Free Republic

Steve Chapman takes Barack Obama to task over his dodge about the relationship between himself and William Ayers. Not only does Obama misrepresent the connection, Chapman writes, he appears not to understand what it says about him and his judgment. The Chicago Tribune columnist offers a handy analogy for those who still don't comprehend it:

Byrd spokesman Jesse Jacobs says Byrd plans to spend his birthday quietly reading the hundreds of birthday wishes that have flooded his offices. Byrd also expects to have lunch with his staff and to visit with his seven great-grandchildren. A surprise 90th birthday party was held Thursday in the ballroom of the Capitol Hill hotel. More than 300 people attended, including West Virginia's entire congressional delegation and Governor Manchin. Manchin presented Byrd with a West Virginia Living Legend Award, which the governor created as a tribute to renowned West Virginians. The award has been given to only two other people:...

WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said in the Senate Thursday she and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., will introduce legislation to end authority for the war in Iraq. The bill will propose Oct. 11, 2007, as the expiration date for the congressional resolution that authorized President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq. That resolution was approved Oct. 11, 2002. "The American people have called for change, the facts on the ground demand change, the Congress has passed legislation to require change," said Clinton, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. "If the...

I want to express my congratulations to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WVa.), who recently became the longest-serving senator in American history. When asked what was the most important vote that he ever made, Byrd replied that it was his vote against the Iraq war. Byrd went on to explain that he has cast more than 17,000 votes during his distinguished career but he stated his most important vote was, without question, against a ''pre-emptive'' war against a country that never invaded the United States. I recall during the fall of 2002, Byrd admonished his fellow members of Congress, who were ''deadly...

His early ads betray a sense of vulnerabilityIt is barely August and already the ad war for the U.S. Senate campaign has begun. The election isn't until November. Wait. I just checked my calendar. That's November 2006. Holy cow. A full 15 months before the election, the eight-term senator feels compelled to run ads to offset last week's ads by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The eyes of television sales managers across the state just lit up. Anyone want to help me open a Maserati dealership? Not since Jay Rockefeller spent $12 million to get to the Senate 21 years...

Eight-term Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd has responded to a Republican ad criticizing his record by putting out his own spot that says the GOP commercial is false and misleading. The West Virginia lawmaker has yet to announce that he will seek a ninth term in 2006. More than a year before the election, the National Republican Senatorial Committee already has begun showing an ad that assails Byrd for his votes against President Bush on national security and taxes. The 87-year-old Byrd ran out a 30-second commercial in response. "Their agenda? Privatize Social Security and tax breaks for companies that...

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - One-time Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was removed from court on a stretcher Thursday on the opening day of testimony in his trial for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. Killen, 80, was taken to a hospital to be treated for high blood pressure, said District Attorney Mark Duncan, who said he had no other details. Killen was sitting up on the stretcher as he was loaded into the ambulance. Killen came to court in a wheelchair and has been attended by a nurse because of his health. He broke both his legs in a wood...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A Ku Klux Klansman helped build seven pipe bombs that a federal informant told him would be rigged to vehicles used by Haitians and Hispanics, a federal agent testified Friday at a detention hearing. Videotapes of meetings between the informant and Daniel Schertz, 27, showed them making the bombs and discussing how they would be used, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Lorin Coppock testified.

On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of ``inferior`` races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects. But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and...

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed outrage at the remarks of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who suggested that some Republican tactics on judicial nominations were similar to Adolf Hitler's use of power in Nazi Germany. In remarks from the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Byrd compared a Senate rule cutting off debate on nominations to Hitler's use of constitutional means to push legislation through the German Reichstag at the start of the Nazi era. Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement: It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could...

<p>The top Senate Democrat yesterday defended a colleague's assertion that Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Klansman, would have been a great leader during the Civil War.</p> <p>Sen. Tom Daschle said there was "no parallel" between Sen. Christopher J. Dodd's praise of Mr. Byrd and Republican Sen. Trent Lott's praise of former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond.</p>

Daschle, in his "DassHole", "I'm Passionate" voice, was paying tribute to the former Klansman, Robert Byrd. Daschle was speaking of what a great man Robert Byrd is. I thought Byrd had died or something and Daschle kept going on and on about what a great man Byrd is and how he is a great teacher and he, Daschle looks up to Robert "KKK" Byrd. He then said that in 2009, Byrd will be the longest serving Senator in the Senate. Are all the newsies going to go after Daschle as they did with Lott? I hardly think so. Again, Daschle...

Democrats To Vote for Klansman as President! My friends, I want you to hand out, read over the phone and e-mail this article across the fruited plain, because something big is going to happen next week when the Senate elects a president pro tempore - the man three heartbeats away from the presidency! The vice president is first in line and the speaker of the House is second under the 1947 Presidential Succession Act. The Democrats will nominate for this position, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who just six months ago used the N-word multiple times on Fox News. In his...

Now Republicans roiled by 10 days of national angst over Sen. Trent Lott's comments that the nation would have been better off if Strom Thurmonds 1948 Presidential campaign had prevailed, are digging up transcripts of the March 2001 FOX News Interview. [where Byrd referred to White N*ggers on air]With Lott's fate as incoming Majority Leader-and maybe even the Seante--in the balance, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) is talking about censuring Byrd.In a town where moral equivalency is always a danger, the national conversation on race seems to be proving an almost biblical instinct to extract an eye for an eye.

Kevin Martin: Black Caucus Fears Senate's Ex-Klansman A Washington, D.C.-based civil rights leader said Wednesday that the Congressional Black Caucus fears the political clout of ex-Ku Klux Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd, and that's why they haven't demanded his resignation for repeatedly using an ugly racial epithet last year. "The Congressional Black Caucus lives in fear of Robert Byrd," said Kevin Martin, head of African-American Republican Leadership Council, on Wednesday. "They've never condemned him on anything," he told radio host Sean Hannity. Martin contrasted the firestorm of protest that erupted this week over the comments of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott...