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June 28, 2010

Best Member of KKK Ever


byrd2.jpg

—Jonathan Schwarz

Posted at June 28, 2010 08:57 AM
Comments

I'd say it's Hugo Black but I get your point.

Posted by: pb at June 28, 2010 12:12 PM

pb is showing some big time smarts there. I didn't think of Hugo, and I even cheated and used Google.

Plenty of old men are better than they were as young men, whether or not they were in the KKK (which, by the way, was never the only form of evil around). Maybe old age did it to him, but Byrd was right and showed some political guts in 2003. West Virginia's electoral votes went to Bush/Cheney in both 2000 and 2004.

Posted by: N E at June 28, 2010 12:56 PM

When Byrd was young, probably every white male around him was either in the KKK or a wannabe. Everybody's gotta grow.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at June 28, 2010 01:15 PM

And remember, Byrd wasn't a lifelong racist who happened to be right about a particular foreign policy topic, like Pat Buchanan. Byrd actively repudiated that part of his past, and worked to remedy it. And he wore some absolutely smashing vests on the Senate floor.

Posted by: mds at June 28, 2010 03:47 PM

When Byrd was young and foolish he did young and foolish things. For all his constitutional rhetoric (and I enjoyed some of it immensely) he was a master at creating federal programs and moving them to the half-a-mountain state. If you want to see the result of his efforts protecting coal, see the ongoing environmental disaster that is his home state on google earth, It makes the deepwater horizon mess look like a literal drop in the bucket.

Posted by: drip at June 28, 2010 03:48 PM

He was still a bigot regarding woman's rights and gays.

Posted by: Jenny at June 28, 2010 07:12 PM

...but was he pure enough to author a blerg?

Or courageous enough to leave anonymous comments on a blerg?

Posted by: Steve in L.A. at June 28, 2010 09:07 PM