Posted on 06/28/2010 2:35:45 AM PDT by careyb
Edited on 06/28/2010 3:51:06 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Published June 28, 2010
| FOXNews.com
Reuters
Feb. 2009: Sen. Robert Byrd doffs his hat for reporters as he arrives at the Capitol in Washington.
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in American history, died Monday at the age of 92, a spokesman for the family said.
Byrd, a Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate since 1959, had been plagued by health problems in recent years and was confined to a wheelchair. He had skipped several votes in Congress in the past months.
Jesse Jacobs, a family spokesman, said Byrd died peacefully at about 3 a.m. at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va.
He was the oldest member of the 111th Congress.
The passing of Sen. Byrd will not affect the balance of power in the Senate. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, will appoint a replacement senator to serve out the remainder of Byrd's term which ends in 2012.
Sadly it will be after the 3rd ....
That’s just this Sunday. They don’t even have to drag their feet n this one to keep his seat in rat mode.
Would be a suprise if Governor makes a choice an noob is sworn in before next Monday....
I’ll give the devil his due - he loved his dogs.
Is Lautenberg next?
They can't fudge this one if so, the people of West Virgina might raise Holy Heck if they have any Tea Party leanings. Just look what happened in Mass.....
He’s got a lot of stuff in WV named after him.
Let’s hope.
Good riddings to bad rubbish!
I don’t agree. It is not healthy for the country as a whole to participate in the pretense that those who have murdered millions of babies, raided the Treasury of billions of dollars, and made life more miserable for tens of millions of Americans, while shredding the Constitution, are members of the body politic. They are alien combatants against the American people and the Constitution.
He was all of those evil things, and a gasbag extraordinaire.
If a GOP notable had been in the KKK at one time the MSM would remind us of it weekly.
I understand Al Gore, Sr., the Commie from Tennessee, was good on the fiddle, and enjoyed playing at rallies. But his wife, the Dragon Lady—what was her name, “LaFonde”?—discouraged it. Too “hillbilly.” She had pretensions. Of course, Algore, doesn’t HAVE pretensions; he IS pretensions, and nothing else.
BTW: This new book, CLIMATEGATE, tells the Algore story. One of them is: Algore literally duplicated the Tea Pot Dome swindle in the 1990’s.
For the first time in decades, there will be no former member of the Ku Klux Klan in the US Senate.
Hallelujah!
Rest in peace, Kleagle Byrd.
Hope your right......otherwise its a rat freebie appointment.
Mr. Byrd’s political life could be traced to his early involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, an association that almost thwarted his career and clouded it intermittently for years afterward.
In the early 1940s, he organized a 150-member klavern, or chapter, of the Klan in Sophia, W.Va., and was chosen its leader at a meeting. After the meeting, Joel L. Baskin, the Klan’s grand dragon for the region, suggested that Mr. Byrd use his “talents for leadership” by going into politics.
“Suddenly, lights flashed in my mind!” Mr. Byrd later wrote. “Someone important had recognized my abilities.”
Mr. Byrd insisted that his klavern had never conducted white-supremacist marches or engaged in racial violence. He said in his autobiography that he had joined the Klan because he shared its anti-Communist creed and wanted to be associated with the leading people in his part of West Virginia. He conceded, however, that he also “reflected the fears and prejudices” of the time.
His opponents used his Klan membership against him during his first run for the House of Representatives in 1952; Democratic leaders urged him to drop out of the race. But he stayed in and won, then spent decades apologizing for what he called a “sad mistake.”
He went on to vote for civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960, but when the more sweeping Civil Rights Act was before Congress in 1964, he filibustered for an entire night against it, saying the measure was an infringement on states’ rights. He backed civil rights legislation consistently only after becoming a party leader in the Senate.
RIP Senator Byrd and condolences to your family.
Yellow dogs!
RIP
He’s got a lot of stuff in WV named after him.
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To honor all the coal miners that voted for “the One” I say lets insist the Cap and Trade bill be named after Byrd.
Prayers for his family.
Senator Robert Byrd will live on, via countless roads, highways, hiking trails, hospitals, firehouses, court buildings, airports, docking facilities, welcome centers, exit centers, state government cafeterias, radio telescopes, microwave towers, water reservoirs, lightning arrestors, coal mines, mountain top scenic look-offs, solar panel farms, schools, day care centers, industrial parks, the infrastructure of West Virginia shall always bear his name, just the way he liked it.
Rest in Peace Senator.
“Well as the saying goes, we should not speak evil of the recently departed .... “
another one of those BS lines I ignore, along with NOT talking about politics or religion in mixed company
If The DEMOCRAT West Virginia Gov waits until July 3rd or later to declare Byrd’s seat vacant, there will not be an election to replace Byrd until 2012, and the Governor will appoint another Democrat to fill the seat.
PUT THE PRESSURE ON HIM NOW! They lose this seat if they must have a Special Election in November!
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