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DECEMBER 15--The former office manager for the late Senator Ted Kennedy was indicted today on federal theft and fraud charges for allegedly pocketing more than $75,000 in unauthorized bonus payments over five years. Ngozi Pole, 39, was named today in a six-count felony indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (a copy of the charging document can be found below). According to prosecutors, Pole, pictured at right, was in charge of processing bonus payments approved by either Kennedy or his chief of staff. These payments, according to the indictment, came in two forms: a "holiday bonus" paid in...

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...

There will be no shortage of Kennedys this evening at President Barack Obama’s address on health care to a joint session of Congress. Vicki Kennedy, widow of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, is a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will host the late senator’s children, including Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Ted Kennedy Jr., and Kara Kennedy and her two children. The notable presence of Kennedy family members suggests the president will give a nod to the late senator in his speech this evening. Kennedy devoted much of his nearly five decade...

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...

Your head will explode when you read this. From NewsBusters: The Huffington Post explains that "Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press." So she's a major-media-certified pundit when she wrote about Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne on Arianna's pages today:Mary Jo wasn't a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan. She was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future....We don't...

Here is video of Laura Ingraham talking with talk show host Nancy Skinner about incredible comments made about Mary Jo Kopechne by a blog poster at Huffington Post. Kopechne died on July 19, 1969 when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy drove the car they were traveling in off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island where she drowned, even as he escaped a failed to call authorities for many hours. The poster actually seemed to suggest that perhaps Kopechne would have felt her death "was worth it" if she could see, what the writer characterized as the incredible career Ted Kennedy went...

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.

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.

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...

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...

Didn't see this.

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...

The Huffington Post explains that "Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press." So she's a major-media-certified pundit when she wrote about Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne on Arianna's pages today:

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...

Below is a small excerpt from a remarkable piece on Senator Kennedy by someone who, like me, spent many years in Massachusetts under the shadow of the Kennedy dynasty. It is a tribute to Kennedy from a liberal turned conservative, and the whole piece deserves to be read – no matter how you felt about the Senator. Nevertheless, its main point is that conservatives and moderates from every perspective should not put aside their opposition to the horrendous government health plans now making their way through Congress thinking it would be some sort of testimonial to Senator Kennedy. This would...

Ted Kennedy had an immeasurable impact on the American political landscape during his time in office and has been praised by feminists as a champion of women’s rights. But conservative women do not look upon Kennedy’s record with women as favorable because of the choices he made both in his political and in his personal life. Conservatives say that the left-wing feminist movement was pivotal in his approach towards women and women’s issues and destructive to the way he viewed women later on in his career. “Liberal feminists had a willful blind spot when it came to Ted Kennedy’s personal...

Back then the word “liberal” was associated with noble ideals. It involved having a concern for the poor and a bedrock belief that there were fundamental, inalienable human rights which must be recognized in the civil (positive) law because they were endowed by the Creator and revealed in the Natural Law. As the years have past, the word has changed in its meaning and that claim has been eroded. I still remember that he began his political career as a strong defender of the rights of children in the womb. For example, in 1971, Senator Kennedy described his strongly Pro-Life...

"After all is said and done, Ted Kennedy is still the man in American politics Republicans love to hate," Republican strategist Lee Atwater, himself the victim of brain cancer, observed in 1990. Though attitudes toward Senator Kennedy softened because of his illness, he remained a figure with few admirers who weren't also colleagues, constituents, or political fellow travelers. Kennedy votaries who dismiss criticisms of the late senator as the product of partisanship or ideological bitterness tell themselves a comforting lie. Scores of Democrats shared Kennedy's politics. None elicited the heated response in conservative direct mail, campaign ads, or red-meat speeches....

Democratic efforts to tie health reform to the memory of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., continued Thursday when President Obama's health secretary visited with senior citizens at what used to be the Kennedy Theatre in Washington, D.C. Sen. Ted Kennedy worked hard to pass health care reform legislation. "Hopefully, at every step of the way, people will ask themselves: 'What would Teddy do?' and move it forward," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "If people are truly interested in honoring his legacy," she added, "the best possible legacy is to pass health reform this year and get President Obama...

Liberalism lost its most reliable champion with the passing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy this week. The senator virtually defined American liberalism for his 47 years in public office and it is not easy to see who will step into his role. But before his body has even been laid to rest, some of his colleagues are hoping to use the senator's death to push through ObamaCare. Several senators have urged that legislation be named in Kennedy's honor in hopes that his Senate colleagues, including Republicans, be persuaded to pass a bill quickly. Universal health care was always Kennedy's passion...

"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."

HuffPo answers: We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.Who knows — maybe she'd feel it was worth it.

WILKES-BARRE – Sen. Ted Kennedy was well known in Northeastern Pennsylvania – from his involvement in the tragic July 1969 death of Edwardsville native Mary Jo Kopechne to his overwhelming margin of victory in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties in the April 1980 Pennsylvania Democratic primary Kennedy’s win here carried him to victory in the state primary over eventual Democratic presidential nominee, incumbent Jimmy Carter. Kennedy, the last surviving brother in a political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in U.S. history, died late Tuesday night at his home on Cape Cod, Mass., after a yearlong struggle with brain...

Susan Estrich worked for a number of years on the staff of Senator Ted Kennedy. Of course, she has some warm memories about working for him. However, in contrast to the almost uncritical lionization of Kennedy by such outlets as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times as well as by Evan Thomas of Newsweek, Estrich was able to look at her former boss, warts and all, in a surprisingly frank remembrance in her column. She did not attempt to bury his faults as you can see in this critique of his speaking style: The first time I wrote...

Ted is dead. My self-imposed 24 hour grace period, which the left would never give to George W. Bush or any other conservative, has ended. I was willing to leave Ted Kennedy be and let his family mourn on the day of his death. I will not sit back and let the media lionize his life. It is time to take the Ted to the (wood) shed. Not only was he a bad person, but he managed to make everybody around him worse. I will not let Chappaquiddick go. Liberals who chant that “Bush lied, people died,” apparently do not...

With Sen. Ted Kennedy dead at 77, the political iconographers on Wednesday were working feverishly, like alchemists over a fire. The Kennedy legacy has always been about American royalty and the appetites of kings and the use of myth, and that myth was always Camelot, those shining knights and the idealistic boy who drew the sword from the stone. With the death of the Massachusetts Democrat, finally, mercifully, let's let Camelot go. The iconographers on the political right, including some who call themselves Christians, were busy damning his soul to hell for walking away from that crash at Chappaquiddick 40...

You’d think President Bill Clinton would reminisce about Teddy during his visit in San Diego, wouldn’t you? That’s what we thought when we headed over to the San Diego Convention Center to hear Clinton speak at the National Business Travel Convention. But no go. President Clinton spoke about his role helping to free the journalists in North Korea, swine flu, and even talked about health care but made no mention of the "greatest Senator of our time" passing early Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was too close to his heart to mention. Perhaps the president known for being able to...

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's body will travel more than 70 miles from his Cape Cod home to Boston to lie in repose in a presidential library he helped develop in tribute to one of his slain brothers. Family members will attend a private Mass at Kennedy's Hyannis Port compound at noon Thursday, and the motorcade is scheduled to leave around an hour later. It will pass sites that were significant to the senator on the way to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where his body will lie in repose until Friday, a Senate...

Ted Kennedy’s polarizing political legacy was on full display on Wednesday as some U.S. conservatives showed little restraint in their hostility for the veteran liberal senator who died late Tuesday. Conservative talk radio hosts blasted away at the policies of Kennedy, a towering figure in the Democratic Party and a standard bearer of liberal causes who died at age 77 after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.Nationally syndicated talk show host Rush Limbaugh said the political left was “exploiting his death and his legacy� to advance Obama's agenda for healthcare reform, which was also one of Kennedy’s signature issues.“The greatest...

WASHINGTON - Ted Kennedy often said his biggest political mistake was turning down a health care deal with Richard Nixon, and Kennedy's old lament had Democrats yesterday thinking again about compromise on reform. Kennedy said he turned down the universal health coverage plan offered by the Republican President in the early 1970s because it wasn't everything he wanted it to be. He later realized it was a missed opportunity to make major progress toward his goal.

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...

...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...

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.

Just before his death Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) asked the Massachusetts governor and lawmakers to change the law back to what it once was so that an interim replacement could be appointed as a replacement for his seat in the Senate if he was unable to continue serving. The law was changed in 2004. At that time, Massachusetts had a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, who would have had the right appoint a replacement to serve an interim appointment when a vacancy occurred.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009; 4:31 PM Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the political patriarch who died late Tuesday after a 15-month battle with brain cancer, will be buried Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery, close to the famed gravesites of his slain brothers. As tributes poured in Wednesday from across the country and the world, Washington mourned the Massachusetts Democrat whose outsize personality and political skills continued to drive the health-care debate even in his final days. Flags were ordered flown at half-staff at the U.S. Capitol, the White House and federal buildings. Across the Potomac River at the nation's military cemetery,...

Here it is the predicted and obligatory forgiveness redemption motif for Christians. Kennedy has earned salvation, he didn't need G_d's son he just needed to be for the media cause de jour. Fallows would have us accept, "A flawed man, who started unimpressively in life -- the college problems, the silver-spoon boy senator, everything involved with Chappaquiddick -- but redeemed himself, in the eyes of all but the committed haters, with his bravery and perseverance and commitment to the long haul. And his big, open heart. A powerful, brave, often-wounded animal at last brought down." I didn't hate Kennedy I...

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens." -- Sen. Edward Kennedy, floor of the U.S. Senate, 1987. I'm all for remembering a man's good qualities upon his death. But not at the price of ignoring—and denying—history. Yet that's just...

Boston's two largest talk radio stations have responded to Ted Kennedy's passing by dumping their usual conservative programming and replacing it with local liberal supporters of the late senator. WRKO-AM withheld its standard midmorning and early afternoon lineup of Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh, replacing it with a special show hosted by convicted felon / former House Speaker Tom Finneran, a Democrat best known for circumventing a voter-approved cut in the state income tax. Known as "Tommy Taxes" for that legislative maneuver, Finneran is normally heard in morning drive. A choked-up Finneran told listeners that Kennedy's passing was much more...

CHILMARK, Mass. (AP) — A grieving President Barack Obama paid tribute to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy Wednesday, calling him a colleague, counselor and friend who etched his place in history as a "singular figure" on the American political landscape.

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."

Politics, these days, never waits, and already a conservative talking point is emerging to counter the the hope on the left that Kennedy's death will advance his cause of health care reform. Conservative blogger Instapundit suggests that Kennedy's death will provoke "a Wellstone memorial on steroids," referring to the sense in Minnesota in 2002 that the Democratic Party inappropriately used the late Sen. Paul Wellstone's funeral to advance former Vice President Walter Mondale's campaign to replace him. Hot Air's Allahpundit makes the same case, and the comparison is currently starting to course around the conservative blogosphere. It would seem odd...

8/26/09 - Rush Limbaugh discusses how Senator Kennedy's struggle with brain cancer was/is the antithesis of the government-run health care proposal to which the current administration will now try ...

Here is a video montage of clips from some of the most memorable of Sen. Ted Kennedy's speeches throughout his long career. (Watch Video)

There are some important reports found in Soviet archives, after the collapse of the Communist dictatorship, that provide an interesting insight into the character of the senior senator from Massachusetts. One of the documents, a KGB report to bosses in the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, revealed that "In 1978, American Sen. Edward Kennedy requested the assistance of the KGB to establish a relationship" between the Soviet apparatus and a firm owned by former Sen. John Tunney (D.-Calif.). KGB recommended that they be permitted to do this because Tunney's firm was already connected with a KGB agent in France named...

As a mark of respect for the memory of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset on August 30, 2009.

What a tragedy, Kennedy was the last of his family that could have led America down a road to really helping the poor here and throughout the world. 1. He could have inspired a Horatio Alger type of mentality yet he was gutless and supported a equality of condition mentality. His actions directly contributed to today's stereotype of the poor - Welfare queens living in government housing full of squalor and crime. 2. Coming off the civil rights movement he could have been a real catalyst for Freedom in 3rd world countries especially Africa by holding the left to strict...

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy Boston, Mass., Aug 26, 2009 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) passed away last night at the age of 77 after a battle with brain cancer.  Kennedy, a Catholic, will be remembered for his service to the poor, and dedication to education but also his opposition to pro-life issues.After a long struggle with brain cancer, last night Sen. Kennedy took a turn for the worse while at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.  Surrounded by his family members and a priest, Fr. Patrick Tarrant, he passed away around 11:30 p.m.Fr. Tarrant told...