The Real Ted Kennedy

Heard any good Mary Jo Kopechne jokes lately? According to his good friend and former New York Times magazine editor Ed Klein, the late Ted Kennedy always enjoyed a good knee slapper on the topic of Chappaquiddick. And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not surprised. You probably don’t know about the “waitress sandwich” episode either. Nor do you recall when Ted Kennedy was raising money for terrorists. Or when he tried to strike a deal with the Soviet Union to undermine US foreign policy.

Since Kennedy gained his eligibility to vote in Chicago elections, our unbiased and ever vigilant mainstream news media has only told us what a great man he was, how he cared about the less fortunate. But while Ted Kennedy used his position in the Senate to tell us how we should live, he lived a life of dissolution and used his wealth, authority and surname to escape legal responsibility.

A young friend of mine had heard of Chappaquiddick but didn’t know what it meant. She had never heard of Mary Jo Kopechne. I enlightened her as I will enlighten you.

Mary Jo Kopechne was one of three young female volunteers for Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign who joined Ted Kennedy and two friends for a party at a cabin on Chappaquiddick Island. Later that night, Kennedy and Kopechne left the party for what was almost certainly a tryst. Kennedy, who had been drinking, missed a turn and drove off a bridge. Kennedy escaped the sinking car. Kopechne did not.

After abandoning Kopechne to her fate, Kennedy swam across a narrow channel and took a room at an Edgartown hotel. Later that night he complained to the desk clerk of noisy neighbors who were disrupting his sleep.

The next day he was confronted by one of his fellow partiers and forced to alert authorities. Kopechne was found later that day in a position indicating that she survived for some time until she exhausted the oxygen in her air pocket. Kennedy received a suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident.

When the news media did mention Chappaquiddick, it was treated as though this was his only transgression in an otherwise exemplary life. Untrue.

Until the 1990’s, the Irish Republican Army was Europe’s most dangerous terrorist group, setting off bombs in public places and committing murders. Ted Kennedy was one of the IRA’s primary enablers in this country and even helped raise money through the fake charity Noraid. Kennedy eventually condemned Noraid and claimed that up until then he was ignorant of its terrorist ties, but if so, he was the last man to learn of it.

And Kennedy didn’t confine himself to subverting Great Britain. About 15 years ago, Russian president Boris Yeltsin opened the Soviet Union’s KGB files for public inspection. The news media discovered, and immediately forgot, that in 1983 Kennedy was attempting to undermine US foreign policy. He offered to sabotage Reagan’s missile defense plans in exchange for Soviet assistance to Democrats in the 1984 general elections. I don’t think that even Alger Hiss’s treachery approaches Ted Kennedy’s. But that Kennedy name and the news media’s affection shielded him once again.

In 1985, Ted Kennedy joined Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) in an assault on a cocktail waitress, which came to be known as the “waitress sandwich.” In an account verified for accuracy by the victim, Carla Gaviglio, that was published in Gentleman’s Quarterly in 1990: “As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair.”

This wretch served for decades as the conscience of the Democratic Party. The Chappaquiddick incident ended his presidential aspirations, but he never paid the slightest price for any of his other misbehaviors.

A wit once posited that, to hear people speak of the recently deceased, one might conclude that dying was a privilege reserved only for the most virtuous. Ted Kennedy’s eulogies verified that. But history should not be so kind.

Democrat Enable The Culture of Corruption

There are plenty of Democrats will ethics problems, but few are easier to understand than Christopher Dodd's. He is obviously crooked. But the party is coming together to keep this shyster in the Senate.

With Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) facing an uphill battle to win reelection next year after a series of Washington scandals battered his popularity back home, President Obama and other national Democrats are sparing no effort to help him.

Despite the scandals which left his ethics called into question, the three-decade Senate veteran is not trying to shake his Beltway image. Instead, Dodd is working furiously to show the impact of his long service by racking up big legislative accomplishments - including, potentially, a health care reform bill - before the midterm elections. And some of the national Democratic Party's biggest names are coming in to back him up.

Christopher Dodd: How To Launder A Bribe

There may be an innocent explanation for Christopher Dodd's Irish "cottage." But Occam's Razor indicates a bribe.

Irish property prices have plummeted since 2002. But a "cottage" in County Galway owned by Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has tripled in value during the same period, according to a financial disclosure form filed by the Senator this month.

There are two possible explanations for this remarkable turn of fortune. Maybe Mr. Dodd is luckier than a leprechaun. Or could it be that he paid well below the market price when he bought out a co-owner in 2002 and had undervalued the property accordingly? If it's the latter, then Mr. Dodd received a "gift," in IRS parlance, and should have declared it on his financial disclosure form that year. He did not. Oh, and by the way, the seller at that low, low price has been the business partner of a man for whom Mr. Dodd lobbied to receive a Presidential pardon.

There aren't that many $660,000 cottages around. It's no wonder that Dodd has insisted upon calling it a "cottage" all these years.

DOJ Corruption Unit In Disarray

Hope and Change!

Two months after prosecutors abandoned the criminal conviction of former senator Ted Stevens, the Justice Department unit that polices public corruption remains in chaos, coping with newly discovered evidence that threatens to undermine other cases while department leaders struggle to reshuffle the ranks.

William Welch and Brenda Morris, senior managers in the department's Public Integrity Section who supervised the case against the Alaska Republican, have been moved into other roles following the transfer this month of two of their subordinates, who worked on lengthy investigations of Alaskan influence peddling, according to four sources.

At the same time, document-sharing lapses that provoked the Stevens turnaround are also affecting other bribery prosecutions in the state, prompting authorities to take the extraordinary step of releasing two Alaska lawmakers from prison late last week. A new team of government lawyers and FBI agents is reviewing thousands of pages of evidence, trying to assuage the concerns of judges and fielding complaints from defense attorneys.

The developments represent a continuing distraction inside the Justice Department, where new leaders had vowed to restore morale in the career ranks after allegations of political interference during the Bush era, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

How convenient for Christopher Dodd, Charlie Rangel, Jack Murtha, Peter Visclosky, Jim Moran, Roland Burris, .......

AIG And The Democrats' Cheap Populism

I fear that Americans are about to learn to their sorrow that moral exhibitionism and cheap populism make a miserable brew. In its permanent campaign, Team Obama picks a villain of the week and initiates a campaign of outrage and vilification against that target of opportunity, hoping to create the illusion of Obama as a dragon slayer defending ordinary Americans against some domestic evil doer. Last week it was Rush Limbaugh. This week it’s AIG. But these brouhahas are pure smokescreen.

The bonuses that provoked so much chest pounding were announced more than a year ago, long before AIG took a cent of bailout money. The man who wrote the legislation granting AIG its no-strings-attached bailout was Timothy Geithner, the tax cheat whom Obama judged as so indispensible to his Treasury Department that Geithner’s tax evasion was overlooked. One of the outraged is Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Waitress Sandwich), who inserted an amendment into Obama’s porkulus bill that explicitly exempted bonuses from limitations on executive pay. Dodd was the only senator to attract more Wall Street campaign contributions than Barack Obama. And Dodd has been rewarded with extra special low interest rate mortgages from the scandal-ridden Countrywide Financial. He also traded his influence for a sweet deal on an Irish vacation home.

Unfortunately, populist demagoguery sells. And when it’s combined with moral vanity, it traps its users. Honest men would have admitted that those bonuses were AIG’s inescapable contractual obligation. But morally vain men who leap to the podium and run their mouths before informing their grandstanding cannot admit error. And this moral vanity is actually hobbling our government.

During the campaign, Barack Obama harvested a great deal of populist hay by bashing lobbyists. (Disclosure: I have actually been a lobbyist.) Lobbyists are often the only people who actually read the laws and are smart enough to interpret the gibberish for those who vote. Excluding lobbyists from executive appointments deprives government of the most talented and informed candidates.

According to insiders, including Barney Frank (D-Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, Obama’s Treasury Department is terribly understaffed due to the inability of the administration to find even minimally qualified candidates who have paid their taxes for fear that the media will actually report these ethical lapses.

“I think it's a problem, although I will say this - for the media to blame that entirely on the Senate seems to me a little bit self serving,” Frank said. “I mean, the media is the problem here, in part. It is the over-focus on part of people in the media to relatively minor infractions that causes this. I guarantee you my colleagues would not, on their own, be doing this. So I do think we are in a culture now where a lack of perfection exacts too strong a toll, but that's the politicians reacting to the media.”

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, actually agreed that the media were to blame. “I take your point, Mr. Frank, Mr. Chairman,” she said. "You're right and we plead guilty because this is, this culture right now of ‘gotcha’ has gotten completely out of control.”

When I try to picture any reporter confessing to overzealous scrutiny of a Republican administration, somehow, I can’t. I just lack the imagination.

The same Barack Obama who had pundits swooning for admitting he screwed up with his appointment of Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services, now cannot bring himself to confess that his populist campaign proscription against lobbyists left him with too small a talent pool to allow him to staff his administration. An ignorant compulsion for moral exhibitionism drove his demagoguery and now his vanity prevents him from admitting his error and making a correction that would greatly increase the talent pool he can draw on. He might even be able to find someone who pays his taxes.

Democrats invested a great deal into their demonization of the firm Dick Cheney presided over before returning to public service. The oil services giant Halliburton eventually took the hint that it was not welcome in the United States and moved its operations to Dubai. Dubai has made it clear that it would like to become the world’s financial capital. If The One adheres to his populist agenda of limiting Wall Street pay, that talent will take their skills to where they are rewarded.

Christopher Dodd: Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

Yesterday, Christopher Dodd insisted that he had not inserted an amendment into the porkulus bill that permitted the AIG amendments. Today, he had to confess that he did.

Too bad we can't call him before a tribunal.

Not Even The NY Times Can Stomach Christopher Dodd

Christopher Dodd's obfuscations regarding the sweetheart mortgage deals he received from Countrywide and what it cost America for him to receive them have finally gotten the attention of the New York Times.

According to company e-mails unearthed and reported by Portfolio.com, Countrywide waived fees and provided mortgages at discounted rates when Mr. Dodd refinanced his homes in the District of Columbia and Connecticut. The favorable treatment could save him thousands of dollars over the course of the loans.

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating whether the terms of the loans violated its rules on disclosing gifts. But such an investigation does not preclude Mr. Dodd from being candid.

Mr. Dodd admits he was extended “courtesies” by Countrywide. It’s time for him to extend some courtesy to his constituents and the rest of the nation and release the records on the mortgages, without delay.

Or, maybe the Times is tired of being 10 steps behind the Hartford Courant.

Sen. Christopher Dodd sounded like Dr. Seuss without the depth last week. "It is what it is," declared Dodd, mistaking Hartford for Whoville, when he told The Courant's Rick Green that he had no plans to release documents from his $800,000 in sweetheart mortgages from subprime titan Countrywide Financial.

"There is nothing to the story and I'm just not going to keep on repeating it," pronounced Dodd, as he morphed into Yertle the Turtle. "'You hush up your mouth!' howled the mighty King Yertle. 'You've no right to talk to the world's highest turtle.'"

Looking For Someone To Blame

Irony of ironies. Christopher Dodd is holding hearings on who's to blame for the mortgage meltdown. The real news is who is missing from the witness list.

Countrywide: The Secret's Out

The New York Times finally got around to letting its readers know about Senators Kent Conrad and Christopher Dodd's involvement in the Countrywide scandal, but portrays them as victims.

Gateway Pundit pronounces BS.

Countrywide: The Secret Scandal

Once again, the mainstream media is largely uninterested in a scandal that has swept up Democrats. New Yorkers who rely upon the New York Times as the sole source for their news would know nothing about it. Fortunately, New York does have a real newspaper - The Post.

Two influential US senators got "VIP" loans from a leading subprime mortgage lender that saved them tens of thousands of dollars, it was reported last night.

The Democratic pols, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both received the highly favorable loans under the designation "Friend of Angelo," a reference to embattled Countrywide head Angelo Mozilo, Condé Nast Portfolio reported.

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, while Conrad is chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee. The two senators refinanced properties through the VIP program in 2003 and 2004, the report said.

Others who received "FOA" loans include Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bush who resigned in April, and Donna Shalala, who was secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration.

The report came one day after Democratic heavyweight Jim Johnson stepped down as chief of Barack Obama's vice-presidential search committee after revelations he'd gotten Countrywide loans at very favorable rates because of Mozilo.

I'm certain that these are not the Christopher Dodd, Kent Conrad, Jim Johnson or Donna Shalala that Barack Obama knew.