Posted on 03/07/2002 11:39:50 PM PST by kattracks
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:37:55 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A simple one-page resolution expressing the Senate's support for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan was on hold yesterday while Democrats wrestled with its language.
"The Senate stands united with the president in the ongoing effort to destroy Al Qaeda," states a draft of the resolution that Democrats were seeking to change.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Publication: The New Republic;
Date: 02-22-1999;
Byrd's baggage
-SNIP
To the editors:
David Plotz's vignette of Senator Robert Byrd is searing but accurate. The former Ku Klux Klaner was one of six senators who had the privilege of escorting into the Senate chamber Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who as a young law clerk wrote opinions against the desegregation of schools, and who as a longtime jurist has never employed a black law clerk. The chief justice was then sworn in by Senator Strom Thurmond, former Dixiecrat and champion filibusterer against civil rights bills.
Plotz repeats, albeit incredulously, Byrd's old song and dance about joining the Klan to uphold "traditional American values" and to fight communism. But had the journalist dug deeper, he would have found proof that Byrd joined the hooded white supremacists because he loathed and feared African Americans. As cited in Graham Smith's When Jim Crow Met John Bull, Byrd, fearing the possible desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces in 1945, wrote the famously negrophobic Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner [the American flag] 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 throw back to the blackest specimen from the wilds." A sexual past can trip up a politician but a racist past seems little hindrance to a long and glorious political career in America.
David W. Southern, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri
-SNIP
LOL I think he's having delusions of grandeur. All of these guys have so dishonored their oaths that many of us don't care what they write any more.
-SNIP
But Byrd's congressional exploits have never matched his gumption. In 1964, he demonstrated his growing mastery of procedure by filibustering the Civil Rights Act for more than 14 hours, one of the longest such delays in Senate history. Several years later, Byrd voted against the Supreme Court nomination of Thurgood Marshall. (Byrd briefly belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in his twenties, a misstep he has apologized for but never adequately explained. He has written that, at the time, he believed the Klan was "an effective force in the struggle against communism and in the promotion of traditional American values," which sounds more like a Klan advertisement than sincere remorse.)
-SNIP
That sentence really does stick out doesn't it. Of all the things that the Senate should be doing and the President is doing, the wording of a non-binding resolution of war support shouldn't be seen as "too serious a matter". At least not from our perspective…
I betrays the perspective that Leahy and his party find themselves in: Bush's 80% approval for the longest time of any president ever, both houses in the balance for an election months away, no issue to run on, and now having to repair Daschle's 3rd or 4th PR strike.
Leahy's right! It's a very serious matter for him. {smile}
shhhhhh…
Don't chase him away now. We want him as a Democrat poster boy in 2 years.
I wish you were right.
The fact is the GOP has had this information for years and has never chosen to use it.
Do you think the D's would be so compassionate to a Republican senator who happened to be a former member of the KKK?
What setback? Nine men dead are not a setback! Are we a bunch of "I'm scared to break some eggs" sissies? In a single day in 1916 60,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded or made missing, and they didn't consider packing their bags and going home.
Closer to home, in a three day fight in 1863 more than 50,000 Americans were killed, wounded, captured or made missing -- yet neither side considered packing it in.
We are a bunch of woosies; we are in a war for national survival. Losing is not an option, yet the Democrats call nine dead -- only nine -- a "setback." Get some freakin' perspective!
This little piss-ant is tripping my trigger finger! If our military guys overseas heard this crap, Tommy Tune Daschle would probably not have a nice day, week, month, year, career... and other longevity considerations. Pink! Hmmm.
Great resolution. The struggle for the right language consists of how many buts they can insert, as in: "We hereby fully support the President and our soldiers, but, we have to recognize that social security, patient's bill of rights, the environment, education, campaign finance reform, prescription drugs for seniors, medicade, medicare, yada yada are equally important.
Carville and Schrum told us so.
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Here is what you say Tommy. "OBL, et al..prepare to meet those virgins".
"setback"? Hope all of America gets the real message of Daschle and every Liberal out there; do hope they are making themselves perfectly clear. . .
p.s. to Tom: re your difficulty in choosing the right words, just call Bill Clinton. Bill will 'parse' your words perfectly and will not take but a few minutes to get the job done. He will choose words that make it look like you are supportive of the President, but in fact, mean otherwise. . .post parsing; and words that make it look like you care about the Military, when in fact you hate all things Military.
Yes, Clinton can dash that off in a minute Tom, just call him.
If you cannot reach him, Hillary is just down the hall. . .
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