Free Republic

(The Politico) Sen. Robert C. Byrd has offered perhaps the most emotional outpouring on the Senate floor in years, offering a weeping tribute to "his dear friend, Ted Kennedy." His voice cracking, hands trembling, Byrd sat in his wheelchair and slowly read his tribute to Kennedy, who has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. "I want to take a moment to say how distraught and terribly shaken I am over the news of my dear friend, my dear, dear friend, Ted Kennedy," Byrd said. "Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you, and I miss you." Byrd broke down...

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) will return to Capitol Hill next week after being hospitalized because of severe back pains, his office announced Thursday. Byrd, 90, has been hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Medical Center since Tuesday after sustaining a back injury from a fall at his Virginia home on Monday night. X-rays showed that Byrd suffered no broken bones from his fall, according to the senator’s spokesman, Jesse Jacobs. Byrd will undergo physical therapy “to ensure he is steady on his feet when he returns to his Senate duties next week,” Jacobs said. Byrd is the longest-serving senator in U.S....

Doctors checking for broken bones after 90-year-old falls at homeWASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was hospitalized Tuesday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after complaining of back pain after a fall at his home, his spokesman said. Byrd, 90, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the nation’s longest-serving senator, was staying in the hospital overnight 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...

KENNESAW, Ga.--Is the history of our great nation important to you? Union Gen. William T. Sherman said of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, "After all, I think Forrest as the most remarkable man our 'Civil War' produced on either side." This came from a man who was once a foe of Forrest on the field of battle. Why do some folks attack America's heritage? Several years ago, attempts were made to change the name of Forrest Park in Memphis, Tenn. Now, there are people trying to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla. But was...

It will very likely be in the first line of any account of the four-decade-long career of federal Judge Gordon Thompson Jr.: “The judge who in 1991 ordered that the Mount Soledad cross had to be moved.” ........... All of this was triggered by Thompson's Dec. 3, 1991, ruling. In that 40-page opinion, Thompson methodically described the history of the crosses, how the cases came to be and laid out the law he was bound to follow. In the end, he wrote that that “binding constitutional precedent compels” a finding that the crosses on public land are unconstitutional. The decision...

FYI..C-span 2 is airing at 9:30 this morning a live "forum" from the Center for American Progress, the new Dem "think-tank" on the topic of judicial filabusters.. JOhh Podesta, Clinton apologist, is the moderator. "Sheets" is a featured panelist, along with AEI fellow Norm Orenstein...

While re-inventing himself at age 87 in his 47th year as a senator, Robert C. Byrd has denied his clear past use of parliamentary maneuver to force majority rule in the Senate. That fits the broader phenomenon of Democrats reinventing the senatorial filibuster, historically notorious for protecting racial segregation, into a weapon of liberalism. Byrd's use of a simple majority rule to make Senate rules fit the wishes of dominant Democrats during the 1970s and 1980s was revealed by legal scholars in January. It took Byrd's lawyers until March 20 for him to claim he did not do what he...

A U.S. Senator's likening of Republican strategy on blocked judicial nominees to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany drew condemnation on Wednesday from top Republicans and the Anti-Defamation League. Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday compared Republican threats to change Senate rules to outlaw procedural hurdles that have blocked 10 of President Bush's judicial candidates to Hitler jamming legislation through the German Reichstag. "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side," the Democrat from West Virginia said. "Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."