ANOTHER KENNEDY COVER-UP?

By Michelle Malkin

***scroll for updates...report of another Kennedy crash two weeks ago in Rhode Island...***

Rep. Patrick Kennedy

Drudge reporting on a Roll Call scoop...

Officers Claim Brass Interfered in Investigation of Rep. Kennedy Incident, ROLL CALL reports... MORE... Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.).

According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy's car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade at First and C streets Southeast.

As they say:

Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

WUSA TV, local DC station, has more:

9 News has learned U.S. Capitol police officers are concerned about the handling of an accident involving Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island) about 3 a.m. this morning.

Rep. Kennedy was reportedly behind the wheel of a green Ford Mustang when it crashed into a security barrier at 1st and "C" streets Southeast.

There are no reports of injuries. A Boston TV station is reporting Kennedy told officers he was late for a vote. We are told police drove him home after conferring with higher-ups in the department. So far, Kennedy HAS NOT been charged. A spokesman for his office told CNN that alcohol was NOT involved.

The head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, Lou Cannon, told 9 News that he’s concerned that Kennedy may have received special treatment and this could be a case where “rank has its privilege.”

Cannon also told 9 News that officers noticed the car swerving, looking as if it was going to make a U-turn.

9 News reporter Stacey Cohan spoke to Kennedy's press secretary at his congressional office in Rhode Island, who said she is looking into the situation, but does not have any information right now.

Congressman Patrick Kennedy is Ted Kennedy's son. He is currently serving his sixth term as the Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island. He sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

More Drudge details.

Update 6:00pm EDT. WRKO talk show host Howie Carr has a police report from a separate Pat Kennedy car crash two weeks ago:

Check out Rep. Kennedy's handwriting!

Full police report here.

MOUSSAOUI WINS, AMERICA LOSES

That about sums it up.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only 9/11 conspirator brought to trial, was sentenced yesterday to life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty.

Moussaoui said:

“America, you lost. You lost! I won!”

“We will come back one day. You will never get him. God curse America. God save Usama bin Laden. You will never get him.”

“I destroyed life” … “maybe one day she (victim’s family member) can think how many people the CIA has destroyed their life.”

Jurors felt Moussaoui’s abusive father and “rough childhood” contributed to who he is today, and that life in prison would be a more just way to punish the terrorist.

His mother, Aicha El Wafi, blames the Moussaoui conviction on France, because he is a French citizen and France did not intervene.

“My son will be buried alive because France didn’t dare contradict the Americans. I don’t share the ideas and the words of my son in the court, but it was because of his words, his color, his race, that he was sentenced to life.”

France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, had demanded that none of the information it provided for the U.S. case against Moussaoui be used to seek the death penalty. France also has a track record of appeasing violent Muslims. Flashback to the November 2005 riots in Paris by Muslim illegal immigrants:

Meanwhile in Paris, after the 15th consecutive night of riots by young Arabs and Muslims, some offenders are being deported and France is taking a second look at it’s immigration policy. The French equivalent of the ACLU called SOS-Racisme is claiming deportations are illegal and demand rights for these mini-terrorists. Whatever happened to “if you can’t be ‘em, join ‘em”? It worked for Spain. No, wait… that was a disaster, too.

It’s ironic that countries which criticize the US’s war on terror are also suffering from the very source of terrorism they renounce the US for fighting.

The problem with life in prison without parole is that there truly is no such thing as life in prison without parole. Hundreds of convicted murderers have been paroled and released back into society in the United States despite the sentence of life without parole. In fact, a death sentence doesn’t necessarily end in execution. Take for example Sterling Spann, a South Carolina man who spent 17 years on death row for murder only to receive a new trial and then be sent back to prison. He was granted parole Wednesday.

The 5-1 decision by the S.C. parole board ends a decades-long fight by Spann for freedom in a case that gained national attention. He will likely be released within the next two months and will live in Connecticut.

York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant, who attended Wednesday’s hearing in Columbia, said law enforcement officials and the victim’s family were devastated.

“This is a sad day for the criminal justice system,” Bryant said. “This system has failed the victim in this case and the family.”

Spann, 43, was sent to South Carolina’s death row in 1982 after a jury convicted him of murder in the rape and burglary, and death of 81-year-old Melva Harper Niell of Clover. She was found in a bathtub, her neck broken.

Spann served 17 years in prison prior to the murder of Melva Harper Niell.

There is no reason to trust in the American judicial system. The Moussaoui case is a perfect example of that. His abusive father, rough childhood, France…..all guilty…

This is why America loses. We’re soft. Our enemies aren’t.

THEY SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM

PEGGY NOONAN

They Should Have Killed Him
The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn't vengeance.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)--Moussaoui said as he was led from the courtroom: "America, you lost." He clapped his hands.

Excuse me, I'm sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury's decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve.

From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved--the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians, the victim representatives--showed an elaborate and jarring politesse. "We thank the jury." "I accept the verdict of course." "We can't question their hard work." "I know they did their best." "We thank the media for their hard work in covering this trial." "I don't want to second-guess the jury."

How removed from our base passions we've become. Or hope to seem.

It is as if we've become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we're just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it's not good we lose it.

No one wants to say, "They should have killed him." This is understandable, for no one wants to be called vengeful, angry or, far worse, unenlightened. But we should have put him to death, and for one big reason.

This is what Moussaoui did: He was in jail on a visa violation in August 2001. He knew of the upcoming attacks. In fact, he had taken flight lessons to take part in them. He told no one what was coming. He lied to the FBI so the attacks could go forward. He pled guilty last year to conspiring with al Qaeda; at his trial he bragged to the court that he had intended to be on the fifth aircraft, which was supposed to destroy the White House.

He knew the trigger was about to be pulled. He knew innocent people had been targeted, and were about to meet gruesome, unjust deaths.

He could have stopped it. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died.

This is what the jury announced yesterday. They did not doubt Moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy. They did not doubt his own testimony as to his guilt. They did not think he was incapable of telling right from wrong. They did not find him insane. They did believe, however, that he had had an unstable childhood, that his father was abusive and then abandoning, and that as a child, in his native France, he'd suffered the trauma of being exposed to racial slurs.

As I listened to the court officer read the jury's conclusions yesterday I thought: This isn't a decision, it's a non sequitur.

Of course he had a bad childhood; of course he was abused. You don't become a killer because you started out with love and sweetness. Of course he came from unhappiness. So, chances are, did the nice man sitting on the train the other day who rose to give you his seat. Life is hard and sometimes terrible, and that is a tragedy. It explains much, but it is not a free pass.

I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres--the academy and law and the media--have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don't wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they're lectured.

I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.

I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.

It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.

If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?

And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?

I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.

I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.