caroline Kennedy, you know, might need, you know, a speech coach, um, if she, you know, wants, um, to be a senator. Um, you know? Kennedy, who gave a flurry of media interviews on Friday and Saturday, revealed some cringing verbal tics that showed her inexperience as a speaker, experts told the Daily News. In a 30-minute session with The News on Saturday, Kennedy punctuated her answers with "you know" more than 200 times. "Um" was fairly constant, too.

With all the attention being focused on the Rod Blagojevich scandal involving the attempted selling of the U.S. senate seat vacancy by the Illinois governor, another senate vacancy seems to have been almost forgotten. That is the New York senate seat to be left vacant by Hillary Clinton who will soon become the Secretary of State. So who should New York governor David Paterson appoint to that senate seat? Washington Post writer Ruth Marcus provides excellent reasons why it shouldn't be Caroline Kennedy but then, absurdly, decides she needs to become a senator so as to fulfill the "girly" dream...

Sentimental New York Democrats were rooting for Governor Paterson to appoint Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate seat his father once held. But Kennedy’s not interested. “It was a heart-wrenching decision, and it occupied me throughout Thanksgiving with my family, with Teddy,” he says. “It’s not a good time for me to move to Washington, because I have a large and young family. They’re all in school.” That’s expensive—though not as pricey as holding on to the seat. “Against formidable opponents, most likely Peter King and possibly Rudy Giuliani, to defend the seat, I’m...

An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel - 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man - was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase. The footage appears to have been shot in the 1950s. When it came to light in the mid-'60s, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had his agents spend two weeks futilely trying to prove that Monroe's sex partner was either John F. Kennedy or Robert F....

Make no mistake about it: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, her husband will be her rogue co-president, causing constant chaos, crises and conflicts for her new administration. And sometimes, that will be exactly what Hillary wants. Chaos is Bill Clinton’s signature style and he’s not about to suddenly change. No way. Nor does Hillary necessarily want him to be a new Bill. In many ways, his divisive role in her campaign has been carefully crafted by Hillary and her team. It might come in useful in the White House, too. Throughout Hillary’s campaign, Bill has given us an unfortunate...

Ted and niece Caroline Kennedy turned back on long history with Clintons, including a sailing jaunt that included Bill, Hil and Ted and son Patrick in 1997. Et tu, Teddy? America's liberal icon Ted Kennedy tossed old chums Bill and Hillary Clinton overboard Monday, after plunging a knife into the former First Couple as he abandoned them in favor of alluring newcomer Barack Obama. "I am proud to stand here today and offer my help, my voice, my energy and my commitment to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States," Kennedy told a crowd of 5,500 at...

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama...

WASHINGTON -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama for president tomorrow, breaking his year-long neutrality to send a powerful signal of where the legendary Massachusetts Democrat sees the party going -- and who he thinks is best to lead it. Kennedy confidantes told the Globe today that the Bay State's senior senator will appear with Obama and Kennedy's niece, Caroline Kennedy, at a morning rally at American University in Washington tomorrow to announce his support. That will be a potentially significant boost for Obama as he heads into a series of critical primaries on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5....

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - John F. Kennedy would no doubt be horrified to see his nephew self-righteously shilling for a tin-horn communist dictator like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. JFK was a liberal on most domestic issues, but on foreign policy, he was an ardent anti-communist. Countless movies and documentaries have been made about Kennedy's shining moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was October 1962, when he forced Premier Nikita Khruschev to blink first and withdraw the Soviets’ nuclear-tipped missiles from Marxist dictator Fidel Castro’s Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida. Today, there is nothing at all bright about the way...

Dynasty takes hit as Joe K annulment nixed The Kennedy dynasty’s renowned clout with the Catholic Church was shaken yesterday by news that the Vatican overturned the annulment of former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II’s first marriage. But his former wife - victorious in winning the reversal - suggested that the famous clan was still receiving special treatment. “I understand he found out a while ago,” said former Kennedy wife Sheila Rauch, who was informed by the church last month, two years after the fact, that the Vatican’s top Romana Rota court reversed the stinging annulment that rendered invalid...

For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario. The screen legend Marilyn Monroe...the FBI report says she "expected to have her stomach pumped out and get sympathy for her suicide attempt", but it suggests she was left to die. Photo: Harold Lloyd/The Harold Lloyd Collection The screen legend Marilyn Monroe...the FBI report says she "expected to have her stomach pumped out and get sympathy for her suicide attempt", but it...

A man who implicated two friends in the 1975 murder that sent Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel to prison has refused to testify, prompting a prosecutor to accuse him of making up the account. Gitano (Tony) Bryant invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination at his deposition recently in Miami and does not plan to testify at hearings on whether Skakel deserves a new trial, said Joel Denaro, his lawyer. "What it strongly suggests to us is that Mr. Bryant's story is a fabrication and he is seeking to avoid testifying under oath for that reason," prosecutor Jonathan Benedict said. Skakel's lawyers...

Rhode Island Republicans have received piles of “hate mail” from supporters of U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, angry that the GOP has called for the troubled six-term congressman to step down. “This has clearly hit a raw nerve somewhere,” Rhode Island GOP spokesman Chuck Newton told the Herald.“We’ve received mountains of hate mail from all over.” Most of the letters and emails include angry and in some cases obscene tirades blasting party leaders for pushing for Kennedy’s ouster as a result of his legal troubles, Newton said. Republicans initially called for Kennedy to step down the day after he slammed...