Sen KKK Byrd to run again

[Vashner]

This guys got to be stopped this time.

Byrd's KKK Alibi Comes Unraveled
NewsMax.com ^ | 1/22/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff


Posted on 01/22/2003 4:18:26 PM PST by kattracks



Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, has said repeatedly over the years that he joined the notorious anti-black hate group the Ku Klux Klan during World War II - not because he was a racist - but because the Klan had taken a strong stance against communism, a system of government that then existed only in the Soviet Union.

But Byrd's KKK alibi doesn't stand up to even the most cursory historical scrutiny, as a World War II veteran pointed out to NewsMax.com Wednesday.

"When Byrd said he joined the Klan, it couldn't have been famous for being anti-Communist, since in 1943 the Soviet Union was our crucial ally in World War II," said our source, who served in Air Force, then known as the Army Air Corps, in preparation for the Normandy invasion.

"In 1943 Franklin Roosevelt was still calling Stalin 'Uncle Joe'," he added. "And I remember U.S. military maps that showed the Red Army's advances toward Berlin, which was something we were all happy about."

Further puncturing Sen. Byrd's KKK alibi, the World War II vet recalled, "There would have been no reason for any patriotic American to have been anti-Communist in 1943 - because we were doing everything we could to help the Reds beat Hitler on the Eastern Front."

In fact, anti-communism didn't emerge as a genuine force in American politics until 1947, with the outbreak of the Cold War - four years after Byrd says he left the Klan. Two weeks ago the West Virginia Democrat's press secretary Tom Gavin said his boss had belonged to the Klan for only "a number of months."

It was during this period that Byrd - supposedly by then an EX-Klansman - was advising Grand Imperial Wizard Samuel Green on whom to appoint to important posts in the hierarchy of the hate group. In a letter to Green, Byrd urged, "the Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state in the Union."

A year later in 1948, Byrd opposed President Truman's initiative to integrate the Armed Forces - and he did so using the language of a very much active Klansman.

The powerful Senate Democrat vowed then that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner (the American flag) with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

"If Byrd said he thought the Klan's main job was fighting communism, he's either not being honest about why he joined - or he was a Klansman a lot longer than he now wants to admit," said the World War II vet.

Read more on this

[Extra Stout]

Byrd's pork is pretty much the entire economy in the state of West Virginia. There's no way they'll vote him out. He'll die in office.

[Murphy]

"Sheets" Byrd!!

[xrayzebra]

Byrd's pork is pretty much the entire economy in the state of West Virginia. There's no way they'll vote him out. He'll die in office.

Heck I thought he was already dead. I mean he thinks he is the saint of the Senate. Carry's a copy of the constitution in his pocket all the time. Of course he cant read the thing, but he carrys it. Old shaky, still afraid someone will expose his past.

[Vashner]

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/robert_byrd.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/2/3781660_9bcca3fa11.jpg


June 10, 1964
Civil Rights Filibuster Ended


Hubert Humphrey (D-MN)
At 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an address that he had begun fourteen hours and thirteen minutes earlier. The subject was the pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that occupied the Senate for fifty-seven working days, including six Saturdays. A day earlier, Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey, the bill's manager, concluded he had the sixty-seven votes required at that time to end the debate.

The Civil Rights Act provided protection of voting rights; banned discrimination in public facilities—including private businesses offering public services—such as lunch counters, hotels, and theaters; and established equal employment opportunity as the law of the land.

As Senator Byrd took his seat, House members, former senators, and others—150 of them—vied for limited standing space at the back of the chamber. With all gallery seats taken, hundreds waited outside in hopelessly extended lines.

Georgia Democrat Richard Russell offered the final arguments in opposition. Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, who had enlisted the Republican votes that made cloture a realistic option, spoke for the proponents with his customary eloquence. Noting that the day marked the one-hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's nomination to a second term, the Illinois Republican proclaimed, in the words of Victor Hugo, "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come." He continued, "The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!"

Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the thirty-seven years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.

The clerk proceeded to call the roll. When he reached "Mr. Engle," there was no response. A brain tumor had robbed California's mortally ill Clair Engle of his ability to speak. Slowly lifting a crippled arm, he pointed to his eye, thereby signaling his affirmative vote. Few of those who witnessed this heroic gesture ever forgot it. When Delaware's John Williams provided the decisive sixty-seventh vote, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield exclaimed, "That's it!"; Richard Russell slumped; and Hubert Humphrey beamed. With six wavering senators providing a four-vote victory margin, the final tally stood at 71 to 29. Nine days later the Senate approved the act itself—producing one of the twentieth century's towering legislative achievements.


Reference Items:


Graham, Hugh Davis. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

[Nbadan]

Byrd's not afraid someone will expose his past. Everyone already knows his past. It was the same as POPE RATZINGER. Hello!

[ChumpDumper]

There would have been no reason for any patriotic American to have been anti-Communist in 1943Probably the most disingenuous quote I have ever read.

Totally unnecessary too, being a klan member speaks for itself -- but if you are going to have a bug up your ass about it every other day in the forum, it would be better to write a check to his opponent.

[JoeChalupa]

Nothing on Byrd.
Knew that already besides I can't vote him out.

[Vashner]

The Pope was not in the KKK you idiot...
He was conscripted into the German army..

Big difference.. to get into the KKK back then you had to pass initiation.. beating up a black person(s) or burning there house down.

I doubt the Pope did that..

Now while Pussy liberals like you after WWI are the ones that sat on your ass with No war isolationism that let millions of Jews, Russians and allied troops died.

[JoeChalupa]

Once again with the name calling. :rolleyes

[xrayzebra]

Byrd's not afraid someone will expose his past. Everyone already knows his past. It was the same as POPE RATZINGER. Hello!

Hell, he doesn't know that. He still thinks everyone thinks he is
God's gift to the Senate.

[JoeChalupa]

I would not vote for Byrd.

[Murphy]

Hello Nbadan, Pope ratzinger was in the the Nazi youth at age 16, then deserted after 2 years, Sheets Byrd was well active in the KKK starting when he was 24 years old! BIG DIFFERENCE!!

[Nbadan]

Hello Nbadan, Pope ratzinger was in the the Nazi youth at age 16, then deserted after 2 years, Sheets Byrd was well active in the KKK starting when he was 24 years old! BIG DIFFERENCE!!

Well, Byrd joined the KKK by choice as a youth, wereas Ratzinger was a conscript into the Hitler youth. See, I even debunk myself sometimes.

:hat

[Vashner]

Holy shit hell just froze over...

[jochhejaam]

Well, Byrd joined the KKK by choice as a youth, wereas Ratzinger was a conscript into the Hitler youth. See, I even debunk myself sometimes.

:hat

Very good Dan. :lol :tu

[smeagol]

Well, Byrd joined the KKK by choice as a youth, wereas Ratzinger was a conscript into the Hitler youth. See, I even debunk myself sometimes.

:hat
Go read the reasons why he was forced to join the Nazi Youth when he was 16 before implying the Pope is a Nazi.

[smeagol]

Once again with the name calling. :rolleyes
I'd also insult anybody that equates the Holy Father with a (former?) racicist.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

If he was a good leader and he went by the initial for his middle name.....