Byrd hospitalized after fall

AP on Yahoo ^ | 2/26/08 | AP

[napscoordinator]

Prayers for a quick recovery. I believe he is due for a nice retirement. Senator wouldn’t you rather stay home and enjoy your life. Why don’t you resign from the Senate. You can be proud of your service to the Senate from you home in West Virginia.

[ReignOfError]

Meaning no disrespect, there should be some mechanism for retiring a Senator who cannot physically meet the (very limited) challenge of the office.

Something like that?

There are several informal mechanisms: Friends and family can prevail on a Senator to step down. Party leaders can quietly nudge behind the scenes. The Senate can expel a Senator they consider unfit, but no one wants to be seen doing that to a poor old man. But if the old dude is that stubborn, you just let him go through the motions and don't trouble him with details he won't remember anyway.

You can't pin this on the Dems alone, either. Strom Thurmond stuck around the Senate long after he ceased to know what was going on.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

It’s just one more burning cross he’ll have to bear.

[ReignOfError]

but it is really really hard to be respectful of anyone, GOP or democrat, conservative or liberal, if he has KKK ties

Had. Past tense. He joined in 1942 and was already publicly repudiating the Klan when he ran for the House in 1952.

Politics is full of people who did dumb stuff in their youth and became solid political citizens later in life. Former Nazis, communists, '60s student radicals, name it. In his 20s, Byrd went with the flow. Older, more confident, he saw the error of his ways.

I'm gonna guess that you're not a Southerner, because in the South we've pretty much gotten used to weighing that as a factor, but not a disqualifyong one. Different place and time. George Wallace was the most prominent face of segregation, but his last few elections in Alabama, he captured most of the black vote. Zell Miller's political career began when he was an aide to Lester Maddux.

Byrd's Klan past is good for chuckles, but don't confuse it with a substantive argument against the man he's been for at least the last half-century.

[Impy]

Get well, then fly away to long overdue retirement. Didn’t the rats want to take away his committee chair due to his senility?

[snuffy smiff]

yep, all that pork for his home state...

...and I can take you to at least two areas of Clarksburg where raw sewage runs in the streets.

I guess it’s really true: people get the government they deserve.

Disgusting.

[presently no screen name]

He could visit the ailing and/or the veterans in the hospital. But, maybe, that wouldn’t fit in w/his control issues.

[presently no screen name]

I agree. THEY do take care of their own, don’t they. But it is our fault - we allow it by silence. Let us ALL try that at our jobs and then they can watch the unemployment figures go up.

[ExSoldier]

I can't help it. That's just funny.

Yeah, I was giggling and snorting quietly as I wrote it, but I was in the fervent hope that nobody else shared my sick, evil and twisted sense of humor. Obviously, I was wrong.

[presently no screen name]

WOW! Talk about the NEED to have your name in lights. Seems at 90 he still hasn't gotten that need met.

Here's my gripe. The good people of his state pay for his salary, ALL his perks, etc. He is a public servant! There should be a law - NO public servant should have their name associated with any building project. I say - a citizen from that state - ONLY VETERANS - or those who GAVE THEIR LIFE for this country deserves the honor of having their name on anything in this country.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

I wish him a pleasant retirement, free of the stresses of life on Capital Hill.

[arthurus]

I’m no fan of the Senator, but I wish him a full recovery and speedy retirement, as surely do all Freepers.

[Gondring]

Did he fall on his sheet just asking Norm

hehehe...that's what my first thought was, too. Good thing I checked before posting! :-)

Best wishes to the Senator for a smooth and complete recovery.

[gopheraj]

Hubby;s 96 YO mom fell in a nursing home and broke her hip. Dies within 4 months from pneumonia.

[Robert A Cook PE]

A fall for somebody that old is serious ... Indicative of how the Senators/House desperately hold too long to power.

[CDHart]

I wish they'd all just go to sleep. They'd be far less dangerous that way.

Carolyn

[NCC-1701]

“...Strom Thurmond stuck around the Senate long after he ceased to know what was going on....”

Isn’t that the case for most of them on the Hill?

[incredulous joe]

Seems like a 'reasonable' suggestion for our congress.

It'll never work.

We regularly vacation in the 'Quiet Zone' in WV. The radio telescope there is the largest movieng radio telescope in the world. Locals simply refer to it as the 'Green Bank Telescope'. They also wink and smirk a little bit when they say it.

[MSF BU]

...he may be Vice President soon...