The vice president praised Byrd as someone who always fought for his home state, and as a close friend.
“We lost the dean of the United States Senate, but also the state of West Virginia lost its most fierce advocate and, as I said, I lost a dear friend,” Biden said, according to a transcript provided by the White House.
Biden called Byrd “a tough, compassionate and outspoken leader and dedicated above all else to making life better for the people of the mountain state — his state, the state of West Virginia.”
“He never lost sight of home,” Biden said. “He may have spent half a century in Washington. But there’s a guy — if anybody wondered — he never, never, never, never took his eye off his beloved mountain state.
And we shall not — to paraphrase the poet — we shall not see his like again. And the Senate is a lesser place for his going.”
—The Hill, June 28, 2010
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“In 1942, 24-year-old [future DEMOCRAT “LEADER OF THE SENATE” Robert] Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose parades in Matoaka, West Virginia, he had witnessed in his childhood. He was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops, or leader, of his local chapter.[8]
According to Byrd, a KKK official told him “You have a talent for leadership, Bob... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation.” Byrd recalls that “suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did.”[4]
He participated in the KKK during World War II, holding the titles Kleagle (recruiter) and Exalted Cyclops [the top officer in the local Klan unit].
Byrd, when he was 28 years old, wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo, of Mississippi, vowing never to serve in such a military:
“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 throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds”
-—Wikipedia
Don’t forget the segregationists that Joe Biden worked together with. He claimed he “Reached across the aisle” but they were both DEMOCRAT bigots.