Don't forget Democrat Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd!
Never fear
You Mean The Filibuster Isn't The Center Of The Republic?
Captains Quarters ^ | 6/11/05 | Capt. Ed
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421008/posts
(snip)
Some white writers, notably Mark Twain, railed against it. Two leading civil rights groups, the NAACP and B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League, sprang up in part to counter lynching. Black journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett devoted her career to ending lynching. Seven presidents, starting with Benjamin Harrison in 1891, argued for making it a federal offense.
None of this swayed the Senate, where southern lawmakers insisted that a federal law would intrude on states' rights. One debate tied up the Senate for a total of six weeks in 1937 and 1938, and supporters were never able to break the filibuster.
That's what made the recent debate over the use of the filibuster such a tragic joke. Having Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK recruiter, get up in the well of the Senate and lecture the GOP and the nation that ending the filibuster presented a danger to the Republic amounted to historical revisionism of the worst kind. While Harry Reid talked about Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (one of Frank Capra's worst and most idiotically idealistic films), the real, non-Hollywood Senate used the filibuster to ensure and to tacitly endorse the racial control that lynching provided. It isn't too far of a stretch to call it Southern terrorism.
Thanks to racists like Byrd, that tradition of filibustering continues today. In fact, Byrd (who isn't even mentioned in this article) filibustered the original Civil Rights Act in 1964, eating up 14 hours of debate before his own caucus finally put an end to his embarrassing display. It is a practice that allows the entire democratic process of the United States to be held hostage by a minority, even if it now requires a larger minority than before the rule changes which eliminated the need for continuous speechmaking.