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May 19, 2008 Categories: Barack Obama Sen. Robert Byrd endorses Obama The Charleston Gazette reports an endorsement deep with symbolism: West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd is endorsing Barack Obama. "Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support," Byrd says. He said he has "no intention of involving myself in the Democratic campaign for President in the midst of West Virginia's primary election. But the stakes this November could not be higher." Byrd, 91, a master of Senate rules and Iraq war foe, has spent much of his political career repenting the...

"Senate President Pro Tem Sen. Robert Byrd., D-W.Va., talks with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 30, 2008, following Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's address to a joint meeting of Congress.""House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., hands Senate President Pro Tem Sen. Robert Byrd., D-W.Va., a gavel on Capitol Hill in Washington.""Senate President Pro Tem Sen. Robert Byrd., D-W.Va., talks with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., on Capitol Hill in Washington."

Even though the topic on the agenda for Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing was Iraq war funding, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) grasped from the moment he arrived that he was the day’s most important subject — and he was ready to make his case. He arrived on time, wore a crisp suit and entered the room smiling. When he left, after two hours, “Shut up” were the only words he had for his critics. He seemed to pass the test, convincing three Senate Democratic leaders that he’s fit to continue as chairman. Byrd knows that he is the most closely...

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...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was hospitalized Tuesday after complaining of back pain following a fall at his home, his spokesman said. Byrd, 90, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the longest-serving senator in history, was staying overnight at Walter Reed Army Medical Center 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 to vote for an Indian health bill. But after noticing he...

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest serving senator in American history, has been admitted overnight to Walter Reed hospital after sustaining an injury to his back this week. The 90-year-old Byrd’s injury is not life threatening, and he was admitted to the hospital for “observation,” according to his spokesman, Jesse Jacobs. The senator injured his back when he fell down Monday night in his Virginia home, but arrived in the Senate Tuesday and cast votes in the morning during debate over an Indian health measure. But he missed the chamber’s afternoon procedural vote to take up a bill aimed...

Democrat Senator Robert Byrd is President pro tempore of the U. S. Senate. As such he is 3d in line to be President of the United Sates in the event of the death, removal or incapacitation of the Prez, VP and Speaker of the House. He is 90 years old. This is incredible, rambling, off-topic video of him, a week ago, He seems drunk, stoned, crazy or senile, (or possibly a combination of all of the above) on the Senate floor, live on national (and international) TV! As a qualification for Democratic Senator from West Virginia, he is a fomer...

Have the Senate Democrats decided to dump their most egregious porker from his leadership position? The Politico reports this morning that Robert Byrd may get pressured to leave his position as chair of the Appropriations committee, a move that could call into question his ability to function at all in the Senate. Pork has nothing to do with this move: A group of Senate Democrats has begun quietly exploring ways to replace the venerable Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, believing he’s no longer physically up to the job, according to Democratic senators and...

Sen. Robert Byrd, the Senate's oldest member and longest-serving member, is celebrating his 90th birthday today. The senator had a party last week and plans to spend time with family and friends today.U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd plans to spend his 90th birthday quietly by reading the hundreds of birthday wishes that have flooded his offices. The legendary senator turned 90 today. Byrd spokesman Jesse Jacobs said birthday greetings have poured into the senator's West Virginia offices and have been forwarded to him in Washington, D.C., where he plans to spend most of his Thanksgiving break. Also on tap for Byrd's...

Over the last two days, the question of patriotism has been debated over the blogosphere. It started with Barack Obama's tortured explanation of why he stopped wearing a lapel pin representing the American flag. He told reporters that he took it off because unnamed others had used it to cover unpatriotic behavior and that the flag had become a "substitute for true patriotism," an explanation that annoyed many more people than did the absence of the lapel pin itself. Today on Heading Right Radio, we debated another dimension of the same question. One of our callers, clearly frustrated with some...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told Congress on Wednesday that he envisioned keeping five combat brigades in Iraq as a 'long-term presence.' Mr. Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee, "When I speak of a long-term presence, I'm thinking of a very modest U.S. presence with no permanent bases, where we can continue to go after Al Qaeda in Iraq and help the Iraqi forces." He added that “in my head� he envisioned a force as a quarter of the current combat brigades. There are now 20 combat brigades in the country, a number that is scheduled to drop to 15...

Byrd's angry theatrics made for a performance reminiscent of Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman." And Byrd did Pacino one better: He invited the audience in the room to join him in heckling the witnesses, creating a responsive Greek chorus. Emboldened, two dozen hecklers in the audience from the antiwar group Code Pink continued to shout at the witnesses and wave signs for the better part of an hour. Finally, after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) challenged Pace on his view that homosexuality is immoral, the hearing collapsed as the hecklers shouted down the nation's top military officer.

This week, FBI and IRS agents searched the home of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, 83. Stevens is under suspicion for his connection to Bill Allen, an oil state-services contractor convicted of bribing Alaska state lawmakers. Stevens has served in the Senate for almost three decades. The Stevens investigation comes hot on the heels of the Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., scandal, in which Cunningham pleaded guilty to taking bribes from defense contractors; the Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., scandal, in which federal agents found $90,000 in cash stuffed in Jefferson's freezer; and the Jack Abramoff scandal, in which Abramoff was connected with...

In a rather soft boiled story on West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd's dotage and his uselessness as an able bodied member of the Senate, at 89 he's currently the longest serving Senator in American history, the AP did the right thing in reminding the readers that Byrd was once a member of the Klan. Yet, they had to go and ruin the truth by claiming that Klan members are "certainly conservative." In fact, this AP story amazingly tries to make it seem as if Byrd had only late in life become that member of Congress that has been "endeared" to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Age is finally catching up with West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd in the winter of his 54-year career in Congress. At 89, the longest-serving senator in history and third person in the line of presidential succession has ceded major duties -- such as handling appropriations bills on the Senate floor -- to younger colleagues and aides. Byrd continues to steer pork projects to his home state, rail against President Bush and the Iraq war and quote Cicero and the King James Bible now and then on the Senate floor. But as he walks haltingly with two...

Since September 11, 2001, the speaker of the House has been required for security purposes to take government planes for official business. The White House rightly called "silly" recent criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desire to have a plane that could fly to her San Francisco district nonstop, which would be larger than the plane her predecessor used. But this flap raises a more serious issue--that of presidential succession. Pelosi takes a military plane because the speaker of the House is second in line to succeed the president, behind only the vice president. That's what drove the Department of...

Throughout the Iraq war, one of President Bush's loudest Democratic critics has been the longest-serving member of the Senate: Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. *** Yet the octogenarian lawmaker's voice was quavering as he spoke, his regal bearing a bit unsteady. It was another indication that all is not well with Byrd, an institution within an institution, who turned 89 in November after winning a ninth Senate term. The war debate now unfolding in Congress is tailor made for Byrd, fusing his three celebrated Senate roles: Appropriations chairman (the legislation on the table is a spending bill); resident constitutional...

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...

The Democrats have done their worst, and now George W. Bush must do his best. The Senate's 51-47 vote to require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within a year, effectively telling al Qaeda and its terrorist allies that if they can tone down the noise for a year the Shi'ites and Sunnis can get on with killing each other in the name of Osama, Mohammed, Allah or any Muslim notability of their choosing. The moderate Muslims everyone here says he wants to help can drop dead (and many of them will). "Nothing good can come from this bill,"...

West Virginia Mountaineer players pose after winning the championship round of the National Invitation Tournament.

The E-mail records prove that MoveOn.org has, for the past two years, knowingly and willfully allowed its Action Forum to be used as a gathering place for vicious anti-Semites and other bigots.

Posted by Tim Graham on October 2, 2006 - 11:34. Late on Friday night's edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," former Bush administration aide Ron Christie, author of "Black in the White House," pressed host Chris Matthews on the suggestion that if Republican Sen. George Allen's alleged racial slurs in the 1970s are a character flaw, what about the Democrats re-electing Senator Robert Byrd, a former Klansman, this fall? Matthews protested in a lecturing tone that "everyone knows about it....It's been raised a thousand times on his record." After claiming he was not defending Byrd, he told Christie: "The guy's 90 years old. Give...

West Virginia GOP senatorial candidate John Raese slapped back at Senator Robert Byrd’s reference to Raese’s deceased father in a West Virginia public television profile which aired Thursday night. In a transcript of the program obtained by the Raese campaign Thursday afternoon, Byrd says, “(Raese’s) father was my friend. I think his father would have been … somewhat ashamed. His father would be supporting me today I feel if he were alive.” Raese fired back, saying, “It is Senator Byrd who should be ashamed for smearing my father – and my family by extension – when he knows my father...

There should be a political “glass house alert” because partisan stone-throwing on race has become a shattering game of catch. Democrats are dancing euphorically as they watch Republican Virginia Sen. George Allen’s downward spiral since referring to one of his rival’s campaign supporters as “macaca,” — an apparent European racial slur likening to monkeys those from South Africa. The focus on this has been staggering with Allen’s once robust lead now reduced to five points in front of Democratic challenger and former Reagan Navy Secretary James Webb.

Klan holds rally at GettysburgGETTYSBURG, Pa. - About 30 Ku Klux Klan members proclaimed hatred for blacks, Jews, gays and Latinos as they stood behind barricades at the Civil War battlefield where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Gordon Young of the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan also called Saturday for the U.S. to pull its troops out of Iraq and use them to patrol the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration. The World Knights obtained a permit in July for the two-hour demonstration. The National Park Service granted it under the group's First Amendment rights to free...

IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...

Robert Byrd intends to mark the day he becomes the longest-serving U.S. senator next week much as he has the others in the last half century -- by working. "Records are fine," said Byrd, a Democrat who has held a number of Senate leadership posts. "But what's important is what I do for the people of West Virginia. They are the ones who sent me here 48 years ago." At 88, Byrd looks frail and walks with two canes. Yet he remains one of the most respected voices in Congress and a passionate defender of the U.S. Constitution. He evolved...

Per WVAH Fox11 news, Senator Byrd's wife Erma passed away this morning after a long illness.

One of the biggest issues incoming San Antonio police chief William McManus will have to face is the number of recent officer-involved shootings here in San Antonio. Now a controversial picture in response to those shootings has San Antonio police fuming. On the cover of the San Antonio Observer is an image of a San Antonio police officer wearing a computer-generated Ku Klux Klan-style hood. The image of the officer is paired with images of hate - the hood and a handgun. The San Antonio Observer is a paper that describes itself as a voice of the minority community. The...

95-year-old former newspaperman joins political fray to oust Texas congressman ASSOCIATED PRESS AUSTIN (AP) - At his age, Sid Smith's campaign slogan seems obvious: "At 95, who needs term limits?" That's right. The 95-year-old former newspaperman, real estate agent and current artist, who scoots around his hillside home with the help of a cane, is running for Congress in Tuesday's Democratic primary. "I'm the oldest guy in this race," said Smith, cracking that his Dec. 24 birthday makes him "one day older than Jesus." His main goal? Boot Republican freshman Michael McCaul, who won the District 10 seat two years...

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted to end a filibuster and moved closer to renewal of the USA Patriot Act. Senators voted 96-3 Thursday to stop debate regarding a compromise on the Patriot Act. All three of the senators who voted to keep debate going were Democrats ... Some aspects of the act were to expire at the end of 2005 but the White House sought to make the bill permanent. Congress gave the act short extensions, the most recent of which will end March 10.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond probably spoke for most blacks and liberals last week when he said the Republican Party is equivalent to the Nazi Party. "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side," he told an audience at Fayetteville State University. Also last week, a new "scientific study" was released showing Republicans are racist by nature. "The study found supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did," The Washington Post reported.

Hearts of darkness By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Avid readers of the classics know the works of Joseph Conrad. In 1898 Conrad penned the novella "Heart of Darkness" and coined the phrase "going native." This phrase has not lost any of its relevance in the 21st century. The disgraced and convicted former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham now stands as a modern-day icon of the dark-hearted politician who betrays his people. As a former constituent of Cunningham's, I feel betrayed by a man who swore to represent me but chose instead to serve himself. As a Navy veteran I...

A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term. John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise ... a rebirth of capitalism... The National Republican Senatorial Committee heralded the filing by Raese, a former state GOP chairman who has sought office before. Though four other Republicans are running in the party primary, the GOP committee called Raese "the first financially credible opponent Byrd has faced since 1982." Raese's last major foray into election politics came nearly 18 years...

West Virginia will get a boost by the candidacy of former state GOP chair and CEO of Greer Industries, John Raese, (media, coal, steel, etc.) announces his candidacy for the US Senate against Robert C. Byrd. For those solid Conservatives out there, Raese is cut from the Reagan cloth.

Here is some more information on Congressman Bobby Rush, D-IL. From yesterday's Daily Southtown: After urging the slating committee to question Dart's record on supporting minority issues in Springfield, Rush (D-1st), of Chicago, told reporters he found Dart "repulsive." "Dart represents to me a kind of Klansman," Rush said. "One that don't wear a hood over the head but one that has a hood in the head." (Thomas Dart was slated by the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization for the office of Sheriff on Monday.) Klansman? Lovely analogy. Incidentally, I wonder what Bobby Rush thinks of his colleague on the...

Amid its disarray last week, the House of Representatives did do one good deed: It included the repeal of the anti-trade Byrd Amendment as part of its budget reconciliation. The White House is also pushing repeal, so opponents are now hoping Senators (including a Republican who wants to run for President) will keep this protectionism alive. "Byrd" is named after West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who snuck it into a 2001 spending bill without debate. The amendment gives companies that sue for "anti-dumping" relief any duties that the government imposes on foreign competitors. U.S. companies that decline to join any...

Hiram Lewis - Candidate for U.S. Senate, 2006 DEFEAT BYRD! On November 7, 2006, I intend to defeat Robert Byrd and win another seat for the Republicans in the United States Senate. In order to send the ultra-liberal Democrat Byrd into retirement and to protect the American values that we believe in , I need YOUR help. In the November 2004 election for State Attorney General in West Virginia, I received 49.6% of the vote in a VERY CLOSE ELECTION. Now, the Democrats -- with the help of Moveon.org -- have mobilized to try and save this vulnerable liberal Senate...

A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate has raised more than $500,000 through his campaign committee, but has just a few weeks to file a new campaign report with the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC sent Morgantown lawyer Hiram Lewis IV a letter on Oct. 11 instructing him to file the proper “Statement of Candidacy” by Nov. 10. Reached on his cell phone in Louisiana, where he is serving with the National Guard in disaster relief efforts, Lewis said, “All they are concerned about is that I have two committees. You can only have one.”

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito said today she will not challenge Sen. Robert Byrd next year for a U.S. Senate seat, but instead will try to keep her high-profile position in the House of Representatives.

Nearly four months after the Senate's most influential Democrat, former majority leader Robert Byrd, defended the Ku Klux Klan in his autobiography, Byrd has yet to offer an apology - and fellow Democrats have not asked him to make one. "Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields" hit bookstores in June - and featured Byrd's firsthand account of his days as an up-and-coming member of the nation's most notorious anti-black terrorist group. According to the eight-term West Virginia Democrat, the Klan he remembers was "a fraternal group of elites – doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other 'upstanding' people." At...

Journalists, pundits, and colleagues consider Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) an expert on the Constitution. They note that he carries a copy of the supreme law of the land in his pocket at all times. He cares about it so much, in fact, that he slipped an amendment into a 2005 appropriations bill requiring all institutions that receive federal funds, including thousands of schools, to teach about the Constitution every September 17, the anniversary of its signing. In doing so, over the last few days (September 17 fell on a Saturday, so Friday and Monday events met the law's requirements), Byrd...

Starting this year, every educational institution receiving federal aid must teach about the U.S. Constitution on the September 17 anniversary of its signing (September 16 in 2005...) The requirement is ironic, given that it came from the Senate's leading Constitutional scholar, yet clearly conflicts with the Constitution, and on many grounds. Last year, Senator Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.) inserted it into a spending bill packed with pork that was blatantly inconsistent with Americans' general welfare, which is the Constitution's rationale. There is nothing in the document that permits the federal government to tell local schools what they can and cannot teach....

Arch Moore, the 82-year-old two-time Republican Governor of West Virginia, is quietly urging his daughter, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, to challenge Democrat Robert Byrd, senior member of the U.S. Senate, for re-election.

If the 2006 United States Senate election were held right now, incumbent Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., likely would win in a race against potential opponent U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. according to a poll recently released by Charleston-based RMS Strategies. Byrd, 87, was expected to announce his plans this week to run for a record ninth consecutive term, but he decided to delay his announcement because of recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina, as well as the funeral for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, which was scheduled for Sept. 7. According to the poll, about 55 percent of...

Ronald Reagan won the "Greatest American" contest. So we here at the Museum of Left Wing Lunacy created the "Who's the Biggest Liberal?" contest. Come place your vote. You are allowed to vote once a day, so you can come back the next day and help make sure your candidate is winning. Let's embarass one of these libs by smacking the liberal label on their forehead when they win this contest. The contest page is at http://www.museumofleftwinglunacy.com/BiggestLiberal.php

Capito said she will announce her decision this fall, but she has some concerns about what might occur if she wins the U.S. Senate seat. "My husband Charlie will become a member of the spouses' club," she said. "I don't think I want him out with (former president and current senatorial husband) Bill Clinton on a Friday night."

WASHINGTON — Tucked away in the 2005 appropriations bill is a little-noticed rider that is aimed at compelling students to spend every Sept. 17 learning about the U.S. Constitution.

Senator Byrd desperately went up on the air today with an ad denouncing the NRSC’s attempts to call attention to his voting record. “Change,” which began airing last Friday, pointed out the recent votes that Byrd has cast against protecting working families, against our troops fighting the War on Terror, and against protecting the American flag. Byrd’s ad, which began airing today, does not dispute a single issue raised in the NRSC’s ad! Instead, it attacks the NRSC as a “special interest group.” It is ironic that Byrd would call the NRSC a “special interest group” based on Republican attempts...