I must remember to log in when posting from school. :smack: That was me, not Robin.
Having had the pleasure of being on Phenergan, I can say it does have some pretty wacky side effects; I could easily see someone thinking they needed to be somewhere and being functional enough to get in the car and drive (poorly). However…
My sister-in-law was recently pulled over for driving… mmmm… let’s say in a manner not consistent with rules of the road. She’d clipped another driver and gotten out of the car to exchange information, but since there was no damage the other driver waved her on. Something about the way she drove off raised some red flags, and he called the police. She admitted to the police that she was “a little dizzy” and they immediately gave her a field sobriety test. Then arrested her, booked her, and held her until court that afternoon. She’d taken one and a half Xanax five hours before getting behind the wheel. She thought she was fine- so did my brother, because I know that if he didn’t, he never, ever would have let their son get into the car with her. They’re all lucky as hell no one was hurt.
I bring this up because I agree with the above poster- we shouldn’t be blaming Kennedy, because if indeed he was taking those medications it’s easy to see how and why his judgement was impaired. We should be questioning the Capital Police, who apparently have a very strange idea of protocol when it comes to our lawmakers. Now there will always be a question of whether he was drunk or not, when a simple test could have been done to remove all doubt.
Concerning the field sobriety tests: I agree that a test should have been performed. He should have had to take a breathalyzer test to determine if his storyis true or he was drunk. Especially given his history, it seems a prudent test.
But the deference shown is unrelated to party affiliation, or even politics in general. Celebrities get special treatment. We can whine about it; but it’s true and probably not going to change.
And, thanks to police higher ups, we’ll never know if it was the drugs, or alcohol or both. If I was Kennedy (and hadn’t been drinking) I’d be supremely pissed off that I wasn’t allowed to blow a 0.0 and have my name (relatively) clear. As it is, the shadow of drunk driving will hang over this event.
I just wanted to drop in and say that I’ve been preparing way too much for my next D&D campaign, because I read the title as “Abyssal Judgment Gene” and though this was going to be about some sort of fiendish magistrate prestige class for demons, which would be really cool, particularly if I gave it to the bad guy in chapter… and then I thought, no, wait… that’s a different message board…
EO: My ideology is better than yours! Nyah!
FI: No, my ideology is betther than yours! Brraapt!
EO: Mine is!
FI: Mine is!
D_Odds: Shut up kids, they both suck donkey testicles.
Mmm…the Kennedies as soldiers inthe Blood War…
Until this thread, I’d just assumed that Kennedy was driving drunk. More fool me. Certainly the police should follow normal procedure with lawmakers, and certainly they should face normal penalties for infractions. But it does seem that an alternate story is plausible–i.e., that Kennedy misjudged his legal medication’s effects, and that the police screwed up with unnecessary deference. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
I draw a distinction between unethical acts that are job-related and those that are not job-related for politicians. Job-related sins are far worse, and have a lot more to do with how I vote.
Daniel
The supervisors definitely shouldn’t have stopped the officers on scene from performing field sobriety tests. It doesn’t matter if the guy is a Kennedy or any other elected official, they are not above the law.
Also, isn’t it supposed to be a monumentally bad idea to be driving after you have just taken Ambien?
I don’t think this seems to be a case of ‘sleep driving’ since the people who do that stuff seem to all have the retrograde amnesia and can’t remember it later, where Kennedy obviously does remember what was going on and seems to have consciously decided to go driving after taking a powerful sleeping pill and another medication that induces drowsiness.
Would a reasonable person do that?
If the politician involved had been a right-wing standard bearer, the response from conservatives would have been, “We don’t have all the information, it’s too soon to come to a conclusion, you people always rush to judgment.” And you repeat this until everybody forgets about it, or enough times elapses that you can say, “That’s old news, we are looking toward the future, not living in the past.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Because we all know that Elephants don’t let theirs get sucked!
<rimshot>
Thank you! I’ll be here all day. Tip your waitresses.
-Joe
This all has nothing to do with party loyalties, and this entire thread is bullshit. If Teddy was drunk and driving, his pickled and wrinkled ass should be in jail. Party has not a damn thing to do with it.
This should not be a polticial issue. If he was drunk lock him up. Same goes for anyone else, on the left, right, Repub, Dem, whatever.
You do know it wasn’t Teddy who was stopped, right?
But Rush is a drug addict!
Come on…
Regards,
Shodan
A reasonable person might also know that there almost certainly aren’t going to be any votes scheduled at 2:45 am, however. So, that combined with QtM’s statement above, I’m willing to give some credence to at least the plausibility that one could be taking both of those drugs, wake up enough in the middle of the night to groggily believe that they were due at work, get into the car and drive off.
That being said, we’ll be hard-pressed to know what really happened because (allegedly) of the Capitol Police supervisors’ actions, and that is despicable.
Getting back to the OP, yeah, getting behind the wheel after taking a sleeping pill that you’ve taken before and not realizing it renders you unfit to drive is just dumb, dumb, dumb.
etc…
You know, I always see the left here screaming at the top of their lungs that “Your guy did a similar thing” is not a defense (even in threads where the SUBJECT is the conduct at hand, and “your guys did it too” IS a legitimate argument when bad behavior is being criticized as a partisan issue), yet it inevitably seems that it’s not the right who brings these things up, but the left. I wonder why? Hmmmm. Could it be that deep in your black little hearts you actually realize that there in no real difference between the power hungry bastards on the left and the power hungry bastards on the right except that the ones on the right are better at getting elected? I hope this is so, it gives me hope for the future.
Next begging the question…is there any possibility of the Capitol Police officers involved being disciplined in any way?
-Joe
I’m willing to give Kennedy the benefit of the doubt that the meds, in combination, confused him to the point where he thought he needed to be on the Hill to vote at 2:45 a.m. I’ve known people to have powerful side effects from meds (like my sister, who ended up hallucinating for a week after taking the antibiotic zithromax). It’s entirely possible that he knew what he was doing but, at the time, thought he was doing the right thing. Just because you can remember doing something really dumb later doesn’t mean your judgment wasn’t impaired.
But the Capitol police totally botched it. Giving preferential treatment to a congressman, especially when said congressman is a Kennedy, especially when said congressman is the son of one of the biggest drunks on the Hill, compounds idiocy upon idiocy. Of course, there’s nothing new in Congress being exempt from the treatment most of us receive; their list of “what applies to the rest of you doesn’t apply to me” rules is truly stunning.
Hear that sound of rapidly-moving air overhead?
Doesn’t matter - just repeat the name “Kennedy” and those who think it matters will make the connection. If the congressman stopped had been named “Patrick Smith (R)”, would it be front page news?
Given whose history? You do know this is Patrick Kennedy, not Ted, right?
That’s inferring that he was capable of making any kind of judgment at all. Based on what I’ve read about one of the drugs he was taking (Ambien), it’s highly likely he had no idea what he was doing, in which case, it would be erroneous to call his actions a “misjudgment.”
That’s inferring that he has any recollection of anything other than the obvious known facts; that he recalls having taken his prescribed medications and was later picked up by police after an accident and driven home. There is nothing to indicate he has any actual memory of any of his actions during the events.