Victoria Kennedy

Victoria Kennedy

Victoria Kennedy, greeted family, friends and dignitaries as they arrived for the funeral mass, CNN said. A brief prayer service was held earlier in the morning in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library before an honor guard loaded Kennedy's casket into the hearse for the short trip to the basilica, The Boston Globe reported. Kennedy, 77, died Tuesday of brain cancer.

"Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy," President Barack Obama said in a eulogy. "The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate -- a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself. " Former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and the prime ministers of Ireland and Britain were among the 1,400 guest who filled the basilica.

Friday night, 650 friends, family and colleagues gathered at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library for three hours of story-telling and remembrance, The Boston Globe said. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., spoke of Kennedy's love of sailing and how the day after Kennedy's death was a perfect day for sailing off Massachusetts. Kennedy is now sailing with the members of his family who died before him, Kerry said, choking up. "Sail on, my friend, sail on," Kerry said. Kennedy will be buried Saturday evening in Arlington National Cemetery near the graves of his brothers, Sen. Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy.

Coley Laffoon

Coley Laffoon

Anne Heche calls ex Coley Laffoon 'lazy' on 'Late Show with David Letterman' Anne Heche has it in for her ex-husband and let it out last night in an interview with David Letterman. "Oh gosh, can you say 'lazy ass' on television?" Heche asked, referring to Coley Laffoon, the father of her 7-year old son, Homer, to whom she pays monthly child support.

"No, no, no. That's terrible," the 40-year-old actress said on "The Late Show with David Letterman." That the the feud was still on was made clear, when Letterman asked what Laffoon does for a living. "He goes out to the mailbox and he opens up the little mailbox door and goes 'Oh! I got a check from Anne! Oh my God! I got a check from Anne! Yay!' "He wants me to come and watch him run around in his little white shorts playing soccer. Honestly, I don't want to come to rehearsal and watch you run around in your tight shorts like trying to pretend you know how to play soccer. I divorced you! I don't want to hang around with you Thursdays and Saturdays, and maybe on Sunday."

Laffoon, who filed for divorce in February 2007, didn't take his ex's words kindly. "After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television," Lafoon, an employee with Los Angeles real estate company Hilton & Hyland, told Usmagazine.com. "I wish Anne Heche could see that public bullying isn't good for the soul or positive for her child. It's mean." During the ex-couple's two-year drag 'em out, Heche said that Laffoon, 35, craved "porn, poker and money." He claimed she want mentally unstable, according to People.com.

Repose

Repose

Kennedy to lie in repose in Boston for 2 days As Sen. Edward Kennedy's family prepares for his public memorials, people are already visiting the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston to pay their respects. About 20 people were lined up before the library opened at 9 a.m. Thursday. Kennedy's body will travel the 70 miles from Cape Cod to lie in repose at the library he helped develop in tribute to one of his slain brothers.

Austin Howe, a 15-year-old a high school student from Laurel, Md., came with his father to see the museum and pay his respects to the senator, who died Tuesday at age 77 after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. Howe says Kennedy was "someone who made a difference." Family members will attend a private Mass at Kennedy's Hyannis Port compound at noon Thursday, and the motorcade is scheduled to leave around an hour later.

Kennedy’s body will travel the 70 miles from Cape Cod to lie in repose at the library he helped develop in tribute to one of his slain brothers. Austin Howe, a 15-year-old a high school student from Laurel, Md., came with his father to see the museum and pay his respects to the senator, who died Tuesday at age 77 after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. Howe says Kennedy was “someone who made a difference.” Family members will attend a private Mass at Kennedy’s Hyannis Port compound at noon Thursday, and the motorcade is scheduled to leave around an hour later.

Senator Kennedy

Senator Kennedy

"People know Senator Kennedy as an icon, but what they don't know is what a support he is to his colleagues. There were some rough spots in being the only Democratic woman senator while the nation was in the midst of a generational change. But Senator Kennedy was always encouraging. He was always on my side. He lifted my spirits," said Mikulski, currently recovering from ankle surgery at a rehab hospital in Baltimore. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the oldest of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's 11 children, is among the best known of the family's Maryland members. She served as lieutenant governor from 1995 to 2003 under Gov. Parris N. Glendening and was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2002, losing to Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

The Kennedy family, in a public statement, described the senator as "the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply" and "the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives." The Kennedys said that "the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever." Kennedy died only 15 days after his older sister, Eunice, who was married to R. Sargent Shriver Jr. of Maryland and made her home in Potomac. Their son, Mark, served two terms in the Maryland House of Delegates, from 1995 to 2003.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who defeated Shriver in the 2002 Democratic congressional primary, called Kennedy the Senate's "most gifted legislator" and a "tenacious fighter for working men and women who share the belief that America is the greatest country in the world. His passion and purpose were dedicated to righting wrongs and ensuring that our better days are ahead." Rep. John Sarbanes of Baltimore described Kennedy as "a real inspiration," not only to himself and others in politics, but to millions of ordinary people as well. The Democrat, who has been active in the House in the faltering effort to overhaul the health care system, said that he and others in Congress would now rededicate themselves on Kennedy's behalf.

Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne was a schoolteacher, secretary, and political campaign worker, who was killed one night forty years ago, in an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island at Martha's Vineyard. The driver, a prominent United States senator, claimed to have made several attempts to save her, but did not report the accident until the next morning, when the car and the body were found. The senator pleaded guilty to "leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury." He received a two month suspended sentence. The Kopechne family has never commented publicly on the incident.

The senator went on to a distinguished career in politics, but for a failed attempt at nomination to run for the Presidency. He died early this morning, after a long battle with cancer. The woman who was never able to live as full or as long a life as he, and whose family received little if any justice, can finally rest in peace.

May God have mercy on that senator. May God have mercy on us all.

Chappaquiddick

Chappaquiddick

The “Chappaquiddick incident” refers to circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for the assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick, a small island connected via ferry to the town of Edgartown on the adjoining larger island of Martha’s Vineyard.

The party was a reunion for a group of six women, including Kopechne, known as the “boiler-room girls”,who had served in his brother Robert’s 1968 presidential campaign. Also present were Joseph Gargan (Ted Kennedy’s cousin), Paul Markham (a school friend of Gargan’s who would become United States Attorney for Massachusetts under the patronage of the Kennedys), Charles Tretter (an attorney), Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins (Ted Kennedy’s part-time driver). Kennedy was also competing in the Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, a sailing competition which was taking place over several days.

Kopechne’s dead body was discovered inside an overturned car belonging to Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts under water in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. After the body was found, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally driven his car off a bridge into the water. He pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, and received a suspended sentence. The incident became a national scandal, and may have affected the Senator’s decision not to run for President in 1972.

Ted Kennedy quotes

Ted Kennedy quotes

Ted Kennedy became a Democratic Massachusetts senator in 1962 In his words, as in life, he was a politician unafraid to address issues in a direct and occasionally controversial manner. * "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die" - addressing the Democratic National Convention after pulling out of the presidential race, August 1980.

* "Frankly, I don't mind not being president. I just mind that someone else is" - at Washington Gridiron Club dinner, March 1986. * "Well, here I don't go again" - on not running for president in 1988. * "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam" - on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, October 1971 * "My brother need not be idealised or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it" - eulogy for brother Robert Kennedy, June 1968.

* "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately" - during a televised statement after he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in regards to the Chappaquiddick incident, July 1969 * "What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system" - on health care reform for which he campaigned throughout his life, 1994 * "With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay" - endorsing Barack Obama for president, January 2008.

Jean Kennedy Smith

JEAN KENNEDY SMITH, 1928- Served five years as ambassador to Ireland in the Clinton administration. Married Stephen Edward Smith in 1956; he died in 1990. Former U.S. attorney general, a U.S. senator from New York and a presidential candidate in 1968. Assassinated in Los Angeles, 1968. Married in 1950 to Ethel Skakel. They had 11 children.

Rosemary died from natural causes on January 7, 2005, at the Fort Memorial Hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at the age of 86, with two of her surviving sisters Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith, and her only surviving brother Senator Ted Kennedy by her side.

Lobotomy treatments are now abandoned and discredited by the mental health and medical communities due to it’s sever side effects, the procedure is totally rejected by the modern medical practitioners and is no longer used. However, Publicly, she was declared to be mentally handicapped, as that was more socially acceptable in a political family than a failed lobotomy.