You are correct, that sentence is incoherent.
It is the result of faulty and rapid editing to try and remove any hint of it being a personal attack as that is not how it was intended.
I will try again.
I never said Byrd was a SCHOLAR, I said he was a historian.
From the Merrian-Webster dictionary:
Main Entry: his·to·ri·an
Pronunciation: hi-'stOr-E-&n, -'stor-, -'stär- Function: noun
1 : a student or writer of history; especially : one that produces a scholarly synthesis
2 : a writer or compiler of a chronicle
Robert Byrd is a student of history in that he has a Bachelor’s degree in political Science from Marshall University. He also holds a Juris Doctorate from American University Law School.
He is a writer of history in that he has written several books including, "The Senate of the Roman Republic: Addresses on the History of Roman Constitutionalism" and a four volume work entitled, "The Senate: 1789-1989."
If pressed, I could probably come up with a list of a thousand people who are Historians and as much full of shit as is Byrd. The fact that their conclusions and interpretations are unreasonable or even incorrect does not change the fact that are Historians.
A horrible lawyer is still a lawyer and a horrible teacher is still a teacher until and unless the are fired for their incompetence or malpractice.
As it stands, the sheeple of West Virginia have not seen fit to remove Byrd from office after 47 years and people continue to buy his books on the history of the Senate.
I'm in law school right now and no way is a JD going to make any of these people an historian or anything close. This just isn't relevant. Same with the BA.
He is a writer of history in that he has written several books including, "The Senate of the Roman Republic: Addresses on the History of Roman Constitutionalism" and a four volume work entitled, "The Senate: 1789-1989." If pressed, I could probably come up with a list of a thousand people who are Historians and as much full of shit as is Byrd. The fact that their conclusions and interpretations are unreasonable or even incorrect does not change the fact that are Historians.
This is more to the point, and there may not be as much difference between us as I thought. That said, I don't consider a poor historian a real historian, and since we were talking about Byrd in the context of impressing Roberts, seems to me that was something that mattered. These books, for example, are hardly histories in the normal sense, but collections of speeches. They don't even seem to have been "written"; the blurb on the Rome book, at least, notes that it was all spoken from memory, and includes no notes or citations, which if accurate points to shockingly low standards in both Byrd and the Government Printing Office which let this be put out. For the Senate bookset (two volumes of which are simply anthologies of speeches from other senators and a collection of statistics) we're told it was "edited" by two women named Mary Sharon Hall and Wendy Wolff, leaving one free to wonder how much of the heavy lifting was actually done by them.
If Byrd's voting to confirm Roberts's nomination, I think it has more to do with West Virginia's reddish politics, and that there's really no good reason to oppose the man, who is perhaps the most qualified candidate for the Supreme Court around right now. In less politically charged times I suspect there wouldn't have been any controversy at all.