West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd dead at 92

[Police Moderator]

West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd dead at 92

By Joe Holley
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 28, 2010; 5:41 AM

Robert C. Byrd, , a conservative West Virginia Democrat who became the longest-serving member of Congress in history and used his masterful knowledge of the institution to shape the federal budget, protect the procedural rules of the Senate and, above all else, tend to the interests of his state, died at 3 a.m. Monday at Inova Fairfax Hospital, his office said.

Mr. Byrd had been hospitalized last week with what was thought to be heat exhaustion, but more serious issues were discovered, aides said Sunday. No formal cause of death was given.

Starting in 1958, Mr. Byrd was elected to the Senate an unprecedented nine times. He wrote a four-volume history of the body, was majority leader twice and chaired the powerful Appropriations Committee, controlling the nation's purse strings, and yet the positions of influence he held did not convey the astonishing arc of his life.

A child of the West Virginia coal fields, Mr. Byrd rose from the grinding poverty that has plagued his state since before the Great Depression, overcame an early and ugly association with the Ku Klux Klan, worked his way through night school and by force of will, determination and iron discipline made himself a person of authority and influence in Washington.

Read more: washington post

[Scarlet&Gray]

Prayers to his family and the State of WVA.

[zodiacman]

You know I was honestly shocked and surprised at his death. I mean I've seen the Harry Potter movies. I've seen Lord Voldemort and to be quite honest, I never expected a Grand Wizard to die that easily. Oh well, RIP.

[Police Moderator]

Robert Byrd, RIP (updated)
Thomas Lifson

Senator Robert Byrd has died at the age of 92. The former Klu Klux Klan official was no favorite of mine, for he turned from racist politics to pork politics, of which he was a master, bringing billions of dollars of federal spending to his economically beleaguered state. Scott Johnson of Powerline followed Byrd's career, and reminds us of the following:

Byrd was old enough, for example, to have vowed memorably regarding the integration of the Armed Forces by President Truman that he would never fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Even after his resignation from the Klan, Byrd continued to hold it in high esteem, writing to the Klan's Imperial Wizard in 1946: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia."

And Byrd was old enough to have participated in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as to have voted against it after cloture along with 18 other Democrats -- in the name of the Constitution, of course.


As one would expect, many media are downplaying the disgraceful past of Byrd, solely because he is a Democrat. Adam Clymer of the New York Times wrote an obituary that took 18 paragraphs to get to a mention of the Klan. Andrew Taylor of AP took 23 paragraphs. Joe Holley of the WaPo took only five grafs, which is almost fair. But asks yourself if a leading Republican with a racist background had died, would it take multiple paragraphs before it was mentioned? Come to think of it, are there any leading Republicans with such a racist background?

Read more: american thinker