surprise surprise surprise

Quote :

"Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy crashed his car into a security barrier near the Capitol early yesterday, and officers at the scene suspected that he might have been intoxicated, a police union official said. Kennedy (D-R.I.) issued a statement late last night -- his second in several hours -- saying he had been disoriented after taking prescription drugs: Phenergan for gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines, and Ambien, a sleeping medication. Rep. Patrick Kennedy said he hadn't been drinking before the accident. (Victoria Arocho - AP) "Following the last series of votes on Wednesday evening, I returned to my home on Capitol Hill and took the prescribed amount" of the two medications, the 38-year-old congressman said. "Sometime around 2:45 a.m., I drove the few blocks to the Capitol Complex believing I needed to vote," the statement continued. "Apparently, I was disoriented from the medication. . . . At no time before the incident did I consume any alcohol." Kennedy, a six-term congressman, said that Capitol Police officers told him to park his Ford Mustang and drove him home. "At no time did I ask for any special consideration," the statement said. "I simply complied with what the officers asked me to do." Lou Cannon, president of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, expressed skepticism. "The timeliness of the statement says everything," he said. "It took up to 10 o clock," or 19 hours after the 2:50 a.m. incident, to offer the expanded explanation. U.S. Capitol Police released few details and would not even confirm that Kennedy had been in the accident in the 100 block of C Street SE, outside the Cannon House Office Building. Within hours of the crash, however, the union representing Capitol Police officers provided its version of events and suggested that Kennedy, the son of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), had received special treatment. Earlier yesterday, Cannon said officers at the scene thought Kennedy was staggering and might have been intoxicated. They called for supervisors over the radio, and the supervisors drove Kennedy home, he said. Cannon said officers were upset that supervisors prevented them from conducting a more thorough investigation, which might have included sobriety tests. "The officers just want to be able to do their jobs," he said. He said if officers had administered a breath test for alcohol, "that certainly would have showed he wasn't on anything, wouldn't it?" Police sources said officers noticed Kennedy's Mustang shortly before the crash because he nearly drove head-on into a Capitol Police car. The Mustang's lights were off, the sources said. The officer turned his patrol car around to pursue Kennedy, whose car then crashed into the barrier, the sources said. When police approached, the sources said, Kennedy got out of his car and said he was late for a vote. The House had not been in session for hours. Cannon said the union's bargaining committee delivered a letter yesterday to acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher M. McGaffin protesting the handling of the matter. Terrance W. Gainer, who recently stepped down as chief, said he had spoken to some officers who were upset about the incident. "It's always a tough situation when an officer has to take law enforcement action with members of Congress," Gainer said. "But the rules are very clear. If there's a violation of the law, you treat everybody equally." In his first prepared statement, issued about 6 p.m., Kennedy simply confirmed the accident and said that he hadn't consumed alcohol and that he planned to cooperate with police in any investigation. In his statement late last night, the congressman added that he had "contacted the Chief of the Capitol police and offered to meet with police representatives at their earliest convenience." "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401430.html?nav=rss_email/components

5/5/2006 9:14:47 AM

SOMEONE'S GONNA DIE OF A MYSTERIOUS HEART ATTACK

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=137995&format=text

Quote :

"but a hostess at a popular Capitol Hill watering hole told the Herald she saw him drinking in the hours before the crash. “He was drinking a little bit,” said the woman, who works at the Hawk & Dove and would not give her name. Leaving his office late last night, Kennedy refused to say whether he’d been to the Hawk & Dove the night before. "

5/5/2006 9:18:11 AM

why do people still care about the Kennedy's?
i mean, the only relevence left in that family is in the form of an Austrian who married in...
unless you count Ted, and so few people care about him anymore that it's almost laughable when he appears in public outside of his home state...

5/5/2006 9:24:48 AM

He was driving a Mustang... lol

5/5/2006 9:34:39 AM

Quote :

"and Ambien, a sleeping medication."

please god dont let the man admit to driving after taking ambien

i suppose he could say he was sleep-driving.....thats actually a real side effect

5/5/2006 9:37:31 AM

^He claims the medication disoriented him enough that he didn't have the sense not to drive after taking it.

But I guess the same could be said about drunk drivers. "I was too drunk to have the sense not to drive."

[Edited on May 5, 2006 at 9:45 AM. Reason : sss]

5/5/2006 9:44:14 AM

He claimed he was on his way to a vote in congress. I wonder what bill he thought he was voting on? I wonder how many other bills he has actually voted on while high on booze or pills?

5/5/2006 10:09:31 AM

^Just for argument's sake...drinking doesn't affect a person's ability to vote (unless they pass out and don't vote at all)...I mean, are you suggesting that he would get so wasted that he would actually vote the opposite of the way he intended? If he was ever that drunk, people would notice.

5/5/2006 10:14:00 AM

^ nobody would fuck someone when drunk that they wouldn't fuck sober

5/5/2006 10:17:26 AM

Quote :

"why do people still care about the Kennedy's?"

Only because the good people of Massachusetts and Rhode Island keep putting them into office.

5/5/2006 10:22:30 AM

^^That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's not much judgment involved in voting--

All you do is ask yourself four questions:

What do my constituents want?
What does my party want?
Who do I owe politically and financially?
Will this vote have any affect on my career?

Then vote.

It doesn't involve too much thinking.

[Edited on May 5, 2006 at 10:22 AM. Reason : ^they can't help it. lol]

5/5/2006 10:22:35 AM

Quote :

"All you do is ask yourself four questions: What do my constituents want? What does my party want? Who do I owe politically and financially? Will this vote have any affect on my career? Then vote. It doesn't involve too much thinking."

Oh, come on! You don't think alcohol will impair judgement the slightest in regards to these questions? Does it not impair judgement, as pointed out, when talking about sex?

5/5/2006 10:46:52 AM

Besides "will this vote have any affect on my career?" there's no judgment involved in those questions.

I'm not defending the guy. He drives a mustang. I was responding to that one dude's question about voting and drinking. Don't fool yourself--our politicians really don't do much thinking or judging value or weighing the issues or whatever...

[Edited on May 5, 2006 at 11:00 AM. Reason : sss]

5/5/2006 10:58:01 AM

^
Are you saying that because so many politicians spend so little time and effort on deciding issues that affect the lives of milions of people, that having their minds addled by liquor and drugs basically brings about the same results?

Then I'm with you 100%

5/5/2006 11:07:18 AM

^Pretty much.

5/5/2006 11:20:46 AM

Quote :

"Only because the good people of Massachusetts and Rhode Island keep putting them into office."

Uh, the people of Boston and Vicinity and Providence put them into office. Don't go blaming the Berkshires. (I'm from Springfield, Mass. Not a lot of people like the Kennedys over there)

5/5/2006 12:12:43 PM

there's not much judgment involved in sex

all you do is ask yourself one question:

hit it?

[Edited on May 5, 2006 at 12:15 PM. Reason : y/n]

5/5/2006 12:14:35 PM

At least they don't hit people sober...

5/5/2006 1:07:34 PM

He called Ted and Ted was like "Put the body in the lake...oh you didn't kill anyone...call someone else then"

5/5/2006 1:46:10 PM

haha. I know, right? If there aint a body involved in the car crash, then there aint really a problem, right?

5/5/2006 1:55:08 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/05/kennedy.accident/index.html

OH SNAP!

HE JUST GOT ADMITTED INTO REHAB!

(Where is that damn siren pic?)

5/5/2006 3:29:24 PM

He crashed 2 times in 2 weeks. haha. Check out his slurred handwriting after the first wreck..

5/9/2006 8:30:56 AM

doesn't seem that much worse than my normal handwriting...

5/9/2006 8:32:54 AM

thats basically how my handwriting looks when i have to write in cursive

5/9/2006 9:42:02 AM

"Turned right from 138 after the stop signal in order to enter the CVS pharmacy by turning left."

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 12:35 PM. Reason : sss]

5/9/2006 12:35:32 PM

This is a lot like Cheney's shotguning that guy in the face.

Your "I wasn't drunk" story sounds a LOT better if you tell it within an hour or 2 of the incident, instead of 10 hours of lawyer talks later.

5/9/2006 1:37:59 PM