Ed's dead, baby... Ed's dead.

[RetPara]

I think from a historical standpoint whether you agree with his politics or not, it is the end of an era for the Kennedy bothers, all of which served our Country, not without controversy but served with an air of dignity. Two brothers murdered by psycho's, one nefew who died by accident. I believe his death as with the others in his family, will have an underlying impact on the senate in addition to being a greater loss for our Country. As such, I believe our nation has lost another icon & esteemed leader in the senate. May he Rest in Peace

Senator Edward Kennedy

You left out the eldest of the four brothers, Joe. WWII Army Air Corps B17 pilot who was vaporized over England in '44. He was the takeoff pilot for a B17 that was max weight loaded with HE. He was to bail out before the coast, but the aircraft exploded in flight. The mission was for a chase aircraft radio control the unmanned B17 to hit either the V1 launch sites or sub pens.

Always wondered what would of gone differently if he had lived.

[Ranger175csar]

He was a politician not a leader...His integrity was in jeapoerdy until he stopped driking.. then he started to clean up his personal life...still all coorupt and yes TERM LIMITS are needed.

The passing of a loved one sucks for all who loved them.

[Ranger Ron]

They announced someone will be appointed. It's rumored our Governor or A.G. could get the job.

I heard the Governor say last night that he would sign a law allowing an appointment IF the State Legislature would pass one. Makes you want to barf, the games they pay "In our best interest".

[centermass]

They announced someone will be appointed. It's rumored our Governor or A.G. could get the job.

I heard the Governor say last night that he would sign a law allowing an appointment IF the State Legislature would pass one. Makes you want to barf, the games they pay "In our best interest".

They're liberal democrats, they make up rules as they go along as long as it supports their agenda.

Teddy saw the position his party would or could be left in because of such. He began pushing for this exact piece of legislation months before his death. Go figure.

[RAT]

What I find funny is Teddy had the law changed to screw over Romney. LMFAO...

RO!!!

[rgrokelley]

Someone sent this to me.

Ted Kennedy's Legacy:

As soon as his cancer was detected, there was an immediate attempt at the "canonization" of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media. They are saying what a "great American" he is. Here is the history and not the mythology of Teddy Kennedy.

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. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, who got his start bootlegging liquor into the 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.

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. He passed the bar exam in 1959.

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.

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.

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"?

7. 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 role, 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.

8. 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". His comments about Robert Bork coined the phrase “the politics of personal destruction”. He stated that “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”

10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to women.

[RangerX]

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-ke ... inson.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

More items for consideration in Teddy's bid for sainthood.

[dbmtrman]

Hey did anyone get a chance to run out to Arlington today to see if he has risen yet?

[Jim]

And another muse on the life of Teddy.

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