Posted on 02/26/2008 6:42:09 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was hospitalized Tuesday after complaining of back pain following a fall at his home, his spokesman said.
Byrd, 90, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the longest-serving senator in history, was staying overnight at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for observation, said spokesman Jesse Jacobs. It was not immediately clear whether he had suffered broken bones.
Jacobs said Byrd fell at his Virginia home Monday night. He came to his office Tuesday and was on the Senate floor to vote for an Indian health bill. But after noticing he was wincing in pain, Byrd's staff recommended that he see the Capitol physician, who "smartly for a 90-year-old man advised him to go to Walter Reed for observation."
Byrd, who as Senate president pro tempore is third in line to the presidency, walks haltingly with two canes. Due to his frail condition, some Senate Democrats reportedly explored ways to replace him as Appropriations chairman, but he continues to hold the post.
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.
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.
It’s just one more burning cross he’ll have to bear.
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.
Get well, then fly away to long overdue retirement. Didn’t the rats want to take away his committee chair due to his senility?
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.
He could visit the ailing and/or the veterans in the hospital. But, maybe, that wouldn’t fit in w/his control issues.
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.
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.
I wish him a pleasant retirement, free of the stresses of life on Capital Hill.
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.
Hubby;s 96 YO mom fell in a nursing home and broke her hip. Dies within 4 months from pneumonia.
A fall for somebody that old is serious ... Indicative of how the Senators/House desperately hold too long to power.
Carolyn
“...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?
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.
...he may be Vice President soon...
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