Patrick Kennedy: He's Black and he's proud

Or something like that.

Fresh from rehab, Rep. Patrick Kennedy said yesterday he wants to be treated like an African-American from Washington if and when he gets charged for crashing his car on Capitol Hill.

Denying that he was drunk and or that he asked the Capitol Police for preferential treatment, Kennedy, a Rhode Island congressman, said he's prepared "in terms of bookings, in terms of mug shots, fingerprints, whatever they might have me do."

"It's what anyone else would have done to them if they were an African-American in Anacostia," Kennedy said in a shaky voice, referring to the mostly minority neighborhood in southeastern Washington.

Later, Kennedy fretted that "there are probably people who want to throw the book at me a little more to prove that they're not treating me special."