well,the lunatics in my paper are out in full force against Kennedy

As you may recall,I had this letter printed last week
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6404753

Well,here is the response
http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2009/08/31/opinion/doc4a9c1f91c1b40264973911.txt
To the Editor,

This letter is in reference to the letter from Elizabeth Dawson published in the Aug. 27 edition.

Apparently the writer of the letter was unaware of some of the facts concerning Senator Edward Kennedy since they were omitted from the letter. Here are some things to consider, just facts, few commentaries.

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 and 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 the U.S. 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 1980s 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 p.m., 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 pleaded 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 40 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, 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.

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 to make this jerk a hero — how quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is.

Jim Sibley,

Midlothian

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2009/08/31/opinion/doc4a9a118acb9a4510189911.txt
The other side of Sen. Kennedy
Published: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:46 AM CDT
Paul Perry
Guest columnist

Mary Jo Kopechne never had a chance to join the national health-care debate, nor was she buried at government expense. Kennedy-inclined journalists in Massachusetts and a few on the national level tried to do that for the political family. They also helped manage the damage for the now-deceased Kennedy brother.

On July 18, 1969, there was a party on the grounds of a secluded cottage; in attendance were six young, unmarried female staffers from Bobby Kennedy’s tragic presidential campaign and six men, only one of whom was unmarried. Thirty-seven-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the five married men at the party.

Sometime after 11 p.m. (the exact time is disputed), Sen. Ted Kennedy and Miss Kopechne left in Senator Kennedy’s car. Kennedy was familiar with the area. It was frequently used for family getaways. Nevertheless, as he much later reported to authorities, he took a wrong turn, some say purposefully – but that’s a stretch. He did recklessly launch his Oldsmobile off Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond, which connects to the saltwater of Massachusetts Bay. Ted Kennedy made it out of the vehicle alive. Miss Kopechne did not.

Kennedy, reportedly a strong swimmer at that time, said he dived down several times to try to rescue Mary Jo. At some point, the United States Senator from Massachusetts returned to the cottage where his friends were – along the way passing several houses with working telephones, as well as a firehouse with a pay phone, according to official reports. He supposedly returned with two of his fellow partiers, a cousin, Joseph Gargan, and a friend, Paul Markum, and tried to rescue Miss Kopechne.

Kennedy is reported to have returned to his motel room in Edgertown, Mass., by swimming across what is referred to as the Edgertown Channel or Sound, normally a swift-flowing body of water. The time was 2:25 a.m. While it has been noted that Gargan and Markum visited with him around 7:30 the next morning, the accident was not reported to officials until about 9 a.m.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s license and a light sentence were suspended. He was not effectively punished for leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The diver who recovered the body of Mary Jo Kopechne stated that he thought she could have lived up to two hours after the accident due to what he thought was a large air pocket in the car and the position of Mary Jo’s body. In short, Sen. Kennedy’s disregard for the laws he swore an oath to uphold could have cost Mary Jo her life.

Given the power the Kennedys hold in the State of Massachusetts, it’s no wonder the inquest was held in secret by order of the State Supreme Court. A follow-up but local grand jury investigation took no action. In spite of the attending pressures, presiding judge James A. Boyle of the original inquest released a finding that Kennedy’s “negligent driving appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.”

The senator was a champion of liberal causes. I would argue he was far more liberal than either of his two brothers who were assassinated, but in the one instance where his personal actions could made the difference for a regular person, he faltered. It could be argued he was responsible for her death. Even Jimmie Carter has been critical of Kennedy’s lack of action in a crisis during the 1980 Presidential campaign.

The senator’s death is now being used in an attempt to breath life into a stalled proposal for a national medical care system that could require your doctor to seek the permission of bureaucratic committees in order to treat you for serious, even life-threatening, conditions. In some cases your treatment might have to be approved by four or more committees. Your doctor could be prosecuted for moving ahead with your treatment without federal permission. The delay could cause you many hours of pain, if not your life, as it has done for others in nations with similar systems. Our senators and congressmen will, of course, have their own system – it will be better than yours. Ironically, Sen. Kennedy was a champion of the new delay-filled proposal; perhaps it could have similar effects to his delays in June 1969, which perhaps cost Mary Jo Kopechne her life.

Paul D. Perry is a contributing columnist for the Daily Light. He is a local businessman and mediator and a former Ellis County justice of the peace.

nearly identical.

Well I know what I will demand that the press brings up when Laura Bush dies...

Except the media never brings up the past when one of the great Republican party dies.

That should cut them down to size. GWB was no paragon of Republican family values either.

...that Edward Kennedy did not receive preferential treatment, both when it comes to Harvard and the Chappaquiddick incident.

Of course the right will exploit that at every opportunity.

What they cannot get their tiny little heads around, is the fact that Senator Kennedy was *loved* by so many of his constituents as well as most of his fellow Senators.

Let them spew, it's all they have. Morans.

I never knew. :eyes:

In the final days of the John Kennedy campaign I spent close to 6 weeks on the road with Ted Kennedy
and that was more than 40 years ago. I found him bright, interested in the issues and in talking
about them, and an all around real nice guy. I've always been an old time music fan and that was
another side of Ted that I remember with him leading late night sing alongs of an amazing variety
of old time songs. There were times when even though we had a busy day of campaigning the next day
Ted would keep us up til 3 in the morning. It's a nice memory to have of a remarkable statesman &
senator.

and noticed that the flags were at half-mast. He was outraged, I tell you, outraged!

The MIC are deathly afraid that Ted will become the rallying cause to pass real health care reform.

And the entirety of nine of his points is swallowed up by his eighth point: Ask a hungry senior citizen how that Meals on Wheels thing works for them. If that alone was all that Kennedy accomplished in 40 years, it would be quite enough. But there's the civil rights legislation from 1964, Title IX of which sent thousands of young women to college and careers. Yes, that immigration reform bill that enriched our country beyond measure by kicking open that golden door beside which Lady Liberty holds her lamp. An inspirational story of a life redeemed from blows and shortcomings that would have doomed a lesser man. Instead, Ted Kennedy overcame the snipings of lilliputians like Mr. Sibley to establish a legislative record that may admit to a peer but never a superior.

I wonder if Mr. Sibley's record of lifetime accomplishments could compare even remotely to this "jerk's"?

why is his supposed "intoxication" even an issue?

Actually there is just one word these folks should consider and that is redemption. We are all human and all less than perfect. What it all boils down to in the end is whether you made a serious attempt to make up for your failings.

a RW email that is making the rounds. My RW cousin in VA sent it to me Friday. He couldn't wait until Teddy was in his grave to start the dancing.
I send him the Prayers of the Faithful as recited by Teddy's grandkids in return.

oh look, a shiny thang....

Sorry it is Kennedy that they are currently distracted by, but whatever works.

opinions. He helped others. He put them before himself. He acted like a.....OMG a Christian!

a RW email that is making the rounds. My RW cousin in VA sent it to me Friday. He couldn't wait until Teddy was in his grave to start the dancing.
I send him the Prayers of the Faithful as recited by Teddy's grandkids in return.