Eulogizing Robert Byrd--is that a white sheet over that casket?

Hearing Barack Obama and Bill Clinton lauding a former official of the Ku Klux Klan was certainly bizarre. They didn't just eulogize him, they noted with some puffery and pride found only among Democrats that he had rejected that nastiness in his past. God knows, I'm all for redemption, and so thankful that God doesn't grade on a curve, but did Byrd really change all that much? Was his (or any liberal's) objection to Justice Thomas and Secretary Rice really about their qualifications and not their race? There's a lot to overlook in this good old boy

"In a March 2005 fundraising appeal to the radical group MoveOn.org, Obama said, “Senator Robert Byrd was one of the first senators I met with when I came to the Senate three months ago. Senator Byrd understands the history, the importance, and the role the Senate plays in our government...”

Reeling off a long list of charges against the Bush Administration and Senate Republicans, all of which were either untrue or totally misleading, Obama concluded by saying, “Above all, Robert Byrd understands just how sacred the Constitution of our country truly is and fights every day to protect it.”

This is the same Robert Byrd who wrote in a 1944 letter to a Mississippi senator, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side.”

This is the same Robert Byrd who wrote in a 1945 letter to that same Mississippi senator, “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.”

This is the same Robert Byrd who wrote in a 1948 letter to the Grand Wizard of the West Virginia Klan, at a time when Klan membership was in steep decline, “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.”

This is the same Robert Byrd who holds the distinction of being the only man to use the “n-word” on the floor of the U.S. Senate during the last half century, or more.

Obama’s fundraising appeal for his KKK colleague was a successful one. Within 48 hours, nearly $823,000 poured into the Byrd campaign coffers. And when Obama traveled to West Virginia to campaign for Byrd, the Charleston Daily Mail opined, “If the African-American trailblazer has any qualms about endorsing the man who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act and who disdainfully referred to blacks as ‘the darkest specimens of the wilds,’ he’s keeping them to himself.” Paul Hollrah