Daily Ramblings:
To Hide 'Neath The Hood ...03/01/2005 08:06:22 pm
Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd today compared Republicans to Nazis,
because they may soon be seeking to change Senate
rules in order to prevent the filibuster of judicial
nominees (i.e. requiring 60 out of 100 votes to
simply allow an up or down vote on the
particular judge). These rules have been changed
several times during the history of the U.S. Senate.
One of the most famous examples of the use of the
filibuster was in fact by that man whom Democrats
like to call "the historian of the Senate,"
Robert Byrd. He used it in an ultimately vain attempt
to prevent the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
At 9:51 on the morning of June
10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an
address that he had begun fourteen hours and
thirteen minutes earlier. The subject was the
pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that
occupied the Senate for fifty-seven working days,
including six Saturdays. ...
The Civil Rights Act provided
protection of voting rights; banned
discrimination in public
facilities—including private businesses
offering public services—such as lunch
counters, hotels, and theaters; and established
equal employment opportunity as the law of the
land.
Senator Byrd was once a leader in the Ku Klux Klan,
someone known as a "Kleagle," who had the
job of recruiting new members. During the fight in
the 1940s over racially integrating the U.S.
military, Byrd wrote a letter to Senator Bilbo of
Mississippi pledging that he would never fight
"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
throwback to the blackest specimen from the
wilds."
Senator Robert Byrd voted against the nominations
of both the U.S. Supreme Court's black judges - the
liberal Thurgood Marshall, and the conservative
Clarence Thomas.
Last month, he voted against the nomination of the
nation's first female black Secretary of State,
Condoleeza Rice.
Senator Robert Byrd, in an interview on national
television on March 4th, 2001, expressed his belief
that there are such things as "white niggers."
“There are white niggers.
I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time;
I’m going to use that word.”
The interviewer did not press Senator Byrd on what
he considers a "nigger" to be, when not
qualified by the word "white."
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was voted for by 28 of
the Senate's 34 Republicans. By contrast, 21 of the
Senate's 66 Democrats voted against it (including
of-course Senator Robert C. Byrd). For those that
like math, this means that 82% of Republicans voted
for it, compared to 68% of the Democrats.
To bring this all back home, when Bob Dylan sang:
A South
politician preaches to the poor white man,
"You got more than the blacks, don't
complain.
You're better than them, you been born with white
skin," they explain.
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
he could easily have been describing Senator Byrd
from West Virginia.
For the Democrats to continue to use Senator
Robert Byrd as a leading spokesman of their party,
and for him to compare Republicans in 2005 to Nazis -
for the crime of wanting to stop his kind of
obstructionism - is emblematic of the utter moral
emptiness of that party at this point in American
history. This is the party which has worked itself
into the position of effectively opposing democracy
in the Middle East, and hoping for failure, chaos and
murder - if it means Bush's poll numbers go down.
And Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard
Dean said 3 days ago that Republicans are evil ...
Addendum 03/03/2005: Byrd
now trying to deny he was making a comparison of
Republicans to Nazis, while at Daily Kos they're
accusing Republican Jim Gibbons of hate speech for
the following (try not to crack a rib):
“I say we tell those
liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing,
hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies
and their music and whine somewhere else,”
Gibbons said to another burst of applause. ...
He said that they are the same people who wanted
to go to Iraq and become human shields for the
enemy.
“I say it’s just too damn bad we didn’t
buy them a ticket,” Gibbons said.
Laughter rippled through the room, mingled with
more applause.
Both being covered over at Little Green
Footballs.
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