Sen. Robert Byrd

[Auburn85 432]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7070910/

WASHINGTON - A pair of Jewish groups accused Sen. Robert Byrd on Wednesday of making an outrageous and reprehensible comparison between Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and a Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from filibustering.

Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin denied that Byrd, D-W.Va., had compared Republicans to Hitler. He said that instead, the reference to Nazis in a Senate speech on Tuesday was meant to underscore that the past should not be ignored.

“Terrible chapters of history ought never be repeated,” Gavin said. “All one needs to do is to look at history to see how dangerous it is to curb the rights of the minority.”

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Wednesday that Byrd’s remarks showed “a profound lack of understanding as to who Hitler was” and that the senator should apologize to the American people.

“It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party’s tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party,” Foxman said.

Senator defends filibusters

In his comments Tuesday, Byrd defended the right senators have to use filibusters — procedural delays that can kill an item unless 60 of the 100 senators vote to move ahead.

Byrd cited Hitler’s 1930s rise to power by, in part, pushing legislation through the German parliament that seemed to legitimize his ascension.

“We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men,” Byrd said. “But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.”

Byrd then quoted historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler “turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.”

Byrd added, “That is what the nuclear option seeks to do.”

The nuclear option is the nickname for the proposal to end filibusters of judicial nominations because of the devastating effect the plan, if enacted, would have on relations between Democrats and Republicans.

The back and forth was the latest twist in the battle over Senate GOP efforts to free 10 nominated judges that the chamber’s minority Democrats have blocked during President Bush’s first term. The Senate confirmed 204 others.

Byrd's KKK past emerges

The first criticism of Byrd came Wednesday when Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, issued a written statement.

“With his knowledge of history and his own personal background as a KKK member, he should be ashamed for implying that his political opponents are using Nazi tactics,” Brooks said.

Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan as a young man and has repeatedly apologized for it. Now 87 and the Senate’s longest-serving member at 47 years, he prides himself on his knowledge of history and makes historical references frequently during debates.

Brooks also attacked as “disgusting” Byrd’s remark that “some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate” senators’ rights to filibuster. The comment came amid several references by Byrd to the “nuclear option.”

Comments called ‘inappropriate’

“There is no excuse for raising the specter of the Holocaust crematoria in a discussion of the Senate filibuster,” Brooks said. “That kind of political heavy-handedness is inappropriate and reprehensible.”

Byrd is a long-standing defender of the chamber’s rules and traditions, many of which help the Senate’s minority party.

“In the Senate, when a majority runs roughshod over the minority, the people’s liberties can be in danger,” Gavin said. “That majority may be a majority of one party or a majority of one region or a majority of one interest.

Brooks said his group’s counterpart, the National Jewish Democratic Council, should condemn Byrd’s comments. Ira Foreman, executive director of the Democratic group, declined to comment.

Some will argue, "Well, Bush had an alcholic past"

And people talk about George Wallace?

[TrueBlue72 0]

Byrd was an idiot before he became senile! A true demoncrat through and through, he will never be held accountable by the media for his pronouncements or his past.

[Auburn85 432]

Bill Press took up for him on Hannity and Colmes. Press wouldn't denouce Byrd for his past. He would just talk about Bush's past.

[Jenny AU-92 0]

The people of West Virginia keep reelecting him - so who's senile? Sounds like he is truly representative of his constituents.

But let a Rep Member of Congress say this...

[WarTim 3,457]

Byrd is SAD old misguided moron that should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. This can be said of all liberals.

[DKW 86 7,440]

Byrd is a true relic of his party's past. He is a KKK member and I would argue till the cows come home that in the South, a large part of the Dems still support the KKK, segregation, etc. not at the state or national level mind you, but at the local level, oh, heck yea!

He is out of touch, out of date, out of his head for the most part.

He is a good representation of the last vestiges of the old Dem Party IMHO.

[AURaptor 1,126]

Why is it that when Libbies get called on trying to compare Bush to Hitler, they recoil and claim they weren't trying to do that, but then go on to say that they're trying to show the dangers of what can happen.... .. .like comparing Bush to Hitler ???

[Auburn85 432]

I'm not going to defend Wallace for some of the thing he did, but was he a member of the KKK?

Also wasn't an editorial in the New York Times about Byrd and his words.

I just wondered how the NYT handled the Trent Lott situation

[Auburn85 432]

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/1/20/02859.shtml

The West Virginia Democrat, who officially left the Klan in 1943 but continued to advise the anti-black group for years afterward, said through a spokesman that he was merely assuring that the Senate fulfilled its constitutional role of advise and consent.

But the decision by Democrats to make Sen. Byrd the point man in the continuing assault against such a prominent African-American is a particulary awkward one, given his long history of racial misconduct.

In 2001, for instance, Byrd was forced to apologize after he blurted out the N-word twice during a nationally televised interview.

"There are white n****rs, I've seen a lot of white n****rs in my time," Byrd told Fox News Sunday.

In the early 1970s, Byrd pushed to have the Senate's main office building named after Sen. Richard Russell, a leading opponent of anti-lynching legislation who the West Virginia Democrat called "my mentor."

Byrd filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 14 straight hours. And three years after he said he'd left his white-sheeted brethren behind, he wrote to Georgia's Grand Imperial Wizard, urging, "The Klan is needed today as never before."

Sen. Byrd was also a fierce opponent of desegregating the military, complaining in one letter: "I should rather die a thousand times and see old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen of the wilds."

Yet the majority of blacks vote (D).