Whether you liked Robert Byrd or not, he was an Icon in the U.S. Senate.
Senator Robert Byrd, who passed today at age 92, has the distinction of holding the record for longest service in the U.S. Senate. And with his and Ted Kennedy’s passing, and era has also passed.
What we can say is that Robert Byrd always carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution with him and was a staunch defender of it; and example of a dinosaur among Democrats. He also regularly quoted scripture and he was a self-made man. Son of a West Virginia minor and born into poverty.
He might also be an example of someone who voted for Barack Obama not only because of party affiliation but because of political correctness and guilt… like so many other Americans.
Sen. Robert Byrd, 1917-2010
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in American history, died Monday at the age of 92.
Byrd, a Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate since 1959, had been plagued by health problems in recent years and was confined to a wheelchair. He had skipped several votes in Congress in the past months.
He was the oldest member of the 111th Congress.
Byrd held a number of leadership roles during his tenure in the Senate, including conference secretary, majority whip and majority leader -- twice.
Prior to his death, Byrd worked as the president pro tempore -- the second highest ranking official in the Senate and the highest ranking senator in the majority party, putting Byrd third in line to the presidency.
He also served as the senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Other committees on which Byrd served were the Senate Budget, Armed Services and Rules and Administration Committees.
Byrd, who never lost an election, cast more than 18,540 roll call votes -- more than any other senator in U.S. history. He had a 98 percent attendance record in his more than five decades of service in the Senate, according to his Web site.
Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. in North Wilkesboro, N.C., in 1917. When his mother died in the 1918 flu pandemic, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, who renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia.
He received his law degree from American University in 1963, and his undergraduate degree from Marshall University in 1994 -- at age 76.
Byrd was widely regarded as a pre-eminent expert on constitutional law and legislative procedures. Because of his intimate knowledge of Senate rules, he was both feared and respected by his political opponents.
He helped win ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty and was well known for steering federal dollars to his home state. He was also a strong opponent to the Iraq war and vehemently defended minority party rights in the Senate.
He was elected to Congress in 1952, representing West Virginia's 6th Congressional District. Six years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Byrd threw his support behind Barack Obama a week after the then-senator lost the West Virginia Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign -- an endorsement that symbolized the shift in his views on race. Read more ...
Media Bias in Lawmakers’ Obits?
The life stories of Senators Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd are similar but the way they were covered in death has been as different as night and day.
Thurmond, a Republican, opposed segregation and supported states rights. When he died, the Associated Press story included the following headline that appeared on June 27, 2003:
STROM THURMOND, FOE OF INTEGRATION, DIES AT 100
Byrd, a Democrat, was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. When he died, the Associated Press story included the following heading on July 28, 2010:
ROBERT BYRD, RESPECTED VOICE OF THE SENATE, DIES AT 92
Both obituraries were written by the same writer, Adam Clymer. The headlines appeared in the The New York Times.
In the June 27, 2003 story he wrote, “Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South, died Thursday.
Then consider how he wrote about Byrd, the Democrat. “Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virgina, a fiery orator versed in the classics and a hard-charging power broker who steered billions of federal dollars to the state of his Depression-era upbringing, died Monday. He was 92.”
Readers would have been hard-pressed to find any reference to Byrd’s involvement with the KKK. It was buried in the 21st paragraph of the story.
Tim Graham, director of media analysis for Media Research Center, said the two stories represented a classic case of media bias.
“Over the years people have been aware that Senator Strom Thurmond and Senator Robert Byrd both had racist or segregationist pasts,” Graham told FOX News Radio.“You’ve seen this repeatedly over (the) decades that Thurmond’s past was always thrown in his face and Byrd’s past was sort of left down the memory hole.”
Graham said there’s a pattern of the media dismissing or excusing Byrd’s involvement with the KKK.
“Both of these politicians changed their ways yet the coverage of Thurmond seems to imply that he never changed,” he said.
He added that the way the stories were written “illustrate the media’s mindset that they find alot of racism still lurking in the Republican Party and there’s none in the Democratic Party.”
And the average reader doesn’t notice the pattern, Graham said, unless they’ve been clipping out headlines from seven years ago.
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