Patrick Kennedy made news this week by announcing he’s forming a group to lobby against the legalization of marijuana, a stance that’s gotten him in the cross-hairs of the nation’s largest pro-pot group.

“Former Congressman Kennedy’s proposal is the definition of hypocrisy,” Mason Tvert, the Marijuana Policy Project’s communications director, said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. “He is living in part off of the fortune his family made by selling alcohol while leading a campaign that makes it seem like marijuana – an objectively less harmful product – is the greatest threat to public health.”

The group’s Twitter feed was more acerbic, describing Kennedy as a “booze fortune heir.” His grandfather, family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy, made a fortune in part by thanks to alcohol distribution rights (though apparently he wasn’t a bootlegger).

The new national organization Kennedy is chairing, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, is scheduled to release its proposals on Wednesday in Denver. “Let’s not just throw out the baby with the bathwater,” he told Reuters last weekend. Kennedy has been making a number of media appearances promoting the group, which also counts former Bush speechwriter and Republican apostate David Frum among its board members.

The Marijuana Policy Project has also created a Change.org petition calling on Kennedy to “to drop out of SAM or explain why he is working to keep a less harmful alternative to alcohol illegal.”

• Related: Study: More got high in RI after medical marijuana legalization (March 28)

House Speaker Gordon Fox pledged on Saturday that the R.I. House of Representatives will vote before the end of January on whether to legalize same-sex marriage.

Fox, a Providence Democrat who’s in the toughest re-election fight of his 20-year career, added specificity to the pledge he made in an interview on WPRI 12′s Newsmakers earlier this year, when he announced he would call a vote in the House on gay marriage during the 2013 session if he got re-elected.

Fox, who is openly gay, told a small crowd of supporters at the restaurant Blaze on Providence’s East Side that he would call a vote “during the third or fourth week of January.” The speaker opted not to call a vote on gay marriage last year because of opposition from leading Senate Democrats including Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport.

Fox’s opponent, independent Mark Binder, has criticized the speaker for failing to call a vote, saying he “put marriage equality on the back burner because he didn’t think it would pass a Senate vote.” Binder says on his website he’s pleased Fox is now calling for a vote, but “I only wish that he’d done it years ago.”

(more…)

Patrick Kennedy is making a splash in his new hometown in New Jersey.

Kennedy is building a million-dollar home in the Republican stronghold of Brigantine, N.J., where his new wife Amy is from – much to the delight of local Democrats, according to this fun Philadelphia Inquirer profile by Amy S. Rosenberg. A few highlights (emphasis mine):

Kennedy is already a fixture in Brigantine, where he jogs along Bayshore Drive daily (a practice, he has said, that has replaced the medication he was taking for his depression and bipolar conditions). The family is renting until the house is done. …

New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who also showed up in Brigantine, hopes this is about more than wind. A Democrat, he’s salivating over the possibility that Kennedy might return to politics and run for, well, anything.

“Having Patrick Kennedy here in the state of New Jersey is very good for Democrats,” he said. “Sure, there’s a scramble – he’s a former congressman with a million-dollar brand.”

The buzz has spread up to Gov. [Chris] Christie, according to Kennedy. He says his cousin Timmy Shriver met with Christie about the Special Olympics (New Jersey is hosting in 2014, and Kennedy already is planning a casino gala). “He told Timmy, ‘What did I hear about your cousin running against me?’ ”

For now, Kennedy, who will vote one last time in Rhode Island this fall, says the politics he’s interested in deal with health care for mental illnesses and addiction.

Read the rest here.

• Related: Patrick Kennedy cuts asking price for his RI home to $1.395M (Oct. 5)

Speaking of Rhode Island’s former congressman, he’s getting some press north of the border:

RUTHERFORD, CALIF. – Patrick Kennedy likes to show a black-and-white TV clip of his uncle, John F. Kennedy, promising to put Americans on the moon in the ’60s.

Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island, has a lofty goal for this next decade — a “moon shot to the mind” that would lead to a cure for brain disease.

“If we can go to outer space, we can go to inner space, and if we can explore the outer galaxies, we should be able to explore the inner galaxies,” he said in an interview.

Kennedy is co-founder of One Mind for Research, a non-profit aimed at speeding global research in brain injuries and disorders.

He’s joined by private equity investor Garen Staglin and his wife Shari, Napa Valley winery owners whose son, Brandon, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1990.

Patrick Kennedy is sweetening the deal for would-be buyers of his home on Aquidneck Island.

Kennedy has cut the asking price for his three-acre waterfront property on Farmlands Drive in Portsmouth to $1.395 million, a $200,000 reduction from the original asking price in January, according to its listing with Prudential Prime Properties.

The former congressman built the 10-room, three-story home overlooking the Sakonnet River in 2001. It’s described as the Kennedy Orchard House and features three bedrooms, three bathrooms, two fireplaces and 3,144 square feet of living space. The estimated annual tax bill for the property is $17,975.

Kennedy, who now spends most of his time in New Jersey with his wife and new baby, has said he plans to buy a home in Providence to maintain his ties with Rhode Island. He retired from Congress in 2010 but returned recently to campaign for his successor David Cicilline.

Kennedy wouldn’t be the first Rhode Island politician to be disappointed by the local property market in the wake of the housing bust. Gov. Lincoln Chafee was forced to cut the price of his Providence home repeatedly before it finally sold for $675,000 last September.

• Related: Patrick Kennedy inherits millions from his late father Ted (Aug. 25, 2010)

Patrick Kennedy is keeping busy in his post-congressional life. He visited Rhode Island to campaign for David Cicilline earlier this month, and now the AP reports he was among the speakers at a rally outside the United Nations organized by Iranian opposition groups this week:

Outside the building, thousands of anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrators rallied in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza opposite the world body. ..

Outside, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich praised the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama for recently taking the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, off the U.S. terrorist watch list. The group is a major anti-Ahmadinejad force that was allied with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. …

A coalition of Iranian-American groups organized the protest against Ahmadinejad – one of the largest gatherings staged against the Iranian leader in recent years during the General Assembly.

Speakers at the protest included two former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

CNN reports Kennedy has been paid to lobby for the MEK.

Update: The New York Times notes that Kennedy “admitted on camera last year that he had been paid $25,000 to voice his support for the M.E.K. at a rally in Washington.”

By Ted Nesi

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (WPRI) – The atmosphere was more like a family reunion than a campaign event Monday morning when Congressman David Cicilline and his predecessor Patrick Kennedy stopped by Leon Mathieu Senior Center to appeal for votes.

The event’s big focus wasn’t even there: Kennedy’s baby boy, four-and-a-half-month-old Owen Patrick Kennedy. Senior after senior, mostly women, asked Kennedy to pull out a well-worn printed photograph of the smiling infant. “He’s got those Irish eyes,” a beaming Kennedy declared.

Kennedy told WPRI.com that during a visit Sunday to Woonsocket’s John F. Kennedy Manor he promised voters there he’ll bring Owen along when he’s back in town to campaign for Cicilline – a little “October surprise” just in time for the November election.

And what if Owen someday decides he wants to go into the family business and run for office himself? “Well, God bless him,” Kennedy said. “I think politics will look a lot different by the time he’s on the ballot.” There’s plenty of time: Owen only just learned to roll over on his side.

(more…)

Frank Phillips reports for The Boston Globe:

The already frayed relationship between Vicki Kennedy and her late husband’s children is at the breaking point, with the two sons growing increasingly convinced that she is jeopardizing the senator’s legacy and mishandling the creation of the $71 million institute that bears his name.

Much of the conflict centers around the construction and governance of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the US Senate, a project that faces potential cost overruns, according to a close family friend who was authorized by some family members to speak on their behalf, but who declined to be named.

Edward M. Kennedy Jr. and Patrick Kennedy, the senator’s children, believe their father’s widow is badly bungling the efforts to create what their father had hoped would be a monument to his storied career in the US Senate, said the friend, whose account was confirmed by another close family associate.

Patrick signed a fundraising pitch for the new Edward M. Kennedy Institute just last December.

Patrick Kennedy isn’t pleased with one of the two Democrats trying to win his old 1st Congressional District seat.

In a statement Thursday evening, the former congressman took Anthony Gemma to task for telling WPRO-AM he won’t support fellow Democrats U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin in November. Gemma cited their support for incumbent Congressman David Cicilline over him.

“It is critically important that we all continue supporting our fantastic federal delegation this year in Senator Whitehouse and Congressmen Langevin and Cicilline,” Kennedy said. “This is about Rhode Island, not about each candidate, and I don’t think Mr. Gemma understands this.”

Gemma told WPRO the other federal officials should have stayed neutral in the Democratic primary. “I’m frustrated with Senator Whitehouse that he has not stepped up and done what’s right for me,” he said. “His constituents are telling him in droves that I am the right candidate. I know it for a fact.”

Gemma added that he does support U.S. Sen. Jack Reed because “he’s not running.”

Cicilline defeated Gemma in the Democratic primary to succeed Kennedy two years ago after the veteran congressman decided to retire. In his statement, Kennedy said he supports the three incumbents because of their positions on Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, offshoring and fossil-fuel subsidies.

“I was proud to serve with Senator Whitehouse and Congressman Langevin in Washington and I saw firsthand their dedication to Rhode Island and their fierce advocacy for the people of our state,” he said.

A WPRI 12 poll in May showed Cicilline with a slim in the Democratic primary, with 40% of voters supporting him, 36% supporting Gemma and 20% undecided. The primary is Sept. 11.

Patrick Kennedy offered some striking insight to The New York Times last weekend (emphasis mine):

Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply a part of “how this business works.”

“If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I do my part.”

Mr. Kennedy visited the White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they face.

“I know that they look at the reports,” he said, referring to records of campaign donations. “They’re my friends anyway, but it won’t hurt when I ask them for a favor if they don’t see me as a slouch.”

“Quid pro quo” it is, then! That drew this comment from The Weekly Standard:

Access to the Obama White House is in direct correlation to the amount of money donated to the president’s reelection effort and the Democratic party, the New York Times reports today. …

But the most explosive allegation in the news story comes from former Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Ted Kenney [sic], who calls what the Obama White House is doing “quid pro quo.” …

And Kennedy admits that folks in the White House are checking out the donor records ….

Translated, “quid pro quo” means “this for that.” As in, if you want this from the Obama White House, then give that (e.g., cash).

The New York Times editorial board weighed in today, crediting Kennedy for his honesty:

The administration, of course, says there is no relationship between donations and access and notes that thousands of nondonors regularly visit the White House. But a more realistic appraisal of events was given by Patrick Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who also gave the maximum amount while pressing the administration to support his nonprofit medical venture. That’s “how this business works,” Mr. Kennedy, who had several visits to the White House, told The Times. “If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he added. …

The candidate who truly wants to impress voters would put an end to special-access retreats for big donors and would promise not to check a donation list when granting White House access. Mr. Obama, in particular, promised in 2008 to fix a “broken” public financing system that allows oversize donations. He opted out of the system, and the country is still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.

The world gets its first look at Owen Patrick Kennedy – cute video from our sister station KYW-TV:

My colleagues have added this photo gallery of the Kennedys’ departure, as well.

Owen Patrick Kennedy was born Sunday at 5:30 p.m., weighing 6 pounds and 15 ounces, Ted Kennedy Jr. reports. Both mother and son are doing fine. More details here.

Patrick Kennedy is out of office, but not out of politics.

The former congressman signed an email fundraising blast for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last week that celebrated the anniversary of President Obama’s health-care law and sought donations to help the party have a good financial showing in its first-quarter fundraising report.

“My father, Ted Kennedy, spent his entire career fighting tooth and nail for universal health care and my father and I fought side by side for mental health care,” Kennedy wrote Friday. “He would be proud of this moment.” The message also name-checked Super PACs, Citizens United and Karl Rove.

Kennedy sent the message the same week he co-hosted a pricey DCCC fundraiser in Portsmouth where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was the guest of honor. Kennedy was the DCCC’s chairman during the 1999-2000 cycle, a plum post for him considering his relative lack of seniority at the time.

Apart from politics, Kennedy is keeping busy teaching a class at Brown and promoting brain research. He and his wife, Amy Petitgout, are expecting their first child this spring after getting married last summer.

Here’s some more evidence that Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s star is on the rise.

Raimondo gets second-billing after former Congressman Patrick Kennedy on the invitation that just went out to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s fundraiser with top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi on March 18.

The DCCC’s evening “cocktail reception” with Congressmen Jim Langevin and David Cicilline will be held at the Carnegie Abbey Club in Portsmouth. Couples are asked to donate $30,800 (the “Speaker’s Cabinet” level) or $15,000 (“Host”), while individuals are asked to give $5,000 (“Sponsor”) or $1,000 (“Guest”).

The other hosts are attorney Zach Darrow of DarrowEverett LLP and Don Migliori of Motley Rice; lobbyists Gerry Harrington and Chris Vitale of the Washington-based Capital City Group; and lobbyists Rick McAuliffe and Jeff Taylor of The Mayforth Group.

The invitation does not say whether Raimondo is “endorsing” Cicilline or just “supporting” him at the event. Pelosi has hosted fundraisers in Rhode Island in the past, and in 2009 she made an ill-advised visit to a Middletown company whose top executive later pleaded guilty to paying bribes for defense contracts.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse got a whole lot less liberal in 2011, at least in the eyes of National Journal.

The Beltway magazine is out with the latest edition of its widely watched annual rankings of where members of Congress fall on the ideological spectrum, and Whitehouse dropped to No. 19 on the liberal list after two years on top.

National Journal put Whitehouse in lockstep with his senior colleague U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. The Rhode Islanders shared a two-way tie for 19th place, voting for liberal policies 78% of the time. Reed ranked 10th most-liberal the prior year.

Reed and Whitehouse were the only two senators from the same state who received the exact same composite scores from National Journal for 2011. But the other half of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation isn’t in agreement nearly as often.

(more…)

The New York Times reports on Rhode Island’s former congressman entering the fray in Massachusetts:

Patrick J. Kennedy lashed out at Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts on Sunday, asking him to stop invoking the name of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s father, in a radio advertisement about insurance coverage for contraceptives. …

In a letter that the Brown campaign released on Sunday, Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat like his father, wrote: “Providing health care to every American was the work of my father’s life. The Blunt Amendment you are supporting is an attack on that cause.” …

He added, “You are entitled to your own opinions, of course, but I ask that, moving forward, you do not confuse my father’s positions with your own.”

In a response circulated by the Brown campaign, Mr. Brown wrote: “I’d like to think your dad would have been working with me to find an accommodation that all sides found satisfactory. One thing I know he would not do is demagogue the issue, or inflame passions against the church, as Elizabeth Warren has done.”

(photo: Pathikrit Bhattacharyya / Brown Daily Herald, used with permission)

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy sent an email appeal Wednesday to seek donations to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a nonprofit educational center being built on the campus of the UMass Boston.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the institute was held in April, and Kennedy said he expects “significant milestones” in its development next year. He pointed out donations to the nonprofit made before Saturday can be deducted from this year’s tax bills.

“As a young child, I had the great privilege of walking the halls of the Capitol with my dad, Ted Kennedy, as he worked tirelessly to make America live up to its highest ideals,” Kennedy wrote.

(more…)

The New York Times has a long story on Wednesday’s front page about Newt Gingrich’s career as a health care consultant through his Center for Health Transformation, and Rhode Island’s recently retired 1st District congressman gets a cameo:

[Gingrich] also pressed for passage of a federal bill to increase the use of electronic health records, collaborating with one of its co-sponsors, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, both Democrats. After appearing at a press briefing on the issue with Mrs. Clinton [and Kennedy] in 2005, he stated flatly on Fox News: “We’re launching a bill.” …

Some of the ideas promoted by the center found their way into the electronic health records legislation proposed by Mr. Kennedy, which was prepared with input from Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Kennedy said that he had known Mr. Gingrich from their days in the House, and that they had found a common interest in the issue.

“We worked together because it usually got people’s attention,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview. “When there was a Kennedy and a Gingrich, it got people to think, ‘Hey, if this is above partisanship, let me take another look at it.’ ”

The Kennedy-Gingrich alliance is no secret; the pair co-authored a Times op-ed in May 2004, and Gingrich joined the congressman the following month at a Brown University health conference. They shared an award for their efforts presented by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 2005.

Kennedy – who’s been energetically raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign lately – was aware that the relationship could pose political problems for them, Darrell West reported after the 2004 Brown conference:

Kennedy laughed that following a joint press conference attended by Gingrich and his brother Ted Kennedy Jr., photographers took pictures of Gingrich with a Kennedy on each side. Kennedy joked that if Gingrich didn’t do the right thing, he would “release the photo to the Republican party.”

For his part, Gingrich joined in the banter. Following Kennedy’s introduction, Gingrich laughed that Kennedy might have some explaining to do to current Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi over why he had invited Gingrich to his health care conference.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is one of the few big-time political donors in the National Football League who’s given most of his money to Democrats since President Obama took office, a new study by the Center on Responsive Politics shows.

Kraft has donated $28,800 to Democrats but just $4,800 to Republicans since January 2009, according to federal campaign-finance data analyzed by the center.

Kraft has given $1,000 donations over the years to Congressman David Cicilline, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, as well as Chafee administration official Richard Licht when he sought the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2000, a WPRI.com review of the data shows.

Only three NFL officials donated more to Obama’s party than Kraft: the Miami Dolphins’ Stephen Ross ($37,200), the Seattle Seahawks’ Paul Allen ($36,000) and league official Rodney Peete ($30,400).

(more…)

Kara Kennedy Allen, daughter of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy and sister of former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy, died suddenly on Friday at the age of 51, NBC News reports.

Kennedy Allen had attended Patrick’s wedding in Hyannisport just two months ago. She was a lung cancer survivor, and her father famously prayed for her recovery daily at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston, where his own funeral Mass was held in 2009.

Patrick has one other sibling, his older brother Ted Jr., as well as a stepbrother and stepsister from his father’s second marriage. Their mother Joan is still alive; she turned 75 last week. (Joan and Ted divorced in 1982.)

Kara was not a familiar face in Rhode Island, WRNI’s Scott MacKay tells me, but he recalled that she did campaign for Patrick at least once during his youthful run for state representative.

This photo shows Kara, standing at right, sailing in Nantucket Sound on July 15 a few hours before Patrick’s wedding to Amy Petitgout. Standing at left is brother Ted Jr.; Patrick is seated at right.

Update: In an interview with the AP, Patrick Kennedy confirmed that his sister died while at a gym in Washington, D.C.:

(more…)

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy is planning to host a second fundraiser to raise money for David Cicilline, who succeeded him in January, WPRI.com has confirmed.

“We are planning an event with the [former] congressman for the fall,” Cicilline spokeswoman Nicole Kayner said. “Details haven’t been set or confirmed yet.” It will likely take place in September.

Kennedy already held a fundraising reception for Cicilline in California last month when the two men were both in the Golden State. “It went great, and we were thrilled to have the congressman do it,” Kayner said.

Kennedy is not just a supporter of Cicilline’s - the Portsmouth resident is also one of his constituents in the 1st Congressional District.

A source close to Kennedy said the newly married former rep is fully behind Cicilline as the first-term incumbent prepares for what could be a tough re-election fight. “Patrick and David are close, so it’s not surprising that Patrick would look to help him whenever and however he can,” the source said.

Kennedy and his wife are scheduled to hold a fundraiser this Saturday to benefit another Rhode Island Democrat up for re-election in 2012, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Nearly two years after Ted Kennedy’s death, the clan will gather on Cape Cod this weekend for the wedding of his son (and our former congressman) Patrick. But The Boston Globe reports the reunion may be tense:

Negotiations are underway to transfer ownership of the main Kennedy home in coming months to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a proposal that has raised concerns among family members who live on adjacent property ….

Vicki Kennedy, while carrying out her husband’s wishes, has unsettled other family members in and around the compound, particularly Ethel Kennedy, whose compound home is next to the main house. Delicate negotiations are attempting to placate those concerns, the associates said.

The Globe article follows a New York Times piece earlier this week outlining the bitterness among Bobby Kennedy’s heirs about his treatment at the JFK Library. It’s too bad all this is overshadowing Patrick’s big day.

Today on Nesi’s Notes:

> A look at why the state’s real problem is ‘hidden pensions,’ not ‘free’ ones

> Rhode Island definitely elects a lot of Democrats. But is it really a blue state?

> Loughlin raised 1% of Doherty’s haul, but his people say they’re not fazed

> Fallout from Target 12′s Feel the Burn investigation continues – at a snail’s pace

> Could Obama’s deficit deal hurt Cicilline and Whitehouse at the polls next year?

(photo: Wikipedia/Dennis Mojado)

Patrick Kennedy will be the subject of a new documentary Sunday night by CNN’s Sanjay Gupta that takes its title from the former congressman’s aborted memoir “Coming Clean.” The network describes the interview as “deeply personal and wide-ranging.”

Kennedy tells Gupta he was embarrassed at having been in and out of rehab more than six times during a 25-year struggle with depression and substance abuse.

“I felt like a loser … I felt like … ‘I’m not living up. What a shame,’ ” Kennedy said, according to a transcript. “You know, ‘I’m a shame on my family by needing – treatment, for getting mental health treatment.’ ”

Kennedy also says he decided to leave Congress “because, frankly, living in the public eye and in political life was not conducive to really getting that kind of long-term steady recovery” he was seeking.

Here’s a clip from the special:

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy has bought a house on a small island off New Jersey’s Atlantic coast, WPRI.com has learned.

Kennedy recently purchased the home in Brigantine, N.J., but still plans to keep his farmhouse here in Portsmouth, a person close to him told WPRI.com. The newly retired congressman is dividing his time between Rhode Island, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., the person said.

Brigantine is located northeast of Atlantic City and has 9,450 residents, according to last year’s U.S. Census. Its population includes a mix of wealthier homeowners with seaside properties and middle-class families who work in the neighboring casino mecca, the person said.

Kennedy’s presence in Brigantine was separately confirmed by employees at the city assessor’s office and a local newspaper. The assessor’s office said the property he bought is not registered under his name.

The Kennedy family fortune is managed by the Park Agency, a private office in New York City that patriarch Joseph Kennedy established in the 1940s.

Since leaving office in January, Patrick Kennedy has been devoting his time to an energetic effort to promote research into neuroscience, including illnesses like depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kennedy and Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman are scheduled to hold a meeting this Thursday at the White House with Obama administration officials to discuss his brain research initiatives, the person said.

Kennedy has created an organization called The Next Frontier that will work to promote and coordinate brain research. Its efforts will kick off with a conference in Boston in May. He has also accepted a two-year visiting fellowship at Brown University’s Institute for Brain Science, where he will maintain an office and deliver two lectures a year.

“Millions of people live with disorders of the brain and central nervous system and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and veterans have suffered traumatic brain injuries,” Kennedy said in a statement issued by Brown. “Finding treatments and cures for their suffering is a national emergency with a scientific challenge akin to our efforts to go to the moon that galvanized the country half a century ago.”

Kennedy is also working on a memoir, “Coming Clean,” that is scheduled to be released on Nov. 8 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His co-author is former Washington Post reporter Mary Ann Akers. He attended the annual Providence Newspaper Guild Follies in Swansea last month, too.

Rhode Island has at least one connection with Brigantine in addition to Kennedy – Ilya, a manatee that swam into Rhode Island waters in September 2009, was eventually transported to the city’s Marine Mammal Stranding Center en route to Florida.

Apparently newly elected Gov. Lincoln Chafee isn’t having any honeymoon with Rhode Island voters.

Chafee’s approval rating stands at just 38% in new survey results released Friday by Public Policy Polling, which put out those much-discussed Senate results from the same sample earlier in the week. It’s the first poll done since the former senator took office nearly two months ago.

Chafee’s 38% approval rating is only two points higher than the 36% share of the vote he won in November’s four-way gubernatorial race. The survey found 44% of voters disapprove of the job Chafee is doing as governor and 17% are unsure.

The automated telephone survey of 544 Rhode Island voters was conducted Feb. 16 to Feb. 22 by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-affiliated firm in Raleigh, N.C. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

A detailed look at the poll shows that while Chafee may have won office as an independent, his base is in the Democratic Party.

The only groups with a majority approving of the job Chafee is doing as governor are voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama, 56% of whom approve of Chafee’s job performance, and self-identified Democrats, at 53% approval.

A whopping 84% of Republicans – Chafee’s own party until 2007 – disapprove of the job he’s doing as governor. More worryingly for his political advisers, just over half of independents – 51% – disapprove, too.

Chafee is doing much better among women, with 45% approving the job he’s doing so far compared with only 31% of men. He also scores higher among voters ages 18-29 (43%) and 46-65 (42%) than among voters 30-45 (36%) and 65+ (33%).

The poll also shows that U.S. Sen. Jack Reed continues to be the state’s most popular politician by a long shot, with a 60% approval rating.

Even more impressively, PPP says Reed is the most popular Democratic senator in the entire country based on job approval polls it’s done for 82 senators coast to coast over the last 13 months. Even with Republicans added in, only Wyoming’s Senate delegation scores better than Reed. (Perhaps he’s using psy-ops on the electorate? Kidding, kidding.)

PPP also asked voters’ general opinions about four other Rhode Island politicians, which sometimes differ from job approval numbers and therefore aren’t directly comparable to the numbers for Chafee and Reed.

U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin scored highest, with a 50% favorable rating. Below the halfway mark were former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy at 43% favorable and his successor, David Cicilline, at 34% favorable.

Former General Treasurer Frank Caprio, whose gubernatorial bid imploded last fall, performed worst with a favorable rating of only 29%.

Here’s a chart of the poll results – again with the caveat that it shows job approval numbers for Chafee and Reed versus favorability ratings for the other four:

National Journal is out with the 2010 edition of its famous annual rankings of where members of Congress sit on the ideological spectrum – and Sheldon Whitehouse was the most liberal U.S. senator for the second year in a row.

Whitehouse took the title of “most liberal” in a nine-way tie with senators from Ohio (Brown), Maryland (Cardin and Mikulski), Vermont (Leahy and Sanders), Michigan (Levin and Stabenow) and Nevada (Reid), according to the Beltway magazine. They voted for liberal policies 83% of the time.

Whitehouse’s Rhode Island colleague Jack Reed was right behind him, though, in a three-way tie for the ranking of 10th most-liberal senator along with New York’s two members, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer. Reed voted for liberal policies 81% of the time.

In the House of Representatives, now-retired Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin were further from the ideological extremes and also further apart from each other than the senators.

National Journal ranked Kennedy the 60th most-liberal congressman, voting that way 83% of the time, and Langevin as 120th most-liberal, voting that way 73% of the time.

Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who represents Bristol County, was in a three-way tie for eighth most-liberal congressman, according to National Journal. He took the liberal position in votes 95% of the time.

National Journal’s Ron Brownstein said the rankings showed Congress reaching “a new peak of polarization.” Here’s how he described the magazine’s findings overall:

The results document another leap forward in the fusion of ideology and partisanship that has remade Congress over the past three decades, the period tracked by NJ’s vote ratings. For most of American history, the two parties operated as ramshackle coalitions that harbored diverse and even antithetical views. … But since the early 1980s, they have vastly diminished as the differences within each party have narrowed and the distance between them has widened.

Over that period, “it’s just a straight, linear increase” in congressional polarization, says Gary Jacobson, a University of California (San Diego) political scientist who specializes in Congress. “There’s a little bit of bumping around in the numbers here and there, but the basic movement is toward the parties moving further and further apart. The 1970s are a high point of all the cross-party [coalitions]. The last three decades are ones of pulling apart.”

The magazine has been putting together the rankings since 1981. To do so, its researchers looked through all of last year’s roll-call votes in Congress – 664 in the House and 299 in the Senate – and determined which ones showed a clear ideological distinction. Just under 100 votes were used to do the calculations. More about the methodology is available here.

Patrick Kennedy, who finished a 16-year career as a Rhode Island congressman last month, is back in the news thanks to a lengthy interview he gave Politico in the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Arizona.

Kennedy, whose family is all too familiar with the reality of political violence, had some tough words for Sarah Palin. More surprisingly perhaps, he also used alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner to make the case for his pet cause, improving mental health treatment:

“When Sarah Palin puts targets on people’s districts? Or you have 10,000 signs on the mall during the healthcare battle saying ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’? When the vitriol and the rhetoric is so violent, we have to connect consequences to that,” said Kennedy, who left Congress two weeks ago after serving eight terms representing Rhode Island. …

In Loughner, Kennedy sees an object lesson for the media and others. “When I hear terms about the alleged shooter in this case, pejorative terms like psycho, lunatic, or they say ‘He’s crazy.’ These are terms we use to describe someone’s mental health?” he asked, his voice booming over the telephone.

“This is a rare opportunity to take all the stigma and stereotyping, and take the terms like crazy and psycho, that are being bandied about by reputable people who should know better, and use this as an opportunity to have some enlightened debate about better public policy that can help respond to the real need amongst many families whose family members are part of that very small subset of individuals who suffer from violent, paranoid schizophrenia.”

Gov.-elect Lincoln Chafee has come to the defense of his friend Barack Obama as the president continues to face criticism over his compromise with Congressional Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts.

Chafee’s office issued a 400-word statement this evening that described some criticism of the president’s proposal as “unfair.” He called on Congress to approve the measure.

Chafee said he hoped to add “a degree of balance to the public discussion of the last few days.” After that throat-clearing, the former Republican senator reminded people that he “was a vocal and determined opponent of the Bush tax cuts” at a time when most Republicans were supporting them, and criticized his former colleagues for “launching a spending spree that has arguably led to a devastated national economy” – a much stronger charge than blaming the G.O.P. solely for the federal government’s red ink.

“As a fiscal conservative, I left the Republican Party because my former colleagues took a record surplus and turned it into record deficits,” Chafee said, going on to criticize what he described as the “reckless behavior” of Republican leaders then and now. And he praised Obama for including a 13-month continuance of extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.

The politics of this have gotten interesting over the last few hours.

Patrick Kennedy’s statement a little while earlier cited his late father Ted – a liberal icon – to explain why he would be supporting the president. Now Chafee is out with a statement that aligns him with Obama while reminding voters of his days as a maverick senator. Neither one of those should displease a White House worried about shoring up its standing among independents ahead of the 2012 campaign while mollifying unhappy liberals.

I asked Chafee’s office whether the White House requested his public support on this, and I’ll update if I hear back. His full statement is posted after the jump.

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A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy just sent me his statement on President Obama’s deal with Congressional Republicans on the Bush tax cuts. He will support the president’s proposal – reluctantly – with a nod to his late father Ted Kennedy. Here’s the congressman:

While disappointed with this deal’s demonstration of the Republican hypocrisy on deficits and their willingness to sacrifice America’s working families in their single-minded pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy, I have to commend President Obama for securing this agreement.

Perhaps no one appreciated the art and understood the value of compromise better than my father, and this situation required the president to balance the interests of 98 percent of Americans against Republican’s unyielding defense of the wealthiest 2 percent.

At the end of the day, too many Rhode Island families are suffering to oppose this deal that will genuinely be the difference for millions of Americans in determining if they can afford to put food on their table.

That makes Kennedy the first member of Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional delegation to come out in support of Obama’s compromise, which is getting hammered by some liberal lawmakers. Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse and Jim Langevin all took a wait-and-see approach in the statements they issued over the last 24 hours.

The vote on the tax package also will likely be one of Kennedy’s final acts as a congressman, since he is retiring at the end of this session. Providence Mayor David Cicilline will succeed him.