Ask Not What You Can Do for Your Country, But What Pills Can Do To a Kennedy Behind the Wheel…
The developing story in the Patrick Kennedy car crash conflagration? That the coppers were prevented from administering a sobriety test to the Rhode Island congressman (who claims prescription medication wuz the culprit):
Two police union officials, who were not at the scene, complained that the Rhode Island congressman and son of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., looked like he'd been drinking after crashing into a barrier near the Capitol building at 2:45 a.m.
"The driver exited the vehicle and he was observed to be staggering," Officer Greg Baird, the acting head of the Capitol police union, wrote in a letter to his boss, according to the newspaper Roll Call.
Lou Cannon, president of the Washington chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, said Kennedy looked intoxicated.
"It's my understanding that he had an odor of alcohol about him and he was unsteady on his feet," Cannon said.
More here. Do note the secondhand nature of said testimonials.
Reader Alan Vanneman wonders whether PK was high on those newfangled morning glory seeds that the kids aren't doing these days. I'm wondering if Patrick Kennedy's low-impact, non-fatal car crash is just the latest manifestation of the Stupid Grandson Theory, which argues that Joseph Schumpeter's "three generations from overalls to overalls" pertains to the quality of familial scandals every bit as much as to the loss of family wealth.