Political Headline of the Day

I liked this from Godfather Politics:

Ted Kennedy Let Mary Jo Kopechne Die in the Back Seat of His Car While Mitt Romney Cut a Kid’s Hair

Today's Teddy Kennedy Award Winner

At least this woman survived:

Democratic California Assemblyman Roger Hernandez has been charged for drunken driving by local authorities, after police caught the politician weaving through traffic with a 29-year-old woman in his car.

Good thing there wasn't a bridge around.

Bobblehead Assassins

Who thought this was a good idea?

Bobblehead dolls of the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln have been pulled from sale at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitors' center bookstore.

The dolls of John Wilkes Booth with a handgun were removed from shelves on Saturday, a day after a reporter for Hanover's The Evening Sun newspaper asked about them, officials said.

"On rare occasions, there's an item that might cause concern, and obviously the bobbleheads appeared to be doing that," Gettysburg Foundation spokeswoman Dru Anne Neil said Tuesday.

Can you imagine a bobblehead Lee Harvey Oswald complete with Carcano rifle? Or a bobblehead Teddy Kennedy complete with 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88?  Of course not.

The Teddy Memorial

No, not a memorial to skimpy women's nightwear (though now that I think about it, that might be appropriate in this case), but a memorial to the corpulent late Massachusetts senator:

The Kennedy family transferred ownership of the main home in their compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate on Monday. The institute will use the 9,055-square-foot waterfront home for educational seminars and will create a plan to allow limited visits by the public, according to a statement. The Kennedy family, which still owns other homes in the compound, will continue to use the property on a limited basis.

I hope they use this picture somewhere.

If they're going to do this right they need to park a partially submerged 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 in the surf.

"Kennedy's" Miniseries Finds a TV Home

It won't be on the History Channel as originally intended, but will be available to millions of homes via REELZ (from The Hollywood Reporter):

The controversial miniseries will world premiere on April 3 on the ReelzChannel, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Producers of the ambitious project from 24 executive producer Joel Surnow and writer Stephen Kronish have struck a deal with the independent, family-owned cable network to air the 8-part miniseries, which was abruptly yanked from the History channel on January 7 amid pressure from the Kennedys over its depiction of the political family. At the time, History owner A&E Television Networks told THR that “after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”

But it is certainly a fit for ReelzChannel, a 4-year old independent cable channel owned by Minnesota-based Hubbard Communications that is available in 60 million homes nationwide on services including DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Charter Communications.

Channel 238 on DirecTv. I'll be watching.

Defense Department Bill Contains $8 Million for Ted Kennedy Shrine

Geez...from the Traditional Values Coalition:

"Just when Americans started to hope that the liberal leadership in the Senate had learned its lesson last November, they do something which is so blatantly hypocritical and offensive.

"Few legislators despised the U.S. military more than the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

"So where does the Senate include funding for (take a deep breath here because this is going to make your blood boil!) the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate to the tune of $8 million?

"It's right there on page 383. It is part of a $41,400,000 appropriation for the Department of Defense!

"This is money, which could be spent on more flak jackets for the troops or better armor on the trucks they ride in through the streets of Afghanistan, is headed for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

"Money which could be spent to assist military families so that they are no longer required to rely on food stamps while one of their family members is risking his/her life to defend us.

"Money which should be spent to equip our sons and daughters who have sacrificed huge chunks of their lives to defend us is going to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

"It is mind-boggling! A taxpayer funded shrine for Ted Kennedy!

I'm hoping the shrine will include a sculpture of an Oldsmobile being pulled out of a tidal channel.

I See Dead People

Harry Reid is having visions:

Reid: Greatest Living Americans Are Robert Byrd And Ted Kennedy...

That will come as a shock to both of their families.

Jimmuh Carter Slams Ted Kennedy

Somebody needs to get word to Jimmuh that it's not polite to speak ill of the dead.  That's what conservatives were told when Kennedy assumed room temperature.

However, Jimmuh, who's never met a grudge he couldn't obsess over, takes after dead Teddy over the issue of health care:

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy is widely hailed for devoting his political career to the cause of providing health care to all Americans. But in an interview set to air on 60 Minutes Sunday, former President Jimmy Carter says Kennedy is the one to blame for delaying legislation to provide such care.

"The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed," Carter told CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl. "It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill."

Carter said Kennedy blocked the bill out of spite in advance of the Massachusetts senator's unusual, yet ultimately unsuccessful 1980 bid to unseat him.

"He did not want to see me have a major success in that realm of life," Carter said.

Grumpy old man.

Dems Can't Find a Candidate in Massachusetts That Isn't Named Kennedy

How weak must the Dem field in Massachusetts be if the only candidate they can find to challenge Scott Brown is a dead Kennedy's wife?

Nearly one year after Edward M. Kennedy's death, prominent Democrats in Washington and Massachusetts are promoting his widow as the party's best shot at winning back the Senate seat he held for nearly five decades.

Though she has seemed to bat down the idea of challenging Sen. Scott Brown (R) in 2012, Victoria Reggie Kennedy has been in some ways acting the part of a candidate. She has raised her public profile by campaigning for other politicians and appearing at events across the country.

The prospect of her candidacy is fast becoming a source of family tension, according to several Kennedy intimates. Some relatives fear that a campaign against Brown -- a popular figure even in liberal Massachusetts -- would distract Kennedy from promoting her late husband's legacy, they said.

If there's one thing they ought to hope for it's something to distract people from Ted Kennedy's legacy.

Happy 70th!

A very happy 70th birthday to Mary Jo Kopechne.  Her kids and grandkids must be very proud.

Oh wait...never mind.

Cape Wind Project Approved by Interior Department

That rumbling sound you hear at Arlington is Teddy Kennedy spinning in his grave:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday approved the construction of a controversial wind

farm off the coast of Cape Cod that puts the Obama administration at odds with one of the president's biggest supporters: the Kennedy family.

Salazar's decision will affect thousands of residents, local businesses and tourists who flock to the seashore paradise each summer -- and sets the course for the building of other such offshore wind farms in states from New York to Michigan.

The Cape Wind project, which will be the first in the nation, had created a bipartisan jumble that pit environmentalists and lawmakers against each other on both sides of the dispute over the 130 planned turbines -- whose windmill arms would extend over 400 feet above the water.

Salazar said the decision marks a "new direction in our nation's energy future," claiming the wind farm will be "one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the nation," cutting carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons annually.

The offshore wind farm, to be built five miles off the Massachusetts coast, has been blasted by critics like the Kennedys as an "economic boondoggle" that will cost taxpayers billions, hurt commercial fishing and pose a danger to wildlife along a pristine stretch of the Nantucket Sound.

"It's a boondoggle of the worst kind," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and the son of the late Bobby Kennedy, said in an interview Tuesday with FoxNews.com. "It's going to cost the people of Massachusetts $4 billion over the next 20 years in extra costs."

And yet I've never heard RFK Jr. decry the gasoline taxes that are constantly being increased, thus raising energy costs for all those people in Massachusetts and elsewhere.  The Kennedy's just don't want to look out the window of their family compound and see anything other than underage girls.

Sen. Brown Hits The Dems on Obamacare

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) took some shots at the Dems over their insistence on cramming down the Obamacare bill:

Newly arrived Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts accused President Barack Obama and Democrats on Saturday of a "bitter, destructive and endless" drive to pass health overhaul legislation that Brown warned would be disastrous.

"An entire year has gone to waste," Brown said in the weekly GOP radio and Internet address. "Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and many more jobs are in danger. Even now, the president still hasn't gotten the message.

"Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway."

Brown himself can claim responsibility for the Democrats' failure to pass health overhaul legislation to date. They were on the verge of doing so before Brown claimed the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in a special election upset in January, depriving Democrats of their filibuster-proof supermajority and throwing the health care effort into limbo....

Brown, as a state senator in Massachusetts, voted in favor of the universal-coverage law in that state. The bill he supported in Massachusetts has a number of features in common with the Democrats' legislation, including a mandate for nearly everyone to be covered.

But he campaigned on a promise to be the Republicans' crucial 41st vote against Obama's health plan, and said Saturday that his victory amounted to a message from voters that Washington should "get its priorities right."

"We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt," Brown said.

Just think, had Ted Kennedy retired when it was clear his health was in serious decline chances are Scott Brown would never have ended up in his Senate seat. However, Kennedy delayed until he finally passed away and by that time the tide had already turned against Kennedy's signature issue, thus paving the way for a Republican to win Kennedy's seat. To some extent Kennedy is the reason Obamacare hasn't passed yet.

Kennedy Miniseries Has Libs in an Uproar

If lefty Oliver Stone can make movies about Reagan and Nixon, then I don't see why a conservative can't make a miniseries about the Kennedys:

A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage has been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt.

The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film about Ronald Reagan, the dispute over the embryonic Kennedy series seems to say as much about the enduring place of the Kennedys as a battleground in the culture wars as it does about history itself.

The mini-series, called “The Kennedys,” is the brainchild of Joel Surnow, a creator of the Fox action show “24” and an outspoken political conservative. That raised alarms among Kennedy partisans when the History channel said in December that it would pick up the project.

Now a documentary filmmaker who makes no secret of his liberal politics is releasing an Internet video in which Kennedy scholars say the scripts offer a portrait of the president and his family that is, at best, inaccurate, and at worst, a hatchet job.

“It was political character assassination,” the filmmaker, Robert Greenwald, said of the screenplays in a telephone interview. “It was sexist titillation and pandering, and it was turning everything into a cheap soap opera of the worst kind.”

In other words, a typical Kennedy weekend.

The piece goes on with this:

Mr. Greenwald said he is hoping that his 13-minute video and an accompanying petition, at stopkennedysmears.com, will take on lives of their own on the Web. A title card at the film’s conclusion reads: “Tell the History Channel I refuse to watch right-wing character assassination masquerading as ‘history.’ ”

The charges come as a surprise to the members of the production team behind “The Kennedys,” who say that the scripts for the eight-part series are still being rewritten, and that criticism of the project is premature.

I'll tell you right now that even though I generally despise the Kennedys, I'll watch this miniseries of Joel Surnow makes it. It'll probably be much more accurate than anything Hollywood would typically produce.

The Last Kennedy to Retire

I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that 6 of 10 voters in his district want someone else (from The Fix):

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy will retire after eight terms in office, bringing an end to his House career just months after his father, legendary Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, passed away.

An informed Capitol Hill source confirmed Kennedy's retirement to the Fix after it was first reported by the Associated Press.

Kennedy has easily held Rhode Island's 1st district since 1994 despite the occasional attempt by Republicans to knock him off.

Kennedy's time in Congress was decidedly uneven. He was rumored to be planning a Senate bid in 2000 but decided against running. He was tasked with chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in that same cycle with expectations within the party that they would seize back control of the House. It didn't happen.

After his stint at the DCCC, Kennedy took on a far less high-profile role in Congress -- emerging only infrequently and not always in the best light. In the spring of 2006 Kennedy crashed his car into a police barricade near Capitol Hill; he entered rehab for addiction and depression days later. Over the summer, Kennedy admitted himself to a rehabilitation facility again.

Patrick Kennedy's retirement means that for the first time in nearly five decades there will not be a member of the Kennedy family in Congress. His father, who served Massachusetts in the Senate for more than four decades, died on August 25.

The D.C. nightlife will be a lot quieter without Teddy and Patrick. Waitresses will be able to rest a lot more peacefully.

Camelot Emancipation Day

Howie Carr writes today about the new world that dawned on Massachusetts this morning:

To all of you Kennedy groupies out there, go find yourself a grief counselor.

Call the Samaritans. As the sign on the Sagamore bridge says, suicide is not the answer.

This morning, for the first time since January 1953, there is neither a Kennedy nor a Kennedy-family retainer “representing” Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

The moonbats are really in mourning now. This was worse than finding out yesterday that their Priuses may be ... unsafe at any speed.

To all you grief-stricken blow-in drifters on Morrissey Boulevard, go home to New York, mix up a pitcher of brandy Alexanders and put some Judy Garland on the stereo. Do not despair - after all, you still have Barney Frank.

Maybe someday you’ll have a new generation of Kennedys to cover up for, to point out how they are turning their lives around after (fill in the blank) a cheating scandal, a drug scandal, a rape accusation, a blonde in the pond, an overturned Jeep on Nantucket, an extramarital affair with a polo player, a drug overdose, a waitress sandwich . . .

Not only that, but yesterday we learned that the last of them in Congress, Patrick “Patches” Kennedy of Rhode Island could be knocked out of office. A new WPRI-TV poll showed him with low 35 percent approval rating, and 62 percent disapproval.

Yesterday was Camelot Emancipation Day. For taxpayers, it was Christmas and the Super Bowl rolled into one.

Howie goes on to list the Kennedy family's greatest hits. Read it all.

Incredibly Stupid Political Question of the Day

From Barbara Walters to Sen.-Elect Scott Brown:

“How do you think that Senator Ted Kennedy would feel about your election? Do you think he'd be disappointed?”

Nah, Teddy's too busy swatting away pitchforks to worry about the election in Massachusetts.

The Blame Game

The circular firing squad action has started for Democrats and the White House:

As voters head to the polls in Massachusetts, nervous Democrats have already begun to blame one another for putting at risk the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for more than 40 years.

Many angry Democrats blame their candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, for running a sluggish campaign that let Republican Scott Brown set the contours of the race.

Some Democratic strategists lay the fault at the feet of President Barack Obama, saying he should have done more to sell the party’s agenda.

And in private conversations, Hill sources say White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has blamed Coakley, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake for failing to see Brown’s surge in time to stop it.

“With the legislative and political stakes so high, it’s unbelievable that the Senate committee and White House let this race get so out of hand,” said one senior Washington Democrat. “There’s a lot of blame to go around. Martha Coakley is only one of the problems here.”

If the election goes as hoped, the aftermath will be plenty entertaining.

Mr. Brown Is Ready to Go To Washington

He may be taking a page from Roland Burris' playbook. Remember when Dems threatened not to seat him because they didn't like the way he came into office and Burris showed up on Capitol Hill with the press in tow and embarrassed Harry Reid? Looks like Scott Brown may have similar ideas:

Insurgent Massachussetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown told CNN he expects to be installed quickly as Massachusetts' next senator should he win the state's special election Tuesday.

Asked about the state of the race, Brown said he's still campaigning as if he's running "down 30 points."

But sounding confident, the GOP state senator says he's made plans to travel to Washington Friday if he's victorious.

Brown warned any plan to quickly pass health care reform before the results are certified in Massachusetts would send the wrong message to Americans.

The key will be the margin of victory (of course, assuming Brown wins). If the margin looks like what we're seeing in the last flight of polls (6%-10%) the Dems will have a very tough time stalling Brown's seating in the Senate. Anything closer will give them an excuse to wait for certification or the results from a recount if that becomes necessary.

For what it's worth, when Ted Kennedy won that seat in 1962 he was seated in the Senate the following day. It can be done.

Political Quote of the Day

From Democrat Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Chairman of the DCCC:

"Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?"

We're still trying to figure out if he's talking about George W. Bush or Teddy Kennedy.

Bonus Political Cartoon of the Day

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