Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Robert C. Byrd, after speaking at a MoveOn.org rally last month in Washington, defending the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees.
Posted on 04/03/2005 3:04:42 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, April 2 - After 46 years in the United States Senate - including a 12-year stint as Democratic leader - Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia sees himself as its protector and defender, a guardian of its history and traditions.
A co-author of a four-volume tome of Senate history, Mr. Byrd, 87, comes to work each day with a tiny leather-bound copy of the Constitution in his left breast pocket. "I've forgotten more about the rules and procedures," Mr. Byrd said in an interview this week, "than most senators will ever know."
Now Mr. Byrd's reputation as an authority on all things senatorial is under attack. Lawmakers return to Washington on Monday after a two-week recess, and the Senate is headed for a procedural showdown over a Republican-led drive to end the minority Democrats' use of the filibuster in blocking President Bush's judicial nominees.
Mr. Byrd, the senior senator from West Virginia, is front and center in that fight, carrying the banner for his party and at the same time drawing the ire of conservatives outraged by his vocal defense of the filibuster.
Republicans hope to end judicial filibusters by changing Senate rules to prevent them - a move so explosive it has been dubbed "the nuclear option." Mr. Byrd, invoking Senate tradition and his beloved Constitution, is railing against it, drawing charges of hypocrisy from Republicans who say that when he was leader, he initiated some artful rules changes of his own.
"Such a sweet old man," Senator Rick Santorum said sardonically in an interview. Mr. Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who ranks third in his party's leadership, went on: "Facts are facts, and the fact is Senator Byrd has singularly used this tactic more than any other leader in the United States Senate. To come in and feign outrage over a technique of which he was the master is even a little much for senators to swallow."
The fight has made Mr. Byrd, currently the longest-serving member of the Senate, an unlikely cult hero among liberals and an object of derision among conservatives in the twilight of his political career. He is up for re-election in 2006, and though he has not yet formally said whether he will run ("I'm inclined to," is as far as he will go), Republicans are already working to unseat him.
Christian conservatives and right-wing bloggers are unearthing his past as a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ("I've said time and time again that I was wrong about that and I apologize," Mr. Byrd said.) The National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending out a stream of "Byrd watching" news releases. "Robert Byrd Flies Off the Deep End," declared one. "Robert's Rules of Order: Do as I Say, Not as I Did," blared another. And Republicans are decrying a recent speech by Mr. Byrd, in which he invoked Hitler to assail the nuclear option.
"One more speech like that and we'll have more than enough votes" to eliminate the filibuster, said Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader. "We ought to call this the Byrd rule change."
Mr. Byrd began brushing up on the Senate's rules decades ago, when some of his colleagues were barely out of diapers. He was encouraged, he said, by his mentor, Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. of Georgia. "He said, 'Don't just study the rules, study the precedents,' " Mr. Byrd recalled.
So Mr. Byrd did - a move that came in handy in 1977 when as Democratic leader, he helped close a loophole that had allowed Republicans effectively to filibuster legislation by offering a stream of amendments. Republicans say Mr. Byrd used procedures to limit debate on three other occasions, though he says he never once "deprived the minority" of "the right to freedom of speech."
While Republicans are holding Mr. Byrd as an emblem for inconsistency, Democrats are rallying around him. "He's the Senate's encyclopedia," said Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Byrd "a legend."
Indeed, when Mr. Byrd takes the Senate floor, voice quavering, finger wagging, words like "escutcheon" dripping from his lips, the chamber steps back in time. He quotes Popeye and Plato with equal ease.
Democrats are also discovering Mr. Byrd's defense of the filibuster is a useful fund-raising tool. Last week, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out an e-mail appeal from Mr. Byrd in which he warned that "an ill wind is blowing across this country" and urged potential donors to download their own "personal Constitution by clicking here."
The battle over judges has been good for Mr. Byrd's political coffers as well. The political action arm of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn .org, whose members fondly recall the senator's blistering critique of the war in Iraq, raised more than $800,000 over the Internet last week for Mr. Byrd's re-election. The fund-raiser came on the heels of a MoveOn rally several weeks ago, where Mr. Byrd delivered a hellfire-and-brimstone speech that was part religious revival, part civics lesson.
"These instant constitutional experts want to warp, want to bend, if you will, the Senate's constitutional purpose with a witch's brew of half truths, twisted logic and vicious attacks on freedom of speech," the senator thundered, wagging his finger and waving his copy of the Constitution. "Why? Because they don't like the rules! They want to change the rules so they can pack the courts!"
The crowd swooned like schoolgirls catching their first glimpse of the Beatles, and the senator seemed to relish every minute. But political analysts say getting the rock-star reception from the MoveOn set could backfire for Mr. Byrd in West Virginia, where President Bush won last November's election by 13 percentage points.
At home, Mr. Byrd is sometimes called "the prince of pork," for the millions of dollars in federal aid he has brought back for public works projects, many of which bear his name. He has represented the state in Washington for 52 years, having served 6 years in the House before the Senate. Republicans do not have a candidate to run against him, though they are courting Representative Shelley Moore Capito.
That would be quite a match-up, said Robert Rupp, a professor of political science and history at West Virginia Wesleyan College, noting that Mr. Byrd has not had a competitive race since 1958.
"What we have here is not a question of an old politician fading or fighting for his life," Professor Rupp said. "What we really have here is an old politician who is getting a revival, a new image, in what will be his last political campaign. So the question then becomes: what will the state owe an icon?"
With his white hair, his polished wooden cane and hands that shake from what aides say is a benign tremor, Mr. Byrd cuts a seemingly frail figure in the Capitol, and some wonder if he would be up for a grueling campaign. His wife of nearly 68 years, Erma, has been ill, and he said she is very much on his mind. Yet as he sat in his chandeliered Capitol office last week, his cane resting by his side, Mr. Byrd seemed energized, casting thunderbolts like Zeus from the mountaintop.
"How sad," Mr. Byrd declared, lowering his eyes and dragging out his words for dramatic effect, "will be the legacy of those senators who vote to assassinate freedom of speech in the Senate of the United States. What a blotch upon the escutcheon of the great basic liberty of the people. How sad."
And here, the senior senator from West Virginia grew silent for a moment before issuing his final warning: "And mark my words, people will know who wielded the dagger."
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Robert C. Byrd, after speaking at a MoveOn.org rally last month in Washington, defending the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees.
The man is an absolute Disgrace.
But he's a Big Time Democrat. So he's given a Pass by the MSM.
That pretty much says it all. I'm surprised the Times saw fit to print it, even buried in the middle of the article.
Poor old Sheets Byrd, Pinch Sulzberger feels your pain. What's an old KKK Kleagle to do, anyway? Everyone is picking on you. How unfair.
Buried in the article. And inaccurate--he was a RECRUITER for the Klan, not just a member.
The Times also neglects to mention that Byrd was a segregationist and filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, the Times also liked Stalin, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, so they're not perfect.
escutcheon
perhaps L scutum=shield
species: noun
defn: 1 part of a coat of arms
2 protective or decorative shield such as around a keyhole
3 the part of ship to the stern where its name is displayed
In 1968, Senator Byrd said: "Martin Luther King fled the scene. He took to his heels and disappeared, leaving it to others to cope with the destructive forces he had helped to unleash. And I hope that well-meaning negro leaders and individuals in the negro community in Washington will now take a new look at this man who gets other people into trouble and then takes off like a scared rabbit."
will this man please moveon.org. Please, someone slap the retired military folks in WV. Come on people.
Byrd was a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan for a period of time in the early 1940s, holding the title Kleagle; Klan recruiter. In 1945, controversy was raging over the idea of racially integrating the military. In his book When Jim Crow Met John Bull [1] (http://www.heretical.com/smith/wwar2.html),
Graham Smith referred to a letter written that year by Byrd to racist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, in which Byrd vowed never to 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." [2](http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/02/standards.html)
In a 1946 letter, he wrote, "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." However, when running for Congress in 1952, he announced, "After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan."
Since then, Senator Byrd has often referred to his Klan membership as a mistake of his youth, less often as a moral outrage. As recently as 1997, he told an interviewer he'd encourage young people to become involved in politics, but with this warning: "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena."
As a result of this 50 year old affiliation, Senator Byrd is often maligned by his critics with the moniker, Robert "Sheets" Byrd.
I see him as suffering from extreme dementia, and his family hasn't go the courage to keep him home (for fear he will filibuster at the dinner table).
How nice, he thinks it will protect him; he obviously doesn't give a hoot about what it actually says and means.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/pageone/
It's the first of the lesser stories referenced on the front page. I doubt that they would place untoward information in the lead paragraph.
The Slimes is pretty hard up for leftie heroes when they have to lionize a Klansman. Too bad liberals are impervious to irony.
The fact is that Byrd is a fraud. His act might impress his constituents back in West Virginia, but I think the Senate is showing him way too much respect.
"The Great Compromise resulted in proportional representation for the States in the less-powerful House of Representatives, and disproportional representation in the Senate. To calculate State populations for House representation, each slave was counted as three-fifths of a free person (Article I, Section 2, third clause)."
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