1 Great stuff.  Got anything from the last several decades?  Maybe anything that happened while I, a middle-aged guy, was alive for?  Because, if you don't, it kind of seems like you're living in the past and not showing any Christian forgiveness.

Heck, this dates even before Laura Bush killed her boyfriend!  And before Bush stopped doing cocaine.

2 Let's see -- unproven charges of drug use, a tragic accident over which no criminal charges were filed, and admitted membership in a racist terrorist organization.

Glad to see that your sense of proportion is so completely screwed up -- and that you and your fellow libs still support the KKK, which for nearly a century-and-a-half has been your party's paramilitary wing!

3 Besides, we are talking about a man who filibustered the 1957 & 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and who has voted against both African American Justices to ever sit on the US Supreme Court. I was alive for all but one of those events.

Would a Republican with such a record be given any of your "Christian forgiveness"?

4 Hahahaha - now you've brought your argument to only a little more than 40 years ago.

While we're in the history books, I want to acknowledge that Lincoln was a good president. It's been a long dry spell for Republicans since then . . .

5 Well, I suppose if you leave out Reagan, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, among others, you might get that impression.

But to be honest, I can't think of a single great Democrat President -- well, at least not since Truman, who was the last Democrat who actually believed in defending America from its enemies (instead of giving them aid and comfort) and exhibited a lick of competence in doing so. Even then, my admiration for Truman has more to do with his standing up against the Democrat Party's paramilitary terrorist wing that Byrd was a leader of. Even then, he didn't have the courage to actually renounce them and their votes by taking a firm stand for the rights of African-Americans (and, indeed, the equality of all Americans) -- something that has always been and remains the cornerstone of the GOP.

6 And by the way, Dan, your standards are interesting.

You give Byrd a pass for his racist past and his use of the "N word" on television, but have a problem with Trent Lott saying nice things about an old guy celebrating his 100th birthday. Some sense of priority and proportion.

7 Reagan and Nixon were criminals who shamed our country, so I wouldn't be bragging on them. But that's an historical argument - which seems to be your specialty in this thread. I pointed out that you're knocking Byrd for stuff that happened two generations ago, and you keep on living in those "good old days".

No double standard here. If, tomorrow, Byrd yearns for the days of segregation at anybody's birthday, I'd be on him like stink on a pig. But if you played me some grainy footage of him doing so from 40 years ago, and then showed me that he has been a good and loyal Senator ever since, I'd view it as irrelevant.

I said things in the 1960s that wouldn't play well today. Did you?

8 Reagan -- a criminal? Hardly.

And given the criminality of Bill Clinton and the anti-Semitism and incompetence of Jimmy Carter, the Dems have nothing to brag about.

And as for Lott -- he wasn't yearning for the days of segregation, he was paying a courtly compliment to an old man on his birthday. Contrast that with Byrd's spewing of the "N -word" on national television" in the last decade.

Robert Byrd -- Racist Terrorist. And you support him.