Ted Kennedy has died [Archive] - Professional Soldiers ®

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Praetorian

08-25-2009, 23:39

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TedKennedy/story?id=6692022

Mitch

08-26-2009, 00:55

The end of an era. RIP

sf11b_p

08-26-2009, 01:20

May Mary Jo Kopechne RIP.

Ret10Echo

08-26-2009, 02:38

Ted Kennedy has died

....and the government didn't collapse.

Whatever will Massachusetts do with all those Pre-Marked ballots?

Guy

08-26-2009, 03:01

May Mary Jo Kopechne RIP.:eek:

Stay safe.

JJ_BPK

08-26-2009, 04:14

Mary Jo Kopechne RIP,,

POS,, you can burn in HELL...

kgoerz

08-26-2009, 04:46

Well..... it looks like another News black out week for me. Someone PM me if something important happens. I don't think I could stand hearing how he is a Hero to our Nation even once let alone a 1000 times.

Stras

08-26-2009, 04:54

HowardCohodas

08-26-2009, 05:29

Edward Kennedy Bio with warts (http://www.nndb.com/people/623/000023554/)

Pete

08-26-2009, 05:32

"We have to do it for Teddy. He would have wanted it.

Lets name it the "TeddyCare Bill".

Any of you right wing whackos who are still against the health care now will be known as "Meanies" in addition to everything else. "

Give it a few days and the above will be the new mantra from the left.

longrange1947

08-26-2009, 05:33

Since I can't say anything nice, I will shut the f**k up. :munchin

Paslode

08-26-2009, 05:50

Since I can't say anything nice, I will shut the f**k up. :munchin

x2

glebo

08-26-2009, 06:29

Good friggin ridance.

Mary Jo, RIP.

SF-TX

08-26-2009, 06:30

"President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the nation lost "the greatest United States senator of our time" with the death of Ted Kennedy.

"For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts," Obama said of the Massachusetts senator, who died Tuesday at his home on Cape Cod, Mass., after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. He was 77..."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/08/26/obama-reacts-death-sen-ted-kennedy/

LarryW

08-26-2009, 06:35

I don't know if I can take it...first Michael and now Teddy! :boohoo

Since I can't say anything nice, I will shut the f**k up.

3x

Peregrino

08-26-2009, 06:45

Pity he wasn't subject to Obamacare. This could all have been behind us a while ago.

Team Sergeant

08-26-2009, 07:08

Drunkard, Coward, Murderer and US Senator, it's going to be tough to fill those shoes.

That piece of shit and his entourage came to Ft. Bragg in the late eighties. He came and visited a classified military unit. Before he showed up we were told who was coming and if we didn't want to stick around to leave. Most of us left the unit that day. I'm sure it was because the leadership didn't want to have an incident that might make the news.

May you rot in hell.

TS

mojaveman

08-26-2009, 07:55

May Mary Jo Kopechne RIP.

He should have been held accountable for that, but then he was rich and a Kennedy. I guess those type of people will always be above the law.

Praetorian

08-26-2009, 09:13

My mother taught me not to speak ill of the dead....

So congratulations Ted, on your first day of sobriety!

swpa19

08-26-2009, 09:53

So congratulations Ted, on your first day of sobriety!
__________________

That on is a pure jewel.

jw74

08-26-2009, 10:04

I hope his hell is underwater

greenberetTFS

08-26-2009, 10:10

Since I can't say anything nice, I will shut the f**k up. :munchin

This is gonna piss off TS,but I say x3 or x4 what ever................:boohoo

Big Teddy :munchin

echoes

08-26-2009, 10:50

http://www.usflag.org/nffhalfstaff.html

FLYING THE FLAG AT HALF-STAFF:

The pertinent section of the Flag Code says, "by order of the President, the flag shall be flown at half-staff upon the death of principal figures of the United States Government and the Governor of a State, territory, or possesion, as a mark of respect to their memory. In the event of the death of other officials or foreign dignitaries, the flag is to be displayed at half-staff according to Presidential orders, or in accordance with recognized customs or practices not inconsistent with law.

In the event of the death a present or former official of the government of any State, territory, or possession of the United States, the Governor of that state, territory, or possession may proclaim that the National flag shall be flown at half-staff."

This event brought my attention to review the Flag Code, and wonder how it could be changed, or at least, amended to not include individuals that have a history of unethical behovior and/or abuse of power while serving in Our Government?

Just my .02...

Holly:munchin

Richard

08-26-2009, 10:51

The ringmaster may be gone, but the circus has yet to leave town. RIP.

Blitzzz (RIP)

08-26-2009, 11:17

afchic

08-26-2009, 11:20

nmap

08-26-2009, 11:42

"President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the nation lost "the greatest United States senator of our time" with the death of Ted Kennedy.

In terms of weight...perhaps.

May he spend his eternity with others just like him.

SF_BHT

08-26-2009, 11:47

armymom1228

08-26-2009, 12:47

The ringmaster may be gone, but the circus has yet to leave town. RIP.

With his mentor and puppet master gone, what shall BHO do?

Just what did this character do anyway? I mean I can think of other Senators, now a part of the Silent Majority that did far more for the American people than Teddy did? The radio said his focus was healthcare and education. He did what exactly?
oh well.. When WTOP starting waxing poetic about this person, I turned on the CD...

swpa19

08-26-2009, 13:36

With his mentor and puppet master gone, what shall BHO do?

Did George Soros die too????

Waymaker

08-26-2009, 13:42

Brain cancer, huh? I think they need to call into question all of his decisions because he was impaired at the time of their making....

JimP

08-26-2009, 14:06

monsterhunter

08-26-2009, 14:33

Not so fast guys - Barack visits hawaii and his grandmother dies. Barack visits Marxist Vineyard and teddy dies. Anyone wanna check to see if there's pillow-marks on their faces (and not the kind that barney frank munches)??

Maybe we can arrange a visit between barack and Nancy pelosi...???

...and Boxer/Feinstein.

This man stood for everything I was against and against everything I stood for. I will never have to listen to his liberal babble again (except for the b.s. tributes that will undoubtedly be spewed by the media). I'm sure another idiot will be raised up to fill his shoes.

Praetorian

08-26-2009, 14:37

Not so fast guys - Barack visits hawaii and his grandmother dies. Barack visits Marxist Vineyard and teddy dies.

Yet another benefit to living in "flyover country"?

The Reaper

08-26-2009, 15:05

Brain cancer, huh? I think they need to call into question all of his decisions because he was impaired at the time of their making....

Au contraire.

They are going to name the health care bill after him.

TR

Surgicalcric

08-26-2009, 15:11

And so even in the grave he will contribute to the deaths of Americans...

ABN307

08-26-2009, 15:52

{quote}Then, no other senator contacted the Soviets as often as Kennedy did. Nor were his relations with Moscow at all restricted to official visits. His chief of staff, Larry Horowitz, would journey there on Kennedy’s instructions several times a year. No other U.S. senator had a similar envoy.

All these facts are probably well-known to those who follow such matters. Serious questions about Kennedy’s role in the Cold War have been asked more than once before. From time to time, some bits of his mysterious story are revealed — only to demonstrate that much more of it still remains in darkness.

Now it happens again, with professor Paul Kengor quoting from a top-secret KGB report about their contacts with Kennedy, in his new book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. The document, first released in the Sunday Times by Tim Sebastian in 1992, reveals how Kennedy secretly offered the KGB to work together to undermine President Reagan. This proposal was conveyed to the Soviets by former senator John Tunney in 1983.

http://www.littlegreenfootballs2.com/2009/08/26/senator-ted-kennedy-cooperated-with-the-kgb/

Gypsy

08-26-2009, 16:42

May Mary Jo Kopechne RIP.

My first thought this morning after hearing the news.

Other than that...I got nothing.

kgoerz

08-26-2009, 17:06

Au contraire.

They are going to name the health care bill after him.

TR

WTF OVER! I thought they were going to name it after Micheal Jackson.

And why is he being buried at Arlington, a Soldiers Cemetery. Unless he served then I stand corrected. I guess. :(

Sigaba

08-26-2009, 18:42

And why is he being buried at Arlington, a Soldiers Cemetery. Unless he served then I stand corrected. I guess:(
Senator Kennedy was in the army. From the New York Times obituary (source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/politics/27kennedy.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all)).
After graduating from Milton in 1950, where he showed a penchant for debating and sports but was otherwise an undistinguished student, Mr. Kennedy enrolled in Harvard, as had his father and brothers. It was at Harvard, in his freshman year, that he ran into the first of several personal troubles that were to dog him for the rest of his life: He persuaded another student to take his Spanish examination, got caught and was forced to leave the university.

Suddenly draft-eligible during the Korean War, Mr. Kennedy enlisted in the Army and served two years, securing, with his father’s help, a cushy post at NATO headquarters in Paris. In 1953, he was discharged with the rank of private first class.
According to the Arlington National Cemetary's website, Senator Kennedy is eligible for burial for two reasons. Source is here (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/historical_information/JFK.html).
Any former member of the Armed Forces who served on active duty (other than for training) and who held any of the following positions:

1. An elective office of the U.S. Government
And also--
Provided certain conditions are met, a former member of the Armed Forces may be buried in the same grave with a close relative who is already buried and is the primary eligible.

echoes

08-26-2009, 18:44

And why is he being buried at Arlington, a Soldiers Cemetery. Unless he served then I stand corrected. I guess:(

Sir,

This is all I could find...:munchin

http://www.nndb.com/people/623/000023554/

"Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured.

While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.

While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two.

His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging.

Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged."

Holly

Sdiver

08-26-2009, 18:50

Team Sergeant

08-26-2009, 19:04

And why is he being buried at Arlington, a Soldiers Cemetery. Unless he served then I stand corrected. I guess. :(

Doesn't matter he's a kennedy, they get what they want (see below). Please explain to me Sigaba how Jr. got a USN Warship to have a burial at sea. Disgusting if you ask me.

I'll be rethinkning the idea of being buried at Arlington now.........

JFK Jr. burial at sea today
Cremated remains to be scattered from Navy ship

CNN) -- The cremated remains of John F. Kennedy Jr. are to be scattered in the waters off Martha's Vineyard at 9 a.m. Thursday in a ceremony attended by members of his family on the destroyer USS Briscoe, senior government officials told CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/22/kennedy.plane.01/

Sigaba

08-26-2009, 19:19

Doesn't matter he's a kennedy, they get what they want (see below). Please explain to me Sigaba how Jr. got a USN Warship to have a burial at sea. Disgusting if you ask me.
MOO, it is beyond disgusting. Fortunately for me, the event escaped my notice until today. Source is here (http://www.defenselink.mil/utility/printitem.aspx?print=http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=2151).
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE APPROVES BURIAL AT SEA REQUEST FOR JOHN F. KENNEDY JR.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen approved a request by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy for U.S. Navy assistance for the burial at sea of John F. Kennedy Jr. The Freeman and Bessette families also requested that Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Bessette be buried in the same ceremony. Cohen asked the Chief of Naval Operations to provide this support.

USS Briscoe, a Spruance-class destroyer homeported in Norfolk, Va. will perform the burial at sea ceremony scheduled for 9 a.m. today. The ship is at sea conducting training operations in the Virginia Capes area and was directed to proceed to the vicinity of Martha's Vineyard to provide ceremonial support. Impact on the operational schedule of the Briscoe was minimal.

Capt. Louis Iasiello and Cmdr. William Petruska, U.S. Navy Catholic chaplains, and a civilian Catholic priest, will officiate at the ceremony.

An appropriate solemn observance also will be conducted on board the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV67) at the same time as the memorial service in New York City on Friday morning. The John F. Kennedy is currently participating in a major fleet exercise off the mid-Atlantic coast.

USS Briscoe was commissioned in June 1978 and carries a crew of 26 officers and 300 sailors.
I need some Ibuprofen.

Richard

08-26-2009, 19:23

Please explain to me { } how Jr. got a USN Warship to have a burial at sea.

Family request honored by DOD - only thing I can figure is (1) due to his father being a decorated naval officer and POTUS combined with (2) another photo op for the USN to get one up on the USMC and USAF. ;)

MOO - he didn't deserve such an honor but it wasn't my call.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

doctom54

08-26-2009, 19:32

Told a friend today
"Best news I've heard all week"

GratefulCitizen

08-26-2009, 19:36

jw74

08-26-2009, 21:23

I actually feel some pity for the camelot gang.

Their patriarch, joe kennedy, was an unethical businessman who made his fortune at the expense of others, rather that producing anything worthwhile.

His progeny have borne his curse.
It is a shame that so many others had to be affected by joe's legacy.

"If a man pays back evil for good, evil will never leave his house."
-Proverbs 17:13

Wait a minute?? It is Joe Kennedy's fault that Ted Kennedy lived the life he did. And setting his cowardice and self serving nature aside, a "career" as a US Senator for over 4 decades is a curse?
I agree that it is a shame that so many (the American people)have been affected by the Kennedys.

Box

08-26-2009, 22:43

meh

GratefulCitizen

08-26-2009, 22:46

Wait a minute?? It is Joe Kennedy's fault that Ted Kennedy lived the life he did. And setting his cowardice and self serving nature aside, a "career" as a US Senator for over 4 decades is a curse?
I agree that it is a shame that so many (the American people)have been affected by the Kennedys.

I should clarify.
Children tend to learn things from their parents.

If they learn irresponsible behaviors, grow up with a sense of entitlement, and embrace those things, certain consequences tend to follow.
If they turn from such things, other consequences tend to follow.

Every person still has a choice.
(Ezekiel 18:14-17)

Detonics

08-26-2009, 23:27

I understand that suet burns at approximately 482 degrees, so I'm sure the temperature in hell just spiked.

Mitch

08-26-2009, 23:41

He is not worth my comment.

The Gov is now willing to support Ted's request to get the law changed so his seat is not vacant. They passed that law back when a Rep was the Gov to keep the seat from being given to a non Dem. What a crock of shit. Thank God I never had to live up there. I can not see how 10th SFG did not Go Postal when they were at Devens.

We were just 12 miles from the NH Border. And the only music played up there was CW. Those people had an accent you had to get used to, but once you got outside of I-495, you were getting into "God's Country."

Spent 7 yearson and off at Devens - Never saw Ted out there. I heard that he did come out there one time - before my time.

Survey Results:

By the way, would you believe that there are a few negative opinions of Teddy on this forum? I took a quick survey.

Just some facts - 6
MJK - 6
Scathing Sarcasm - 20
Mild Sarcasm - 10
Go to hell & rot you F**kin Murderer (or something close) - 4 (nothing remotely sarcastic about that)
Burial issues - 5
RIP - 2 (I added the second one to my previous posting - don't think it will tilt the scale (I'm a Regan Republican), but this man is dead.

Penn

08-27-2009, 03:28

What are the chances of three brothers’ death being directly related to some manner of Brain injury?

As they say in Newark, "I gotta phuckin headache tinkin 'bout it..."

Pete S

08-27-2009, 04:41

What are the chances of three brothers’ death being directly related to some manner of Brain injury?

Hahahaha.

I will not mourn the death of a man with a severe lack of any character or integrity.
He's dead, we can't change that, lets move on.

Paslode

08-27-2009, 05:29

Well....looks as if I'm going to have to sell my Seagram's stock....

....and Bailey's....

....and Goose Vodka....

....and Wild Turkey....

....and Jim Beam....

....and Jack Daniels....

....and ect, ect, ect,....

Maybe not, they might come out with a new brand to capitalize on Ted's rumored over indulgence of fine spirits ....Teddy's Reserve.

A rumor......LOL! My Step Dad while at a ASHRE convention saw Ted crawl into a bar early one morning and 'demand' a drink. The Bartender refused and Ted started emphasizing every sentence with F-Bombs....Do you know who I f-ing am? Do you know who you are F-ing dealing with? I am Ted F-ing Kennedy!

The bartender said, yeah I know. Now get the f*&@ out.

Ted was a piece of work.

Oh well, Ted is answering to his Maker now and he can't buy or bully his way out this time.

Blitzzz (RIP)

08-27-2009, 05:47

Now he can rest with Mary Joe for eternity....

longrange1947

08-27-2009, 06:12

Now he can rest with Mary Joe for eternity....

I sincerely hope they went in opposite directions.

I would not wish to curse a young lady in that manner. :munchin

Blitzzz (RIP)

08-27-2009, 06:59

Just know that would be Hell for him.
of course sitting him in a room with founding fathers could cause him great grief.

VVVV

08-27-2009, 07:12

Ted Kennedy and members of D/7th SFG in Hyannis Port - circa 1966
:munchin.

afchic

08-27-2009, 08:11

mojaveman

08-27-2009, 08:35

Now he can rest with Mary Joe for eternity....

True,

Maybe he can be seatbelted into a '67 Olds Delmont 88 and buried at sea. :D

Paslode

08-27-2009, 08:37

swpa19

08-27-2009, 10:31

T.S.

Here is another option to Arlington.http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/ncalleghenies.asp

It is really a breathtaking location.

There are quite a few SF buried at this location.

Praetorian

08-27-2009, 11:20

T.S.

Here is another option to Arlington.

It is really a breathtaking location.

There are quite a few SF buried at this location.

Ted Kennedy is an "SF".... But in his case it stands for "Senate Fatass."

echoes

08-27-2009, 11:32

Should be interesting to see what happens in Mass with the opening of Teddy's seat. Seeing as how the Dems changed the law in 2004 so that Romney could not fill Kerry's seat when he ran for POTUS. Now they want to change the rules, AGAIN, to fit their own political needs.

I wonder what the people of Mass think about all of this.

afchic,

Great point, IMHO.

Hope that Fox news can keep this part of the story alive, as others try and sweep it under the rug. (Well, sweeping things under the rug did seem to be part of this Senators legacy, so who knows?) JMHO, as I was not there, per se.

VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDglZZLsG44

Mary Jo Kopechne: Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick Incident Video
‘Mark Levin on 40th Anniversary of Chappaquiddick’

STORY:

http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=4645

Mary Jo Kopechne: Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick Incident
By Cathryn Friar

It was the summer of 1969 on Chappaquiddick, a small island connected by ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Mary Jo Kopechne, age 28, was attending a party - a reunion of girl friends called “the Boiler Girls” and others - who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. At 11:15 she left with Ted Kennedy who had offered her a ride to catch the last ferry to Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, where she was staying. It was that very incident that forever links Mary Jo Kopechne, Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick....

Holly

VVVV

08-27-2009, 11:41

Their patriarch, joe kennedy, was a(n unethical) businessman who made his fortune at the expense of others, rather that producing anything worthwhile.

Which, I believe is how most people earn their living and nest eggs.

:munchin

sf11b_p

08-27-2009, 13:18

He is not worth my comment.

The Gov is now willing to support Ted's request to get the law changed so his seat is not vacant. They passed that law back when a Rep was the Gov to keep the seat from being given to a non Dem.

Yes as I understand it the bill was passed during Kerrys 2004 run for president. A Senator of MA did not want the then Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, to appoint the next Senator to the open seat left by Kerry should he win the election. Ironic isn't it, that Senator who insured that 2004 bill passed was Kennedy.

Team Sergeant

08-27-2009, 13:22

Survey Results:

By the way, would you believe that there are a few negative opinions of Teddy on this forum? I took a quick survey.

Just some facts - 6
MJK - 6
Scathing Sarcasm - 20
Mild Sarcasm - 10
Go to hell & rot you F**kin Murderer (or something close) - 4 (nothing remotely sarcastic about that)
Burial issues - 5
RIP - 2 (I added the second one to my previous posting - don't think it will tilt the scale (I'm a Regan Republican), but this man is dead.

You're a nice forgiving man, I'm not, especially to those that are liars, murder women and then use their money and influence to beat the law.

You need not believe me, just read the FACTS concerning the case.... make up your own mind.

Had Mary Jo been my daughter ted kennedy would have been given a dirt nap a long long time ago.

TS

http://foia.fbi.gov/chappaquiddick/chappaquiddick_pt01.pdf

http://foia.fbi.gov/chappaquiddick/chappaquiddick_pt02.pdf

http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/chappaquiddick.htm

Paslode

08-27-2009, 13:47

Gypsy

08-27-2009, 16:56

True,

Maybe he can be seatbelted into a '67 Olds Delmont 88 and buried at sea. :D

Brilliant...

Ret10Echo

08-27-2009, 18:49

I now have a reason to visit Mass. I can go piss on his grave.

THAT would be impressive.......

Kennedy to have Boston funeral, Arlington burial
by The Associated Press

26, 2009, 10:40 pm ET Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy's body will travel for at least two hours from his Cape Cod home to Boston, where it will lie in repose for two days before his funeral at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia

ACE844

08-27-2009, 20:04

The one will be visiting Boston, along with 4 of his predecessors amidst unprecedented security and other measures to attend the funeral. Luckily it's an opportunity to pick up some of that much needed OT and detail cash in these tough times..

The funeral procession took up the majority of the day and lots of media attention and the accompanying circus that brings.. If someone isn't careful they might get the idea Mr. Kennedy was akin to King Edward or the Pope.;)

abc_123

08-27-2009, 20:12

The funeral procession took up the majority of the day and lots of media attention and the accompanying circus that brings..

With the arrival in Boston timed for just about rush hour, so the pictures of stopped traffic were even more dramatic.

Mitch

08-27-2009, 21:19

You're a nice forgiving man, I'm not, especially to those that are liars, murder women and then use their money and influence to beat the law.

You need not believe me, just read the FACTS concerning the case.... make up your own mind.

Had Mary Jo been my daughter ted kennedy would have been given a dirt nap a long long time ago.

TS

Touché mon ami – I did not plan on being an apologist for Teddy – perhaps for a few sickly horses.

I was the second person to post on this thread – the first thought that came to my mind when I realized he had died – wasn’t about Mary Jo, or Health Care, or middle aged bad behavior (alcohol & women). Nor did I think of anything positive, I can’t think, specifically of anything Ted Kennedy accomplished in all his years in the Senate. More than likely, anything that he may have accomplished would be something that I would be against.

Like I implied earlier, all my votes and all my political contributions, meager as the may have been, have gone to Conservative Republicans.

All that being said – when I learned of his death – my first thought was about the “End of an Era.” That is what I said – in that post. His sister died just two weeks ago – she was the last daughter – he is the last son.

Now – I understand too where many are coming from. He never had to answer for Mary Jo – he never had to stand up for what happened - which here in Texas would have gotten him charged with intoxication manslaughter. He was privileged with money and influence that the average guy doesn’t have. For many, death is too good for him – I understand that.

I just find that the kicking of dead horses or dead senators, though fun for a while, just gives you a sore foot.

mojaveman

08-27-2009, 21:58

I just find that the kicking of dead horses or dead senators, though fun for a while, just gives you a sore foot.

Hey Mitch,

How about wearing a pair of steel toed boots? :D

armymom1228

08-27-2009, 23:51

I now have a reason to visit Mass. I can go piss on his grave.

Pvt Kennedy will be buried at Arlington. Massachusetts did not want him either.. :)

Team Sergeant

08-30-2009, 12:59

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully--left-young-woman-die.html - leave it to the UK

LOL, do you think any US media outlet would print the actual "truth"?

Good for them, great article.

kgoerz

08-30-2009, 13:49

Here is some more info about the Great Senator:rolleyes:

The Last of The Kennedy Dynasty

As soon as his cancer was detected, I noticed the immediate attempt at the "canonization" of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media. They are saying what a "great American" he is. I say, let's get a couple things clear & not twist the facts to change the real history.

1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.

2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops! The man can't count to four! His father, Joseph P Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into 20the US from Canada during prohibition), pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him! (like he charged that President Bush received).

3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris , never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his "education" NEVER advancing past the rank of Private!

4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959. Amazing!

5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash, and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a "state secret" until in the 1980's when the report was unsealed. Didn't hear about that from the unbiased media, did we?

6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts . At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur's keys to his Oldsmobile limousine, and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond.

7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party, passing several houses and a fire station. Two friends then returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew - that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car. The Kennedy family began "calling in favors", ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family, before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne and he didn't call police because he was in a state of shock. It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident, Kennedy's "political enemies" have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS. Kopechne's family received a small payout from the Kennedy's insurance policy, and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills... a "token of friendship"?

8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, and funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors and is widely held as the "standard-bearer for liberalism". In his very first Senate roll, he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries.

9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of an increase in immigration, up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Not to mention the pious grilling he gave the last two Supreme Court nominees, as if he was the standard bearer for the nation in matters of "what's right". What a pompous ass!

10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than "great American". "A blonde in every pond" is his motto.

Let's not allow the spin doctors make this jerk a hero -- how quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is. Let's keep this going for truth, justice and the American way.

RAVEN_DUST

08-31-2009, 15:24

I now have a reason to visit Mass. I can go piss on his grave.

Any of you fellas know anyone in The Old Guard? Maybe someone can buy them a few beers and let them handle the dirty work. :cool:

Btw, glad to see I share the sentiment of most here. F that sorry POS.

greenberetTFS

08-31-2009, 16:02

I just find that the kicking of dead horses or dead senators, though fun for a while, just gives you a sore foot. Mitch

Mitch,He was an a$$hole and he's being given a hero's burial and it's just not right,not right at all .....................:(:(:(

Big Teddy :munchin

Richard

08-31-2009, 16:14

greenberetTFS

08-31-2009, 16:20

Personally, I never met the man - but I think if you consider TKs life in two parts - pre and post-1980 - it gives you a better view of what he was expected to become, what he tried to become, what he overcame, and what he eventually became.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard,I say again,He was an a$$hole and he's being given a hero's burial and it's just not right,not right at all .....................:(:(

Big Teddy :munchin

incarcerated

09-01-2009, 02:57

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/kennedy-ted-chappaquiddick-2545006-mary-senator

Things only a Kennedy could get away with

And by not calling his bluff on Chappaquiddick, Americans became complicit in it.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Mark Steyn
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 Kopechne, 1940-1969. If you have to bring up the, ah, circumstances of that year of decease, keep it general, keep it vague. As Kennedy flack Ted Sorensen put it in Time magazine:

"Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life …"

That's the way to do it! An "accident," "ugly" in some unspecified way, just happened to happen – and only to him, nobody else. Ted's the star, and there's no room to namecheck the bit players. What befell him was … a thing, a place. As Joan Vennochi wrote in The Boston Globe:

"Like all figures in history – and like those in the Bible, for that matter – Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse."

Actually, Peter denied Jesus, rather than "betrayed" him, but close enough for Catholic-lite Massachusetts. And if Moses having a temper never led him to leave some gal at the bottom of the Red Sea, well, let's face it, he doesn't have Ted's tremendous legislative legacy, does he? Perhaps it's kinder simply to airbrush out of the record the name of the unfortunate complicating factor on the receiving end of that moment of "tremendous moral collapse." When Kennedy cheerleaders do get around to mentioning her, it's usually to add insult to fatal injury. As Teddy's biographer Adam Clymer wrote, Edward Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne."

You can't make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don't know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo's – but you're struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy's Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not? At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo "would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history … Who knows – maybe she'd feel it was worth it." What true-believing liberal lass wouldn't be honored to be dispatched by that death panel?

We are all flawed, and most of us are weak, and in hellish moments, at a split-second's notice, confronting the choice that will define us ever after, many of us will fail the test. Perhaps Mary Jo could have been saved; perhaps she would have died anyway. What is true is that Edward Kennedy made her death a certainty. When a man (if you'll forgive the expression) confronts the truth of what he has done, what does honor require? Six years before Chappaquiddick, in the wake of Britain's comparatively very minor "Profumo scandal," the eponymous John Profumo, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for War, resigned from the House of Commons and the Queen's Privy Council and disappeared amid the tenements of the East End to do good works washing dishes and helping with children's playgroups, in anonymity, for the last 40 years of his life. With the exception of one newspaper article to mark the centenary of his charitable mission, he never uttered another word in public again.

Ted Kennedy went a different route. He got kitted out with a neck brace and went on TV and announced the invention of the "Kennedy curse," a concept that yoked him to his murdered brothers as a fellow victim – and not, as Mary Jo perhaps realized in those final hours, the perpetrator. He dared us to call his bluff, and, when we didn't, he made all of us complicit in what he'd done. We are all prey to human frailty, but few of us get to inflict ours on an entire nation.

His defenders would argue that he redeemed himself with his "progressive" agenda, up to and including health care "reform." It was an odd kind of "redemption": In a cooing paean to the senator on a cringe-makingly obsequious edition of NPR's "Diane Rehm Show," Edward Klein of Newsweek fondly recalled that one of Ted's "favorite topics of humor was, indeed, Chappaquiddick itself. He would ask people, 'Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?'"

Terrific! Who was that lady I saw you with last night?

Beats me!

Why did the Last Lion cross the road?

To sleep it off!

What do you call 200 Kennedy sycophants at the bottom of a Chappaquiddick pond? A great start, but bad news for NPR guest-bookers! "He was a guy's guy," chortled Edward Klein. Which is one way of putting it.

When a man is capable of what Ted Kennedy did that night in 1969 and in the weeks afterward, what else is he capable of? An NPR listener said the senator's passing marked "the end of civility in the U.S. Congress." Yes, indeed. Who among us does not mourn the lost "civility" of the 1987 Supreme Court hearings? Considering the nomination of Judge Bork, Ted Kennedy rose on the Senate floor and announced that "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution."

Whoa! "Liberals" (in the debased contemporary American sense of the term) would have reason to find Borkian jurisprudence uncongenial but to suggest the judge and former solicitor-general favored resegregation of lunch counters is a slander not merely vile but so preposterous that, like his explanation for Chappaquiddick, only a Kennedy could get away with it. If you had to identify a single speech that marked "the end of civility" in American politics, that's a shoo-in.

If a towering giant cares so much about humanity in general, why get hung up on his carelessness with humans in particular? For Kennedy's comrades, the cost was worth it. For the rest of us, it was a high price to pay. And, for Ted himself, who knows? He buried three brothers, and as many nephews, and, as the years took their toll, it looked sometimes as if the only Kennedy son to grow old had had to grow old for all of them. Did he truly believe, as surely as Melissa Lafsky and Co. do, that his indispensability to the republic trumped all else? That Camelot – that "fleeting wisp of glory," that "one brief shining moment" – must run forever, even if "How To Handle A Woman" gets dropped from the score. The senator's actions in the hours and days after emerging from that pond tell us something ugly about Kennedy the man. That he got away with it tells us something ugly about American public life.

incarcerated

09-02-2009, 00:54

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

Peter Robinson, 08.28.09, 12:01 AM EDT
Considering the late senator's complete record requires digging into the USSR's archives.

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

Kennedy's motives? "Like other rational people," the memorandum explained, "[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations." But that high-minded concern represented only one of Kennedy's motives.

"Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988," the memorandum continued. "Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president."

Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov--the leader of the Soviet Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring--at least in part to advance his own political prospects.

In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian's story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. "The media," Kengor says, "ignored the revelation."

"The document," Kengor continues, "has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I've ever dealt with as a scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery. Kennedy's office did not deny it."

Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever acted on the memorandum--within eight months, the Soviet leader would be dead--and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former senator's opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because Kennedy represented such a commanding figure--perhaps the most compelling liberal of our day--we need to consider his record in full.

Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.

When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong.

Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speechwriter, writes a weekly column for Forbes.

Box

09-02-2009, 05:46

...what are the social implications of the fact that 40 years worth of American voters kept him in office?
To 49 states he seemed to have been a punchline, yet he was somehow the a champion to his voting base.

Team Sergeant

09-02-2009, 06:44

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully--left-young-woman-die.html - leave it to the UK

Great story..... I had to post it..... rot in hell teddy.

Ted Kennedy: The Senator of Sleaze who was a drunk sexual bully... and left a young woman to die
By Charlie Laurence

Last updated at 3:31 PM on 27th August 2009
Comments (109) Add to My Stories 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 broke the Kennedy grip on the White House.

A drunk Ted had been driving back from a party to the family 'compound' on Martha's Vineyard when he veered off a bridge and into a deep tidal dyke.

Drowned: Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge with her inside
Mary Jo was in the back seat and, while he claimed he was just giving her a lift back to her hotel, it was widely thought that he had picked her up for sex. Kennedy swam ashore to save himself, but left Mary Jo to drown - in fact, it was even worse than that.

It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.
Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car - she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later.

As always, Ted used the family name to save his neck. In any other state but Massachusetts, the Kennedys' home turf, and with any other name, he would have been charged with homicide.

Instead, he escaped with a slap on the wrist: a two-year suspended sentence and the loss of his driving licence for a year. He had been allowed to plead guilty to no more than the charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

Kennedy lawyers arranged for him to pay £55,000 to the Kopechne family from his own pocket with a further £30,000 from his insurance. Mary Jo's mother later said: 'I don't think he ever said he was sorry.'

At the height of the scandal, Kennedy went on TV to explain himself in an extraordinary 13-minute address in which he denied driving drunk and rejected rumours of
'immoral conduct' with Kopechne.

He said he was haunted by 'irrational' thoughts immediately after the accident, and wondered 'whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys'.

He said his failure to report the accident right away was 'indefensible'.

Yet the tragedy and his actions appalled millions of Americans
Edward Moore Kennedy was born on February 22, 1932, and took over the U.S. Senate seat once held by JFK in 1962. He was 30, the youngest age allowed.

By this point in the family's extraordinary history, JFK - John Fitzgerald Kennedy - was President and the next in line, Robert 'RFK' Kennedy, was Attorney General. Their eldest brother, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr, had died in World War II.

Ted at first impressed his family and his electorate with hard work and legislative skill in the Senate.

When JFK was assassinated just a year later, Ted was at work on a committee and reportedly stood stunned and unable to move when he heard.

The assassination would prove to be the opening shot in the destruction of the family that in 1960 had held the promise of an era of unprecedented hope in the U.S.

Less than a year after the assassination, Ted experienced his own brush with death in a plane crash. The pilot and one of his Senate aides were killed. He was left with a permanent back injury, broken ribs and a punctured lung.

He was immobilised for seven months, but the family's dominance of Massachusetts politics was so powerful that he nevertheless easily won his first re-election.

In 1964, as his brother 'Bobby' Kennedy began to prepare for his own accession to the White House in the 1968 election campaign, the younger Kennedy made his name in the Senate by steering crucial reforms through Washington with President Lyndon Johnson.

But then RFK was gunned down in Los Angeles and Ted Kennedy became de facto head of the family.

The shattering blow left him barely able to deliver his brother's funeral eulogy in New York's St Patrick's Cathedral. He retreated from politics to spend the next ten weeks brooding and sailing alone off Cape Cod.

While Ted drank and took advantage of compliant women in Washington, his wife Joan stayed at home in Boston to look after his three children. Like her sister-in-law Jacqui, she seemed to have learned that Kennedy women had to put up with humiliation.
The effort ruined her health, however. Kennedy's unending philandering turned her into an alcoholic and, in 1983, she could take no more.

She could no longer stand the hypocrisy of her husband posing for the public as if he lived for family values. She divorced, publicly confessed to her alcoholism and helped shatter what was left of the Kennedy aura.

Charisma, political skill, good timing and ruthlessness had enabled the family to dominate U.S. public life, despite foibles from links with Chicago gangsters to the sexual arrogance that had, according to legend, seen both JFK and RFK seduce Marilyn Monroe.

A writer once noted: 'Ted Kennedy born and bred to act like the last of the Regency rakes: to be a boor when it pleases him, to take what he wants, to treat women as score markers in the game of sexual sport and to revel in high stakes risks.'

His brothers got away with it, but Ted Kennedy's divorce removed the last bounds of shame and he plunged into a life that left him looking like a Saturday night drunk, waving a bottle and calling for any woman who could tolerate him. He staggered from scandal to scandal, reduced to fodder for lurid ' supermarket' tabloid newspapers.

One congressional aide, just 16, told of being propositioned by Kennedy from the back seat of his limousine in Capitol Hill. She testified that he leaned from the window, waved a wine bottle and asked whether she or a friend she was with wanted to join him.

He reeked of drink by nine in the morning and could be relied on to be bawling drunk at four in the afternoon. In Washington's top La Brasserie restaurant, he once threw a waitress over a table in a private room and tried to have sex with her.

His face, once handsome, became as round as a football, bloated and criss-crossed with the broken veins of an out-of-control drinker.

Remarkably, he held on to his political clout and his legislative skills. He won re-election after reelection, dying in office as America's second-longest serving senator.

He was also responsible - or credited by the Left - for an unrivalled body of 'liberal' legislation. He reformed immigration and labour laws, supported 'pro-choice' abortion rights, voted for tougher gun laws and against the Iraq war, and supported gay marriage.

It wasn't long before he became embroiled in another Kennedy family scandal. In 1991, the U.S. was outraged when clan-member William Kennedy Smith was accused of a date rape.

In his own right, Ted Kennedy was a legend, too - but for all the wrong reasons.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully--left-young-woman-die.html#ixzz0Px7pI7so

Praetorian

09-02-2009, 08:43

Ok.... So now theyre talking about who will replace him.... And the names I've heard the media mention are:

His wife;
His son;
and
his nephew.

Did Massachusetts become a kingdom?

Praetorian

09-02-2009, 12:19

Yes.
I'm really beginning to believe that part of the human condition, at least for a vast majority of people, is a subconscious desire to live under dictatorship.

I find this both disgusting (from a standard of what this country was founded on....) and quite telling (from a standard of how insignificant the qualifications to become a U.S. Senator are).

I'm an attorney.

My wife's an attorney.

My dad's an attorney.

We all have very similar educations and qualifications....

But...

If I died tomorrow, under no circumstance would my wife or father be qualified or even considered to take over my job (and vice versa).

But if youre a U.S. Congressman (Sonny Bono for example), or Senator (Mel Carnahan and now maybe Ted Kennedy) it appears the office can be bequeathed to a spouse who has little or no qualifications at the time of the the appointment.

I cant think of another profession whereby a spouse, with no experience can just jump right in and take over.... Doctor? (How would you like the Podiatrist wife of your neurosurgeon to "fill-in" for him during your craniotomy?) Accountant? Police Officer?

But lawmaker? One of the most sacrosanct positions in our country? The job's all yours.

This government is becoming a joke.

Richard

09-02-2009, 14:54

But if youre a U.S. Congressman (Sonny Bono for example), or Senator (Mel Carnahan and now maybe Ted Kennedy) it appears the office can be bequeathed to a spouse who has little or no qualifications at the time of the the appointment.

I don't see the argument - here are the qualifications as stated in the US Constitution:

Congressman

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Senator

Article 1, Section 3, Clause 3: No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

...bequeathed to a spouse...

Since when have vacated seats in Congress ever been bequeathed? States either appoint or hold special elections in determining who fills such vacated positions.

But lawmaker? One of the most sacrosanct positions in our country?
When did lawmaker become sacrosanct?

I cant think of another profession whereby a spouse, with no experience can just jump right in and take over....

I can - lots of them - a spouse stepping in and taking over a business or such when their husband/wife dies is not uncommon.

Doctor? (How would you like the Podiatrist wife of your neurosurgeon to "fill-in" for him during your craniotomy?) Accountant? Police Officer?

There are - of course - exceptions, and those listed above are just a few of them. But as far as qualifications for lawmaker - the historical record has shown that just because a person is knowledgeable of the law does not guarantee that they will be able to make better or more just laws.

For the 111th Congress, its 541 members (435 voting/6 delegates) include:

269 members who served in state or territorial legislatures
214 members who list public service/politics
204 who list law
201 who list business
94 who list education
16 were MDs
3 were nurses
2 were dentists
2 were veterinarians
1 was a psychologist
1 was an optometrist
1 was a clinical dietician
1 was a pharmacist
3 were farmers
3 were ranchers
2 were vintners
1 was an orchard worker
2 were musicians
1 was a screenwriter
1 was a documentary filmmaker
1 was a Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher
1 was a National Football League quarterback
6 were engineers
3 were physicists
1 was a chemist
1 was a microbiologist
1 was a radio talk show host
1 was a radio/television broadcaster
1 was a radio broadcaster
1 was a newscaster
1 was a television reporter
1 was a television commentator
5 were Peace Corps volunteers
5 were accountants
4 are ministers
4 were sheriffs
1 was a deputy sheriff
4 were police officers
2 were state troopers
2 were probation officers
1 was an FBI special agent
1 was a Border Patrol chief
1 was a volunteer firefighter
3 served as Cabinet members
3 were state supreme court justices
1 was Secretary of the Navy
1 was a USN Vice Admiral and a commander of a carrier battle group
1 was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
1 was a Department of Defense counterterrorism consultant
1 was an ambassador
1 was a federal judge
1 was a Foreign Service Officer.
1 was an astronaut
1 was a naval aviator
1 was an instructor at West Point
1 was a pilot of Marine One
3 were carpenters
2 were bank tellers
1 was a driving instructor
1 was a cosmetics saleswoman
1 was a mountain guide
1 was a ski instructor
1 was a casino dealer
1 was a night watchman
1 was a prison guard
1 was a furniture salesman
1 was an ironworker
1 was an autoworker
1 was a clothing factory worker
1 was a textile worker
1 was an oilfield worker
1 was a mortician
1 was a coroner
1 was a waitress
1 was a Teamster and dairy worker
1 was a paper mill worker
1 was a cement plant worker
1 was a meat cutter
1 was a shellfish specialist
1 was a tugboat captain
1 was a taxicab driver
1 was an auctioneer
1 was a toll booth collector
1 was a hotel clerk

And so it goes with all those special qualifications necessary to serve in such a sacrosanct position as lawmaker...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Richard

09-02-2009, 21:28

Government is, for whatever reason, the only profession where people who haven't the slightest clue whatsoever about the topic think they are fully, completely, 100% qualified.

Usually, the less learned the person, the more qualified they think they are (at least from my experience).

So...do you consider those citizens listed as being in the 111th Congress - who were duly elected, according to law, by the citizens of this country in the last elections - who are, for the most part, either degreed or experienced professionals from virtually all walks of life and offering an extremely broad range of experiences and ideas - to not be qualified to represent us and govern over the myriad and complex affairs of this nation? :confused:

Perhaps you should actually consider doing something to improve that with which you have so little regard - after all, it is your right to do as little or as much as you wish in our democratic republic...but don't be too disappointed if there are a number of citizens who don't agree with your opinions - because that's their right, too.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

09-02-2009, 21:50

Only a few prefer liberty. Most just want kind masters.

Government is, for whatever reason, the only profession where people who haven't the slightest clue whatsoever about the topic think they are fully, completely, 100% qualified.

Usually, the less learned the person, the more qualified they think they are (at least from my experience).
Before offering such broad generalizations about the integrity of people in government, it might not hurt if you were to offer a citation for your aphorism.;)

Team Sergeant

09-03-2009, 09:21

In it, Kennedy says his actions on Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable."

Rot in hell ted, you're a slimeball.

You didn't deserve a hero's burial and you definitely don't deserve to be buried with real hero's. Personally I'd like to see a movement to have you tried for murder and disinterred and buried in a prison grave.

ted kennedy is the reason we should have term limits.

Team Sergeant

Kennedy Memoir Reveals Remorse Over Fatal Chappaquiddick Crash
Thursday, September 03, 2009

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, and says he accepted the finding that a lone gunman assassinated his brother President John F. Kennedy.

The memoir, "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.

In it, Kennedy says his actions on Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable." He says he was afraid and "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.

Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne in the car.

Kopechne, a worker with slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.

Kennedy also writes in the memoir that he always accepted the official findings on his brother John's assassination.

He said he had a full briefing by Earl Warren, the chief justice on the commission that investigated the Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas shooting, which was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he was convinced the Warren Commission got it right and he was "satisfied then, and satisfied now."

In the book, Kennedy writes candidly about his battle with brain cancer and his "self-destructive drinking," especially after the 1968 death of his brother Robert.

He also explains why he decided to run for the presidency in 1980, saying he was motivated in part by his differences with then-President Jimmy Carter. He criticized Carter's go-slow approach to providing universal health care.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that a spokesman for the memoir's publisher said he was "dismayed" The New York Times had obtained the book before its publication date.

"We regret that the New York Times did not respect the September 14th release date of 'True Compass,' which was carefully coordinated with the senator's family," Goldstein told The Post. "That copy was obtained without consent or permission from Twelve -- or if it was somehow purchased, then it was sold illegally."

The book was written with the help of a collaborator and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life and hours of recordings for an oral history project.

Kennedy died last week at age 77.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,546020,00.html

jw74

09-03-2009, 09:30

In it, Kennedy says his actions on Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable."

I heard an NPR interview with a Ted Kennedy biographer who also said He loved a good Chappaquiddick joke and would ask people if they've heard any good chappaquiddick jokes lately. And this was being told as though it demonstrated his great sense of humor. It didnt dawn on the biographer or the host that it was tasteless.

Hilarious :mad:

Richard

09-03-2009, 14:28

Term limits!

Ever think about why the Constitution does not address term limits for legislators?

Richard's $.02 :munchin

longrange1947

09-03-2009, 14:43

Ever think about why the Constitution does not address term limits for legislators?

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Yes, because our forefathers never dreamed there would be such a thing as a career politician. They were somewhat naive as shown by the "standing army rule". :munchin :D

Richard

09-03-2009, 16:18

As I understand it, Ted Kennedy is now eligible to vote in Chicago elections. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Red Flag 1

09-03-2009, 17:23

As I understand it, Ted Kennedy is now eligible to vote in Chicago elections. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

He does bring some depth now.:D

RF 1

Richard

09-03-2009, 20:10

Yes, because our forefathers never dreamed there would be such a thing as a career politician. They were somewhat naive as shown by the "standing army rule".

Text of Congressman Hyde's Floor Statement On Term Limits given during the House debate on term limits March 29, 1995

]"If someone told you on election day you had to vote for a certain candidate, you would wonder if you were back in the Soviet Union! But if someone tells you may not vote for a certain candidate because he's overqualified, what is the essential difference? Your range of choice has been limited -- and your fundamental right as a free American to freely elect whom you want to represent you has been abridged --

"If this were a trial, I'd call as my first witnesses the Founding Fathers who directly and unanimously rejected term limits. Chief Justice Earl Warren summed it up by quoting the Founding Fathers in the 1944 case of Powell vs McCormack: "A fundamental principle of our representative democracy is, in Hamilton's words, 'that the people should choose whom they please to govern them.' As Madison pointed out at the convention, this principle is undermined as much by limiting whom the people can select as by limiting the franchise itself."

"In 1788 during the New York debates on ratifying our Constitution, Robert Livingston asked, "Shall we then drive experience into obscurity? He called that an absolute abridgment of the people's rights.

"George Orwell once said it has become the task of the intellectual to defend the obvious -- and while I make no pretense at being an intellectual, defending experience over ignorance is certainly obvious.

"Have you ever been in a storm at sea? I was -- and I was terrified until I looked up at the bridge and the skipper was there sucking on his pipe -- an old Norwegian 45 years at sea and that was reassuring.

"When the dentist peers into your mouth with his drill whirring, don't you hope he's done this work for a few years?

"When the neuro-surgeon has shaved your head, and made the pencil line across your skull and he approaches with the electric saw -- ask him, won't you, one question: "Are you a careerist?"

"ls running a modern complex country of 250 million people and a $6 trillion economy all that easy? To do your job around here you've got to know something about environmental issues, health care, banking & finance and tax policy, the farm problems, weapons systems, Bosnia-Hertzegovina - North Korea, foreign policy, the administration of justice, crime and punishment, education, welfare, budgeting in the trillions of dollars, immigration. The list is endless and we need our best people to deal with these issues.

"We deal with ultimate questions -- war and peace - life and death -- drawing the line between liberty and order -- and do you really doubt that America will never again face a real crisis? With a revolving door Congress, where will we get Everett Dirksens, Scoop Jack sons, Hubert Humphreys, Barry Goldwaters, Arthur Vandenbergs and Sam Ervins?

"Where did Shim on Peres and Yitzak Rabin get the self confidence to negotiate peace with the P.L.O? Experience~ my friends, long bloody experience.

"To those of you who are overwhelmed by popularity of term limits let me remind you of what Edmund Burke told the electors of Bristol in 1744 -- that he owed them the highest fidelity, but he owed them his best judgment too -- and he didn't owe his conscience to anyone.

"l once told an incoming freshmen class at a luncheon speech, that you have to know the issues you are prepared to lose your seat over -- or you will do real damage here. To me, this is such an issue.

"The unstated premise of term limits is that we are progressively corrupted the longer we stay here -- To that, I say look around -- you'll see honest, decent, idealistic men and women in far greater ratio than most other occupations. The 12 Apostles had their Judas Iscariot, and I refuse to concede to the angry, pessimistic populism that drives this movement, because it is just dead wrong.

"Our negative campaigning and mudslinging have made anger the national recreation, but that's our fault, not the system's.

"America needs leaders, statesmen, and giants -- and you don't get them out of the phone book." New is always better? What's conservative about that? Have we nothing to learn from the past? Tradition, history, institutional memory -- don't they count anymore? Ignorance is salvageable, but stupid is forever.

"This isn't conservative -- it's a radical distrust of democracy -- it is cynical and pessimistic, devoid of the optimism and hope that built this country.

"This corrosive attack on the consent of the governed stems from two sources -- one, is well meaning but misguided, and the other are those who hate politics and politicians. Well, l love politics and politicians -- they invest the one commodity that can never be replaced, their time, their family life, their privacy and their reputation -- and for what? To make this a better country.

"Do incumbents have an advantage? Sometimes not. A challenger has no record to defend while an incumbent may have hundreds of votes to explain. But yes, an incumbent does have the advantage of name identification, and why not?

"lt's 11 p.m. on a snowy January night. l'm at a banquet honoring the mayor of a local town - I'm tired, and they haven't introduced the commissioner of streets yet, much less the mayor! But where is my opponent? Does he even know he's my opponent yet ? He's home, smoking a Macanudo, stroking his collie dog, sipping from a snifter of Courvoiser and watching an R-rated movie on cable. And I'm at my one-millionth banquet. Years of faithful constituent service - that's what gives an incumbent an advantage and, on the merits, it's deserved.

"The case for term limits is a rejection of professionalism in politics -- "career politician" is an epithet. Careerism, they say, places too much focus on getting re-elected and not on the public interest. That's a perfect non-sequitur. You get re-elected by serving the public interest. Professionals will run this government, only they will be the unelected, unaccountable, try to get them on the phone, permanent bureaucracy. There are two contradictory arguments for term limits -- one, we are too focused on re-election and not close enough to the people, and the George Will theory that we are too responsive to the people and need a constitutional distance from them. Any cause that depends on such conflicting theories is standing on two stools which as they separate will cause a serious hernia.

"Term limits limit the field of potential candidates -- what successful person in mid-life would leave a career at 50 and try and pick up that career at 56 or 62? This will become a sabbatical for the well to do elite and bored retirees.

"And so, the question of 1788 recurs: Shall we then drive experience into obscurity? Shall we perpetrate this absolute abridgment of the people's rights?

"Last June 6th I stood with Bob Michel, Sonny Montgomery and Sam Gibbons at Normandy -- and I heard the mournful, piercing sound of the British bag pipes playing Amazing Grace as they were scattered among the sea of crosses and Stars of David at the cemetery.

"I looked at some of the names on those crosses -- young men buried over a thousand miles from home -- and I saw a cross with the words, "Here lies in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known but to God" and you realize he died in the cause of freedom -- and today you should realize that the right to choose who will represent you in Congress is a fundamental freedom. I can never vote to diminish that freedom -- and I hope you can't too."

"l speak for Sam Gibbons, Bob Stump. John Dingell, Sonny Montgomery and yes - Bob Dole. Fifty years ago our country needed us - and we came running!. l think our country still needs us. Why do you want to stop us from running? Why do want to drive experience into obscurity? Have you forgotten the report card we received last November?

"Trust the people!"[/I]

http://judiciary.house.gov/Legacy/010.htm

incarcerated

09-04-2009, 01:23

With 46 years of service as a Senator from Massachusetts, a champion of Civil Rights, icon of American liberal politics, Senator Edward Kennedy was an elder statesman and bulwark of the Democrat Party. If he could be cutting deals with the Soviets to undermine a sitting President, what have other members of his Party done in the way of contact with the KGB/FSB/SVR? This makes Chappaquiddick pale in comparison.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/kgb_kennedy_the_ted_kennedy_i.html

Kennedy and the KGB

By Paul Kengor
August 31, 2009
Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification.

The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a confidential offer to the Soviet leadership by Senator Kennedy. The target: President Ronald Reagan. (A pdf file of the original Russian language document and an English translation are available here.)

With Kennedy's death, this stunning revelation is again making the rounds, especially after Rush Limbaugh flagged it in his "Stack of Stuff." I'm being inundated with emails, asking basically two questions: 1) is the document legitimate; and 2) what does it allege of Senator Kennedy?

First off, yes, the document is legitimate. If it were not, I would have never reported it. Over the years, from my book to radio and web interviews, I've provided specifics. Briefly summarized, here are the basics:

The document was first reported in a February 2, 1992 article in the London Times, titled, "Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file," by reporter Tim Sebastian. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had opened the Soviet archives. Sebastian discovered the document in the Central Committee archives specifically. When his article appeared in the Times, other on-site researchers dashed to the archives and grabbed their own copy. Those archives have been resealed.

The Times merely quoted the document and ran a tiny photo of its heading. Once I got ahold of it later, I published the entire text (English translation) in my book.

Importantly, when I published the document, Senator Kennedy's office didn't dispute its authenticity, instead ambiguously (and briefly) arguing with its "interpretation." This was clever. The senator's office didn't specify whether this interpretation problem was a matter of my personal misunderstanding of the document or the misunderstanding of the document's author, Chebrikov. Chebrikov couldn't be reached for comment; he was dead.

So, what was the offer?

The subject head, carried under the words, "Special Importance," read: "Regarding Senator Kennedy's request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov." According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was "very troubled" by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan's "belligerence."

This was allegedly made worse by Reagan's stubbornness. "According to Kennedy," reported Chebrikov, "the current threat is due to the President's refusal to engage any modification to his politics." That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan's political success, which made the president surer of his course, and more obstinate -- and, worst of all, re-electable.

On that, the fourth and fifth paragraphs of Chebrikov's memo got to the thrust of Kennedy's offer: The senator was apparently clinging to hope that President Reagan's 1984 reelection bid could be thwarted. Of course, this seemed unlikely, given Reagan's undeniable popularity. So, where was the president vulnerable?

Alas, Kennedy had an answer, and suggestion, for his Soviet friends: In Chebrikov's words, "The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

Therein, Chebrikov got to the heart of the U.S. senator's offer to the USSR's general secretary: "Kennedy believes that, given the state of current affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan."

Of these, step one would be for Andropov to invite the senator to Moscow for a personal meeting. Said Chebrikov: "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."

The second step, the KGB head informed Andropov, was a Kennedy strategy to help the Soviets "influence Americans." Chebrikov explained: "Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year [1983], televised interviews with Y. V. Andropov in the USA." The media savvy Massachusetts senator recommended to the Soviet dictator that he seek a "direct appeal" to the American people. And, on that, "Kennedy and his friends," explained Chebrikov, were willing to help, listing Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters (both listed by name in the memo) as good candidates for sit-down interviews with the dictator.

Kennedy concluded that the Soviets needed, in effect, some PR help, given that Reagan was good at "propaganda" (the word used in the memo). The senator wanted them to know he was more than eager to lend a hand.

Kennedy wanted the Soviets to saturate the American media during such a visit. Chebrikov said Kennedy could arrange interviews not only for the dictator but for "lower level Soviet officials, particularly from the military," who "would also have an opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful intentions of the USSR."

This was apparently deemed crucial because of the dangerous threat posed not by Andropov's regime but -- in Kennedy's view -- by Ronald Reagan and his administration. It was up to the Kremlin folks to "root out the threat of nuclear war," "improve Soviet-American relations," and "define the safety for the world."

Quite contrary to the ludicrous assertions now being made about Ted Kennedy working jovially with Ronald Reagan, Kennedy, in truth, thought Reagan was a trigger-happy buffoon, and said so constantly, with vicious words of caricature and ridicule. The senator felt very differently about Yuri Andropov. As Chebrikov noted in his memo, "Kennedy is very impressed with the activities of Y. V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders."

Alas, the memo concluded with a discussion of Kennedy's own presidential prospects in 1984, and a note that Kennedy "underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal."

What happened next? We will never know. None of the Kennedy admirers and court composers who serve as "journalists" bothered to ask, even with decades available to pose questions, beginning back in January 1992 when the highly reputable London Times broke the story.

In 2006, when my book was released, there was a virtual media blackout on coverage of the document, with the exception of conservative media: talk-radio, Rush Limbaugh, some websites, and mention on FoxNews by Brit Hume. Amazingly, I didn't even get calls from mainstream reporters seeking to shoot down the story. I had prepared in great detail to be grilled on national television, picturing the likes of Katie Couric needling me. I didn't need to worry.

I worked up a detailed op-ed on the document, where I even played devil's advocate by defending Kennedy, trying to get at his thinking, being as fair as possible. No major newspapers would touch it. The Boston Globe editors refused to acknowledge it or reply to my emails. The editor at the New York Times confessed to being "fascinated" by the piece but conceded that he wouldn't "be able to get it in."

One editor at a West Coast newspaper, a genuinely fair liberal, considered it carefully. We went back and forth. I was shocked to see that neither the editor nor his staff would do any investigating, not placing a single phone call to Kennedy's office. In the end, the editor rejected the piece, telling me: "I just can't believe Kennedy would do something that stupid."

Alas, here we are now, after Kennedy's death, and I'm reliving the same experience, as no one from the mainstream media has contacted me. Liberal reporters lionized Ted Kennedy in life and have begun the canonization process in death. They are liberal activists first, and journalists second.

Finally, a postscript for these liberal Democrat "journalists:" We know they don't care that Ted Kennedy did this to Ronald Reagan. Fine. Well, how about this? As the Mitrokhin Archives reveal, Senator Kennedy did something similar to President Jimmy Carter in 1980 -- his own political flesh and blood.

Does that story interest liberal reporters? No. I likewise noted that gem in 2006. I didn't get a single media inquiry.

It will be left to future generations to examine these truths. As for Senator Ted Kennedy's motivations for doing what he did with the Soviet leadership? Alas, now we can definitively say, he will never tell us. The liberal media protected him, all the way to the grave.

Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperPerennial, 2007) and professor of political science at Grove City College. His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).

Razor

09-04-2009, 09:09

Text of Congressman Hyde's Floor Statement On Term Limits given during the House debate on term limits March 29, 1995

You can't have it both ways. Is legislative experience a critical factor in being a member of Congress or a Senator (as implied in this article, and thus by extension is your opinion), or is it almost completely irrelevant, as you argued earlier in this thread regarding Kennedy's wife or son possibly taking his vacant seat?
No 'John Kerry-ing' allowed.

Richard

09-04-2009, 11:49

Actually - my argument was that legislative experience isn't a requirement (whether one determines it's an important factor or not) by law to hold public office...but...that demonstrated effective legislative performance should be a point of consideration when going to the polls and deciding whether or not to renew a legislator's contract with the people they represent. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Claemore

09-07-2009, 18:35

Dozer523

09-07-2009, 19:27

Well the thing is, Senators and Congressman are elected by direct election, which can mean tyranny of the majority. Pure democracy is not necessarily a good thing. Representatives only serve two-year terms, and there are more of them than Senators, so I don't have much a problem with them. Well as for me, if I have to put up with tynanny at all let it be "of the majority" because at least most of us are getting what we think we want. I'm from Spokane WA where we were happy to re-elect Tom Foley over and over and over and over. (That's Speaker of the House Foley to you!) Most of us liked him a lot, we never worried about Fairchild AFB closing, I-90 got rammed right through the middle of Spokane (look at a map if you don't know where Spokane is - it is in the economic middle of no-where (but it is God's gift believe me). Then along came this Republican named George Nethercutt talking about term limits and how he would only serve 2 terms. Out goes Tom (actually off goes Tom to Japan to work for Bush the Elder) and in comes George. My My my! the learning curve was steep and slippery. He never seemed to get it right. But, come time for the third term he was all about "I've finally got it all figured out."
The voters were unimpressed and unmoved. But George? He moved to DC and worked for a lobbying firm.

Sdiver

09-07-2009, 20:21

Myself personally, I'm somewhat divided about term limits for members of congress. On the one hand, I'm for it. People like Kennedy and his little "dynasty", are reason for creating term limits.

But on the other hand, look at Charlie Wilson, (Charlie Wilson's War). Had term limits been in place while he was first elected into office (1972), and the Soviets still marched into A-stan, would he have been as instrumental in bringing them down, as we all know how he, along with others, brought down the Soviets?

IMO, instead of looking at term limits for members of Congress, we should look at instituting "Perk" limits. If someone is running for office, either the House or Senate, their Salary and "Perks" should be based off their net worth, taken of course from their tax returns.

Number one, this would show the American people that their elected representatives were indeed paying their taxes, as should be. For example, I give you Barry's cabinet. Second, I feel this would show the resolve of these elected people, that they are there for the American People and not just for the "perks". It should be an honor to serve in the Congress.

What always pissed me off was, someone like Kennedy, why would he have to draw a salary, and all the "perks" that went with his office, while we all know, he, and his "family" has money.

I think if "Perk" limits were to be installed, you would see a lot of the Career politicians, leave office early.

Granted, something like this would NEVER see the light of day on either floor, but hey....I can dream can't I?

JAGO

09-09-2009, 05:45

Driving home for the long Labor Day weekend I was listening to Boortz on the radio discuss Kennedy's death and the Dem's using his demise to push their health care agenda. He commented on that being "a shovel ready project".
v/r
phil

Mitch

09-09-2009, 23:24

Myself personally, I'm somewhat divided about term limits for members of congress. On the one hand, I'm for it. People like Kennedy and his little "dynasty", are reason for creating term limits.

But on the other hand, look at Charlie Wilson, (Charlie Wilson's War). Had term limits been in place while he was first elected into office (1972), and the Soviets still marched into A-stan, would he have been as instrumental in bringing them down, as we all know how he, along with others, brought down the Soviets?

Gents,

The one constant in life, above, death, taxes, and the Cubs since 1908, is…………… Change. Things change, the pendulum swings. It's fun to be in the catbird seat and watch everyone else grovel and complain. But sooner or later, the positions switch, the haves become the have nots, but just wait, - the pendulum can only stay out there so long before it comes back again.

Long before there was a Kennedy with 46 years, there was block of the long serving Solid South Democrats who maintained Southern Traditions. They morphed into the Dixiecrats in 1948 who fought for States-Rights and Segregation; a few flipped and became Republicans.

So, the issue of Term Limits is a non argument - it doesn't matter. Have them, don't have them - it only changes the dynamic, not the outcome.

A side note, for some reason, the Midwest seems to be a bad place to try to hang on to a Senate Seat. Looking at a map of the Top 25 Longest Serving Senators, we see that regionally, the south has the most and is the place to be if you want to die in office as an old, old man, but the Northeast is a close second; then the West. Perhaps the voters in the Heartland are just a bit more discerning? (See map, attached)

12991

The Reaper

09-10-2009, 07:38

Sorry, I just have to keep bumping this thread because I love to see it when I log on.:D

TR

Mitch

09-10-2009, 23:26

Sorry, I just have to keep bumping this thread because I love to see it when I log on.:D

TR

Consider it rebumped. :cool:

For those interested - here are names of the top 25.

Senator Bird is the longest, half a century and counting.

Senator
Dates of Service
Length of Service

1. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)
Jan 3, 1959 to present
50 years, 7 months, 25 days

2. Strom Thurmond (R-SC)
Dec 24, 1954 to Apr 4, 1956
and Nov 7, 1956 to Jan 3, 2003

47 years, 5 months, 17 days

3. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
Nov 7, 1962 to Aug 25, 2009
46 years, 9 months, 19 days

4. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI)
Jan 3, 1963 to present
46 years, 7 months, 25 days

5. Carl T. Hayden (D-AZ)
Mar 4, 1927 to Jan 3, 1969
41 years, 9 months, 30 days

6. John Stennis (D-MS)
Nov 5, 1947 to Jan 3, 1989
41 years, 1 month, 29 days

7. Ted Stevens (R-AK)
Dec 24, 1968 to Jan 3, 2009
40 years, 10 days

8. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC)
Nov 9, 1966 to Jan 3, 2005
38 years, 1 month, 25 days

9. Richard B. Russell (D-GA)
Jan 3, 1933 to Jan 21, 1971
38 years, 9 days

10. Russell Long (D-LA)
Dec 31, 1948 to Jan 3, 1987
38 years, 3 days

11. Francis E. Warren (R-WY)
Nov 18, 1890 to Mar 4, 1893
and Mar 4, 1895 to Nov 24, 1929
37 years, 2 months

12. James Eastland (D-MS)
Jun 30, 1941 to Sep 28, 1941
and Jan 3, 1943 to Dec 27, 1978
36 years, 2 months, 24 days

13. Warren Magnuson (D-WA)
Dec 14, 1944 to Jan 3, 1981
36 years, 20 days

14. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE)
Jan 3, 1973 to Jan 15, 2009
36 years, 13 days

15. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM)
Jan 3, 1973 to Jan 3, 2009
36 years

16. Claiborne Pell (D-RI)
Jan 3, 1961 to Jan 3, 1997
36 years

17. Kenneth D. McKellar (D-TN)
Mar 4, 1917 to Jan 2, 1953
35 years, 10 months

18. Milton R. Young (R-ND)
Mar 12, 1945 to Jan 2, 1981
35 years, 9 months, 22 days

19. Ellison D. Smith (D-SC)
Mar 4, 1909 to Nov 17, 1944
35 years, 8 months, 13 days

20. Allen Joseph Ellender (D-LA)
Jan 3, 1937 to Jul 27, 1972
35 years, 6 months, 24 days

21. William Boyd Allison (R-IA)
Mar 4, 1873 to Aug 4, 1908
35 years, 5 months

22. John McClellan (D-AR)
Jan 3, 1943 to Nov 28, 1977
34 years, 11 months

23. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
Jan 3, 1975 to present
34 years, 7 months, 25 days

24. Walter F. George (D-GA)
Nov 22, 1922 to Jan 3, 1957
34 years, 1 month, 13 days

25. George Aiken (R-VT)
Jan 10, 1941 to Jan 3, 1975
33 years, 11 months, 2 days

incarcerated

09-25-2009, 04:20

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/09/25/watchdog_groups_rap_20m_earmark_for_kennedy_instit ute/

Kerry asks $20m for Kennedy institute

Fiscal groups criticize military bill earmark
By Bryan Bender
Globe Staff / September 25, 2009
WASHINGTON - A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The earmark, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The item is drawing fire from fiscal watchdog groups, who assert that military funds should not be raided to pay for an institution that has nothing to do with improving military readiness.

“Whatever beneficial value civic education may have, it’s hard to see why the Defense Department should pay for it,’’ said Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington. “It would seem the location of this hefty earmark has more to do with the powerful position of its sponsor than [the Defense Department’s] responsibility to educate elementary school children.’’

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The institute will serve as a focal point for the late Massachusetts senator’s legacy, much as presidential libraries do. It will house Kennedy’s official papers and oral histories from the nearly half-century he served in the Senate. With a museum and exhibit space, it also will be dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new US senators, and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate in American political life. The institute plans to host an annual “Summer Senate’’ for high school students from across the nation.

The $20 million earmark would cover as much as 40 percent of the institute’s initial fund-raising goal.

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kirk, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, has also served as a member of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board and has played a key role in helping plan and raise funds for the new center. If he casts a vote in favor of the defense bill, he also will be voting in favor of an institute to which he has had close personal and professional connections....

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09-25-2009, 06:23

6 out of 25...
...Republicans must not be able to hold a job as well.

IMO term limits are a hard call: the voter imposes term limits, but many voters aren't voting for leadership that is best for the country they are voting for a welfare pay raise and the politicians that should be "term limited" have perfected the art of pandering to this voter base.
...on the other hand this barrel of monkeys we call congress with the combined centuries of "experience" that they posses have proven that collectively, the US elected body of leadership can fuck up a shot-put.

Now we need 20million bucks tacked onto the defense bill for an institute?
Is this building going to have class rooms used for military training? Are they going to do military defense research ? Nope, no need for term limits here. Go get that cash Sen Kerry! Hell, ask for 40 million and build a memorial park right next to the institute; we'll pay for it

Senator Kennedy held his job for 47 years and likely would have continued to serve if he hadn't succumbed to his own mortality... so he must have done a great job representing Massachusetts or the voters would have run him off...
...right?

If the voters like what they want, then why shouldn't they get to vote for him - or did 47 years in the seat allow him to perfect the art of "telling the voters what they want to hear"

meh...