This will continue until Republicans get some backbone and attack BYRD and the rest of the Democrats for what they are and have been. Power Mongers.
Yup...The democrats are feeling really strong right now and until the Republicans slap them down a little it will continue to escalate.
They did this days ago.
Things are only bound to get worse. Lott's resignation has given the Demopcrats a new BAR-B-Q grill and they are dying to use it on the next Republican that slips up or the next appointee thay don't like.
Hey look folks We Republicans are in the Majority lets start acting like it. Drown out the Democrat lies. They will stop at nothing to regain power with their willing media allies.
The following should shed some real light on this mess:
THE REAL PROBLEM WITH LOTT
By Timothy Robert Wyatt
http://www.tarheells.com/
In the wake of Trent Lott’s recent statement of support for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential bid, and Lott’s subsequent apologies, the one point on which everyone seems to agree is that Lott has done something shameful. Lott’s comments are routinely labeled as “racially insensitive” by supposedly objective news reporters, despite the fact that his comments did not touch on race at all.
Similarly, Thurmond’s presidential campaign is roundly acknowledged as having been racist, with no evidence for this claim except the fact that he supposedly ran on the “segregationist” platform of the “Dixiecrat” party.
It all makes one wish that reporters and politicians were held to the same standards of accuracy that the rest of us are. Simple research would have turned up the fact that Thurmond ran on the States Rights Democratic Party ticket. “Dixiecrat” was a derogatory nickname coined by the Charlotte News.
And whatever the party’s platform may have been, neither the party nor Thurmond called for the country to become more segregated than it already was. Instead, the position most commonly attributed to Thurmond was that integration should not be “forced by the federal bayonet.” His was a states-rights argument: Race relations were to be determined by the individual states themselves. The Constitution did not grant the federal government authority over these matters, and the 10th Amendment specifically reserved all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states themselves, “or to the people.”
In 1948, the Washington Evening Star wrote that “Thurmond’s record as a progressive advocate for a better deal for the Negro of the South entitles him to a respectful hearing.” It is a shame that Thurmond’s stance no longer warrants a respectful hearing in 2002, and that this “progressive advocate” for black America is now roundly criticized as having been a segregationist or racist.
It is true that Thurmond’s bid for the presidency was precipitated by President Harry Truman’s civil rights proposal, but Thurmond did not oppose civil rights. At the 1948 Democratic convention, Thurmond said, “We do not wish to take away from any American his constitutional rights, but we do not intend that our constitutional rights [those reserved by the 10th Amendment] shall be sacrificed for the selfish and sordid purpose of gaining minority votes in doubtful states.”
Thurmond correctly recognized Truman’s proposal as little more than an election-year gimmick. In fact, the three-plank proposal was first outlined to Truman by his advisor Clark Clifford in a strategic memo entitled, “The Politics of 1948.” Clifford and Truman believed that the presidential election would be determined by the urban black vote in California, Illinois, New York, and Ohio. Clifford encouraged Truman to win that vote by offering a “civil rights” package, and to ignore a possible Southern backlash: “As always, the South can be considered safely Democratic. And in forming national policy can be safely ignored.” Were it not for Thurmond giving Southerners another option in 1948, the South would probably still today be ignored when it comes to national policy.
The first plank of Truman’s proposal was to eliminate the poll tax in Southern states. Thurmond did not oppose this measure; he himself had recommended that South Carolina eliminate its poll tax during his gubernatorial inaugural address in 1947. However, he correctly argued that the issue should be decided at the state level. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution specifically granted each state complete control over the manner in which elections were to be held. And as long as it was applied uniformly, regardless of race, the poll tax did not violate the 15th Amendment. As much as Thurmond may have disliked the poll tax, he realized that it was clearly unconstitutional for the federal government to dictate it out of existence.
The second plank of Truman’s proposal was to make lynching a federal offense. Thurmond understood this proposal to imply that the states either could not or would not adequately prosecute lynch mobs. However, in 1947, as Governor of South Carolina, Thurmond had directed his state to prosecute the largest lynching trial ever in the history of the nation. Based on an anonymous tip, Thurmond directed the state police to arrest 31 white men accused of lynching Willie Earle, a black man in jail for murder. At the time, Thurmond said, “We in South Carolina want the world to know we will tolerate no mob violence.” After his yeoman efforts in solving that crime at the state level, Thurmond rightfully felt insulted by Truman’s implication that federal intervention was necessary.
The third plank of Truman’s proposal was to institute minority-hiring quotas through the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission. Truman justified this using the federal government’s authority over interstate commerce granted by Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution. However, Thurmond correctly argued that the federal government had absolutely no authority to mandate hiring practices for the vast majority of companies that did not participate in interstate commerce. Today, polls consistently show that most people of all races agree that race should not be a factor in hiring. Thurmond’s color-blind position in 1948 seems to be more progressive, and certainly more constitutional, than Truman’s quota plan.
Thurmond’s acts as an elected official support the notion that his concern was states rights, not racism, but he recognized that his stance would attract bigots to his campaign. He took special pains to identify those individuals and distance himself from them. After rejecting the support of known bigot Gerald L.K. Smith in 1948, Thurmond told Time magazine, “We do not invite and we do not need the support of Gerald L.K. Smith or any other rabble-rousers who use race prejudice and class hatred to inflame the emotions of the people.”
In 1980, Thurmond said that those who viewed his campaign as racist “misconstrued the whole thing. It was a battle of federal power versus state power. That was my fight.” The evidence certainly backs him up. (It is a myth that Thurmond has acknowledged that he ran a racist campaign and has apologized for it. In 1998, he told the Columbia State newspaper, “I don’t have anything to apologize for.”)
So why did Lott feel the need to apologize? He said, “A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past.” Unfortunately, Thurmond’s stance in 1948 - a literal interpretation of the Constitution and an acknowledgement of the sovereignty of individual states - has become a discarded policy of the past. In that time, Lott has become a complicit part of a federal government that no longer sees any constitutional bounds to its authority. State legislators and governors have become willing yes-men who cede state sovereignty in exchange for payouts of highway funds and storm damage relief.
One has to wonder what Lott meant by saying that if the country had elected Thurmond in 1948, “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.” Could he have possibly meant that we wouldn’t be saddled with a gigantic national debt, produced by years of federal government overspending and overreaching its authority?
If that is indeed what he meant, he should have said so. Instead, he compounded his problem by going along with the deceptive claim that Thurmond ran a racist campaign. By refusing to defend his colleague (and his Mississippi constituency, which did indeed vote for Thurmond), Lott proved that he lacked the most important characteristic of a Southern gentleman: honor. And that is why he should resign.
Frist is a surgeon. He knows a hell of a lot more about abortion than the people complaining do.
Don't be surprized if Bill Frist takes his name out of the hat.
So what? You think they can just call anybody names, and destroy them? They wish. They've been trying to do that to Dubya for two years... he's a dimwit, he's a frat boy, he's the Boy Emperor, he was "selected, not elected." He has 70% approval ratings.