When Senator Robert Byrddied last week, many wondered how his eulogizers might treat an ugly part of his past: his role as a leader/recruiter in a West Virginia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Former President Bill Clinton answered those questions while speaking during the memorial service, ostensibly defending Byrd’s part in the Klan by saying “he was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia,” adding “he was trying to get elected.” Fox News’ Media Analyst Bernard Goldberg took exception to the cavalier shrugging-off of Byrd’s racist past.
It’s a difficult thing to do – criticize the words of someone praising the past of someone who has just past (especially one who has given so many years of service to his country.) However, Goldberg dared to point out what he seemed to be an offhand and inappropriately informal explanation of Byrd’s time in the Klan. And he makes some very good points without stomping on the legacy of the departed Senator.
First, the excepted words of Clinton which raised Goldberg’s ire:
There are a lot of people who wrote these eulogies for Senator Byrd in the newspapers and I read a bunch of them. and they mention that he once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan. What does that mean? I will tell what you it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does.
Goldberg shows both deftness and reason in his critique of Clinton’s eulogy, given that damning the past of the “dearly departed” is ostensibly a very tricky wicket:
Well, first I thought the obvious. You don’t use a funeral to unload on the dearly departed. So I understand why Bill Clinton, you know, did what he did to some extent but he went way, way, way too far.
First of all, you heard the sound bite just then. Bill Clinton says well, he was just a country boy from West Virginia, trying to get elected as if, what, that somehow justifies joining the Klan? Even in the 1940s, Bill, decent people didn’t join the Ku Klux Klan. By the way, Robert Byrd wasn’t just a regular bigot in the Ku Klux Klan, he was a special bigot. He recruited the other morons who joined the could you Ku Klux Klan. Imagine today if some politician felt he had to bad mouth or bash black people in order to get elected. Do you think Bill Clinton would be be so cavalier or anybody else for that matter as to say, well, come on, he is just a country boy who is trying to get elected. Of course not.
And then the second thing Clinton said is that Robert Byrd spent the rest of his life making it up. That’s not even true. In 1964, Robert Byrd not only voted against the civil rights act, but he filibustered for 14 hours. One year later in 1965, He voted against the voting rights act. Now, in fairness, later on in life, Robert Byrd championed making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. We will give him that.
But this leads to one of two possibilities. Either he had a genuine change of heart, which is possible, or he is simply made another political calculation. Just as he joined the Klan for political reasons, maybe he realized that being a bigot wasn’t going to work anymore. I’m not saying that you use the funeral to bad-mouth the guy but Bill Clinton, ever the statesman, could have compromised and just said a little bit less.
"He spent the rest of his life trying to make it up..." Yeah, that filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is just right-wing fiction. I digress because it was Slick Willie who helped turn me into a conservative.
Robert Byrd was not only a former member and recruiter within the KKK, but he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for almost 3 months and opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but what does any of that matter to an organization that's long built itself as standing for the advancement of "colored" people:
From the KuKlux Klan, to a 14-hour, 13-minute filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. former Sen. Robert C. Byrd's life was filled with controversy.
"I realize that people make mistakes when they're young ... I think we've all done things we've regretted ... these are one of the things I know he regretted," Coston Davis, President, Charleston Branch of NAACP said.
Byrd was elected to the U.S. House in 1952. His involvement in the Klan splashed across headlines. He said he joined because of its anti-communism.
He joined with Southern Democrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Bill, a move that would haunt him for the rest of his political career.
"I do know the he filibustered the civil rights for a minute and at that point there was a transformation and change and he actually became a champion of civil rights," Davis said.
What a disgrace. No wonder the NAACP borders on irrelevancy,
Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died early Monday. He was 92.
His office said he died about 3 a.m. at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va. Senator Byrd, who lived in McLean, Va., had been admitted to the hospital late last week with symptoms of heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as temperatures in the Washington area approached 100 degrees. Though he was initially expected to be released after a few days, his condition deteriorated. He had been in failing health for several years.
Mr. Byrd’s death comes as Senate Democrats are working to pass the final version of the financial overhaul bill and win other procedural battles in the week before the Independence Day recess. In the polarized atmosphere of Washington, President Obama’s agenda seemed to hinge on Mr. Byrd’s health. Earlier this year, in the final days of the health care debate, the ailing senator was pushed onto the Senate floor in his plaid wheelchair so he could cast his votes.
Governor Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, will appoint an interim successor to Mr. Byrd.
Thanks to a lamestream media dominated by liberal journalists, Robert Byrd's record will be distorted and rectified to make him look like a good guy who had a few flaws early on in his life. But the facts are simply the facts. When he was a young man Robert Byrd joined and became heavily involved in a hate organization with a history of raping, abusing and killing black people and decades later he joined with other Democrats to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I don't take any glee in Senator Byrd's passing, but anyone who takes part in distorting his record to make him look like a good guy is an idiot.
So despite all these claims by liberal pols that no snow is a clear sign of global warming, now that it's snowing MORE all over the country, that too is a sign of "global warming".
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
The Senate paid tribute Wednesday to the longest serving lawmaker in U.S. congressional history, a milestone marked with tributes and a special resolution.
"I look forward to serving you for the next 56 years and 320 days," Sen. Robert Byrd said in a statement marking the occasion. His only regret, Byrd said, was that his late wife, Erma, was not there with him.
"I know that she is looking down from the heavens smiling at me and saying congratulations, my dear Robert -- but don't let it go to your head," Byrd said.
It was unclear whether Byrd would be able to attend Wednesday's session.
Setting records is old news to the white-maned Democratic lawmaker, whose career in Washington began in 1952 with his election to the House from the state of West Virginia and his elevation six years later to the Senate.
Since June 12, 2006, Byrd has been the longest-serving senator and later that year he was elected to an unprecedented ninth term. His colleagues have elected him to more leadership positions than any senator in history. He has cast more than 18,000 votes and, despite fragile health that has kept him from the Senate floor during much of this year, has a nearly 98 percent attendance record over the course of his career.
Which, by Byrd's count, has spanned 20,774 days. On Tuesday, Byrd's service tied the record set by Carl Hayden, a Democrat who served in the House, then the Senate, from 1912 to 1969.
"I am willing to risk predicting that many of the records set by Sen. Robert Byrd will never be passed," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, in the first of a series of floor tributes Wednesday.
The arc of Byrd's story is more complex than the numbers would suggest. It has been long enough for him to rescind positions that he once trumpeted, such as his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Lengthy enough to voice his regret, over and over, about joining the Ku Klux Klan a lifetime ago.
Good to note that Byrd's "only regret" is that his wife couldn't be here for this "honor"--forget that KKK stint. Unbelievable. Of course, Byrd's a Democrat so not only can the former head Klansmen can get away with being re-elected over and over again, but even uttering the n-word just a few years ago. Double-standard much? Robert Byrd is a disgrace and so is this Congress.
The 90-year-old geezer from West Virginia showing the same resolve as he probably did burning crosses on Black folks lawns back in the day:
WASHINGTON — West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd isn't going gently into any good night, despite reports that 15 Senate Democrats have been talking privately about deposing the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman.
Byrd, 90, has been in and out of the hospital in recent weeks and missed a series of votes before the Spring recess.
That has led, according to Roll Call newspaper, to several senators holding "the first of what's likely to be several private discussions" about whether Byrd can handle his duties as the head of the most powerful committee on Capitol Hill — especially at a time when annual appropriations get into full gear.
I just thought that this clip of Democratic senator Robert Byrd railing against NFL QB Michael Vick's dogfighting charges was hilarious. Of course, the irony of a former member of the KKK shouting "barbaric" endlessly on a Senate floor is funny within itself.
Student of Life, lover of God, Black, conservative Democrat, believer in self-responsibility, traditional values and morals, resident of New York City. Follow me on Twitter at @MrGreyGhost1.
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