Another Kennedy Drunk-Driving Cover-Up?

[Diuretic]

Well that went right off track didn't it?

As jillian said, "why deflect the issue?"

Privilege protects its own. That was my point.

Now if we should continue to painfully (ouch - pun) dissect the hunting accident no worries, quite happy to do so - in another thread (being a latecomer I'm not sure if it was already done, I suspect it was).

But on this incident may I say, I'm not surprised. May I reiterate that the FOP is right in calling for an investigation. May I make the point again that privilege protects itself. And when I say "privilege" I mean it in a strictly non-partisan manner.

I believe the law should apply equally to all. I know it doesn't. This is simply another example of reality triumphing over principle.

And just in case I get slammed for picking on the US (I'm not, but I've learned the value of the pre-emptive strike) I can introduce the case of the DUI ex-Attorney General serving Judge in a state in Australia who put his BMW into someone else's car and was pissed as a parrot and....and I probably can't go on about it too much because of defamation laws but let's say he was dealt with "inappropriately" or the well-connected ex-wife who did the same thing with her BMW coming back from a liquid lunch at a flash Sydney restaurant and somehow evaded the usual procedures.

I might leave it there. I have plenty of examples to back up my argument that privilege looks after itself and that there is no one law for all. This is just another example.

 

[GotZoom]

The lastest is that Kennedy denies being drunk.

He says he was suffering the effect from "Prescription Drugs."

Funny how he is claiming this just days after Rush is all over the news.

How convenient.

 

[Diuretic]

He's had time to speak to a lawyer.

 

[Annie]

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5056

Patrick Kennedy and Cynthia McKinney

In politics, timing is everything. From my perspective, Patrick Kennedy’s timing could not be better. We are in for a treat as the mid-term elections loom in half a year. The GOP’s opportunity has arrived.

Cynthia McKinney’s reaction to the obvious and blatant favoritism enjoyed by Patrick Kennedy is likely to be something to savor. She is already on the record about the indignities she received at the hand of a white cop. But now she sees that for the white boy, supervisors stepped in, relieving the officers at the scene and driving the staggering Kennedy home.

She faces potential legal jeopardy, and now a rich white boy walks away without so much as a breathalyzer test from circumstances that would ordinarily demand a drunk driving investigation. At least one cop reportedly says he smelled alcohol.

There are reports that a complain has been filed with the union over the supervisors coming in. Supposedly, the Capitol Police have a bit of a generation gap between the older supervisory ranks, accustomed to treating Congress like royalty, and the post 9/11 recruits, many of them ex-military, who see their job as protecting the Capitol from serious terror threats and who see the rules applying to all.

Kennedy has a history of trouble:

Kennedy’s past includes several troubling episodes, starting with his treatment in 1986 for cocaine use. More recently, a charter company accused him of causing $28,000 in damage to a rented yacht in 2000. That same year, he acknowledged that he was “on a lot of different medications for, among other things, depression,” and was accused of shoving an airport security guard at Los Angeles International Airport when she tried to make him check his bag.He was in a traffic incident last month in his home district, according to Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who reported that the mishap occurred as Kennedy was hurrying into the parking lot of a pharmacy in Portsmouth, R.I.

Never known for self-control or thoughtfulness, Representative McKinney is going to have a hard time keeping her mouth shut.

She could denounce favoritism, of course. But she is asking for favoritism herself, so that won’t work out too well. Even McKinney can see this.

So she will demand “equal treatment” – meaning equal immunity from the laws which govern the rest of us.

But that argument raises awkward questions for the rest of the United States Congress. We are going into an election, with opponents of either party ready to remind the voters that Congressman X has lost touch with the ordinary folks back home. One would expect a flurry of statements from members of Congress affirming the need elected representatives to live by the same laws as the rest of us.

But to affirm this would then lead the demand that Congress hold hearings on the Capitol Police’s handling of the Kennedy incident. That is a demand that no Congressman wants to heed. They enjoy the special treatment, the outright coddling, they receive from the Capitol Police, as much as you and I would. And the Capitol Police, whose budget is passed by Congress, are happy to oblige.

But we are in the midst of a really serious election, much-hyped by the Democrats as a chance to turn over control of Congress. Nothing concentrates the Congressional mind so wonderfully as the prospect of losing majorities and maybe one’s own seat. The GOP, on the receiving end of a campaign against its own corruption, can perform political jiu-jitsu and turn the issue against the Democrats, with well-timed hearings on the Capitol Police and its treatment of members.

If they don’t, they are going to hear from me and my friends. The GOP base is already angry about a number of issues. The last thing a GOP-controlled Congress ought to do is stand for the principle of immunity from the demands they impose on the rest of us. They will hear this from the grass roots, right as they head home more often as campaigners.

Who will be the first member of Congress to stand-up and demand hearings on the Capitol Police’s treatment of members of Congress?

Thomas Lifson 5 05 06

 

[Annie]

Patrick speaks on tax cuts:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/415619p-351092c.html

In D.C., they see him as Tragic Patrick

Poor Patrick.

It's not what people would be expected to say about a rich kid who sailed into a House seat on the strength of his family name.

But in Washington, where politics is both profession and blood sport, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) has long been seen as a figure of sadness.

"Most people feel sorry for him because he's obviously troubled," said a veteran Democratic consultant after the 38-year-old Kennedy announced his return to drug rehab after crashing his car on Capitol Hill.

"He walks around as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders," the consultant said. "He's had these unfortunate brushes with the law and with addiction. He came to Congress with a tremendous amount of promise, and it hasn't really worked out for him."

Kennedy was just 21 and still a student at Providence College when he was first elected to the Rhode Island Legislature in 1988.

He was barely 26 - not many years past his drug and alcohol treatment and his testimony in cousin William Kennedy Smith's 1991 Palm Beach rape trial - when he ran for the open seat from Rhode Island's 1st District. All the leading lights of America's royal family - including his powerful father, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, and cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. - turned out to secure him a landslide victory.

Kennedy's decade in the House has been marked by prodigious fund-raising, occasionally bad behavior (such as shoving an African-American airport security worker) and a tendency to blurt out things he quickly regrets. "I don't need Bush's tax cut," Kennedy shouted to a shocked crowd of young Democrats in 2003. "I have never worked a f-----g day in my life."

The Democratic operative said: "He's like the boss' son who sort of falls into the family business and doesn't really belong."

But another D.C. Democrat, who has worked closely with Kennedy, was more sympathetic. "I felt he has always been striving to live up to people's expectations of what a Kennedy should be. The weight of that must be tremendous."

Originally published on May 7, 2006