Teddy Kennedy Last Man On Earth Qualified To Question Ethics, Integrity Of Judicial Nominees

By John Lofton, Editor

ACE VENTURA actually a more skilled questioner and point-maker than Kennedy

There may be a more disgusting, nauseating spectacle than Teddy Kennedy sitting in judgment on a Supreme Court nominee’s ethics and integrity, but I’m not sure what this might be. But, there he was on national TV, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking his questions and making his points with all the skills of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Kennedy among other things:

— Was suspended from Harvard because of cheating when he was caught getting another student to take a Spanish test for him.

— Had his father get his Army duty changed to two years from the four years he signed up for. He ended up a guard at NATO headquarters in Paris rather than in Korea where a war was going on.

— Was turned down by Harvard Law School because of poor grades.

— Was arrested four times, while a student at the University of Virginia, for reckless driving, racing with a cop to avoid arrest and for operating a vehicle without a license.

MARY JO KOPECHNE might have been saved if help summoned immediately, according to underwater diver who retrieved her body

— Killed a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, by driving her off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. Following this “accident,” which was, arguably, negligent homicide, Kennedy made 17 credit card phone calls. But it was not until the 18th phone call, nine hours after his car ran off this bridge, that Kennedy reported this “accident.” The frogman who retrieved the dead girl’s body said that he believed she might have been saved if help had been summoned immediately. Kennedy received a two-month suspended sentence, serving no time in jail.

Whenever I think about Kennedy and judges, I think about his support for Boston Municipal Court Judge Francis X. Morrissey. In September of 1965, President Johnson nominated Morrissey as a U. S. District Judge for Massachusetts. Teddy Kennedy was the Congressional sponsor of this turkey.

How bad was Morrissey? He was so bad that Bernard Segal, a spokesman for the American Bar Association, said of him: “From the standpoint of legal training, legal experience and legal ability, we have not had any case where these factors were so lacking - and I say so to my deep regret.” Massachusetts Chief Federal District Court Judge Charles Wyzanski said the “obvious fact” was that “the only discernible ground for the nomination of Judge Morrissey is his service to the Kennedy family.” And the former aide to President Kennedy, Theodore Sorensen, said that Morrissey was a “self-confessed pol” and a “political confidence man.”

The “New York Times” editorially attacked Morrissey for failing to reveal that he was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1933 after a three-month cram course at a “law school” consisting of a “dean” and one “professor” but no law library. The “Times” accused Kennedy of sharing in “responsibility for degrading the Federal Judiciary.” The paper said that Kennedy’s recommendation of Morrissey reflected “very badly” on the Senator’s good sense. And it called Kennedy’s defense of Morrissey a “tiresome display of familial arrogance and personal effrontery.”

In his remarks at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, speaking to Judge Samuel Alito, Kennedy spoke solemnly of the importance of the “rule of law.” When President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, Kennedy excoriated this decision asking: “Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?” Well, it’s obviously the latter. Because if we had equal justice under law, Kennedy would still be serving time in a jail somewhere in Massachusetts!

In his questioning of Alito, Kennedy badgered him about a case involving the alleged misbehavior of some U.S. marshals who went into a home and, among things, shoved a man’s wife making her sit down in a chair. Years ago, when Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court, Kennedy criticized Bork’s record on women saying he was “wrong on equal rights for women.”

Kennedy is concerned about the mistreatment of women?! Yep, that’s what he wants us to believe. But, his own record on women — for example his first wife Joan — is not really all that good, to put it charitably. How he treated her is reported in detail by Marcia Chellis in her book “Living With The Kennedys: The Joan Kennedy Story (Simon and Schuster, 1985). Chellis, who first met Joan Kennedy in 1977, was her friend and administrative assistant for five years.

Regarding the “accident” at Chappaquiddick, which occurred when she and her children were at Cape Cod, Joan is quoted as saying: “No one told me anything. Probably because I was pregnant, I was told to stay upstairs in my bedroom. Downstairs the house was full or people, aides, friends, lawyers. Ted called his girlfriend Helga before he or anyone even told me that was going on. It was the worst experience of my life. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. No one told me anything. I had to stay upstairs and when I picked up the extension phone I could hear Ted talking to Helga.”

JOAN KENNEDY told by Jackie that serial adultery par for the course for Kennedy men

In sickening detail, Chellis tells of Kennedy’s “infidelities” which “devastated” his wife and were, it is implied, a factor in her alcoholism. At one point during his 1980 challenge of Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy suddenly left Joan, climbing out of their private plane and driving away in a car which took him to “The Curraugh,” his boat at the Cape. Joan is quoted as saying: “He’s gone off cruising in the Caribbean with some chick, I think.”

During this campaign against Carter, a group of Kennedy staffers discussed with Joan how she would handle the charge that her husband drove her to drink. One staffer suggested — “laughing and good-naturedly,” we are told — that she say her drinking went back to the days before the Senator started chasing women. To which Joan replied, shaking her head emphatically: “Oh, no it doesn’t, and I can prove it.”

Chellis writes that as Joan prepared to rejoin the Western campaign against Carter in May of 1980, schedulers alerted her to “a delicate situation.” It seems the Senator had “women friends” on the West Coast, and there was concern about the logistics of scheduling Kennedy and his wife on this trip. Chellis writes:

“One Kennedy-watcher noted that Ted’s eye began to rove even before the birth of their first child while he was managing Jack’s Presidential campaign in the West. But during the years of Camelot, press insiders tactfully refrained from reporting both Jack’s and Ted’s infidelities.”

Incredibly, after Chappaquiddick, Kennedy “became even more indiscreet in his relationships with other women,” says Chellis. And a “deeply hurt” Joan went to Jackie Kennedy for advice in handling her husband’s highly publicized affair with socialite Amanda Burden. She was told that “Kennedy men are like that.”

IF WE HAD ‘the rule of law’ Kennedy says he wants, with equal justice for the rich and poor, he’d still be in jail for Chappaquiddick

One friend is quoted as saying of Joan that “she was unused to this kind of behavior and was shattered by it.” And Joan is quoted as saying about newspaper stories concerning Kennedy’s affairs: “Of course they hurt my feelings. They went to the core of my self-esteem…And I began to think maybe I’m just not attractive enough or attractive anymore, or whatever, and it was awfully easy to then say, ‘Well, after all, you know, if that’s the way it is, I might as well have another drink.”’

On another occasion, Joan learned that a woman she lunched with at the Ritz in Boston had been one of her husband’s paramours. She is quoted as saying, indignantly: “Everyone in this city knew about them but me! 1 was the last one to know. And there I was, sitting at the Ritz with her.”

Kennedy also abused his wife in many other ways, according to Chellis. She quotes Joan as saying, “1 was nobody, nothing and not needed.”

ROBERT BORK denounced by Kennedy because Bork was (are you seated?) ‘wrong on equal rights for women’!

One observer is quoted as saying that since Kennedy “was not a confronter of reality,” Joan, although she had the best medical help available, was left to deal with her alcoholism virtually on her own. And the Senator, who some say seemed to invite press coverage of his wife’s drinking problem, once allegedly asked a friendly journalist at Hyannis Port if she would like to see Joan. He led the journalist out the back door and pointed to a car where his wife was passed out in the back seat.

A real profile in courage, right?

Chellis quotes Joan as saying about her husband: “Ted is the last of the Irishmen who revere their mothers and put their wives on a pedestal, but don’t talk to them.” And to think that in his 1980 challenge of President Carter Kennedy was supported by such rabid feminists and advocates of so-called “women’s rights” as Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Democratic Rep. Barbara Mikulski, Shirley Chisholm and Midge Costanza!

“Equal rights” for women, Senator Kennedy?! Please, please do not speak to us, sir, about the rights of women! Because on this subject, as regards your own despicable behavior, what Emerson once said is most appropriate: “Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

When the Chellis book was published, I asked a Kennedy press aide, Bob Mann, if it was true? He told me he had no comment on the book. He added that Kennedy was not saying a word about it, that he hadn’t read it and he didn’t intend to.

One more thought, specifically, about Kennedy objecting to those U.S. marshals who, supposedly, shoved that wife and made her sit down in a chair. The word “chair” made me think of this.

CHRISTOPHER DODD a longtime boozing buddy of Teddy’s; they threw waitress around, stomped on framed photos, smashing glass

In 1985, Kennedy and his drinking buddy Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) were at the Washington DC restaurant “La Brasserie.” The two were in a private dining room. When the blondes they were with go to the ladies room, they call for a waitress, Carla Gaviglio. She comes. Teddy throws her on a table knocking plates and lit candles to the floor. He picks her up and throws her onto Dodd who is sprawled on a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Teddy jumps on her in a way that causes the waitress to complain she was sexually assaulted.

This same year, Kennedy and Dodd visited the “La Colline” restaurant in D.C.. When a tipsy Teddy sees a photo of Dodd on the wall, he shouts: “Who’s this guy?” He seizes this picture and flings it to the ground. Dodd then pulls a photo of Teddy off the wall and throws it down. Laughing and shouting, both men dance on their photos, smashing glass and frames.

Like I say: There may be a more disgusting, nauseating spectacle than Teddy Kennedy sitting in judgment on a Supreme Court nominee’s ethics and integrity, but I’m not sure what this might be.

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