Let me begin by saying that if I were a member of the US Senate, I would have abstained from voting on the resolution apologizing for the failure of the Senate to pas a law making lynching a federal crime. I wasn't born at the time the laws were considered, and as a Republican I have nothing to apologize for -- it was a series of filibusters and other parliamentary tricks used by a Democrat minority to prevent the majority of senators (including all Republicans) from voting to make lynching a federal crime as asked by Republican a number of Republican presidents. That is why I'm not too disturbed that a number of senators failed to co-sponsor the apology resolution.

Texas' U.S. senators decided against co-sponsoring a resolution apologizing to lynching victims and their families because of procedural reasons rather than any second thoughts about the measure, aides said Wednesday.

The decisions by Republicans Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn put them among the 17 senators who refrained from co-sponsoring the apology. It was co-sponsored by the 83 others.

The resolution, which apologized for the Senate's failure to enact anti-lynching legislation through two centuries, passed by unanimous consent.

Only about six senators were on the floor for the vote, which is not unusual when measures are approved in such a manner. Hutchison and Cornyn were absent.
The resolution was introduced by Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia.

I'm sorry, the resolution passed was nothing short of a steaming pile of crap dumped on the graves of lynching victims. The passage of this resolution STILL fails to make lynching a federal crime, and so it is meaningless beyond a hollow symbolism. Any actual apology should have come in the form of legislation accomplishing the aim of the original bills that failed to gain passage -- all 200 of them.

Partisan Democrats are, of course, making hay over the fact that these senators did not co-sponsor the resolution. The irony is that one of them has paid advertising on his site raising money for Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd (KKK-Dogpatch), whose previous career includes a stint as a paid recruiter for the Klan – and who has never publicly answered questions about his participation in lynchings, cross-burnings, and other acts of KKK terrorism during his days in that anti-American organization.

UPDATE: Two recent developments:

1) Senator Byrd has published his memoirs -- and still fails to come clean about the full extent of his involvement in the terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan. Seems he is still in denial about its nature and the level of evil of his membership/organizing activities.

2) It only took a week, but John Aravosis FINALLY acknowledges that lynching is still not a Federal crime.

hadn't realized they NEVER passed the law. This puts the importance of the anti-lynching resolution in a whole new light. They NEVER passed the law, while lynchings continued up until the late 1960s (though, I'd argue, what happened to James Byrd in Texas a few years back was clearly a lynching).

When I made an issue of it in his comment section, noting that I'd been pointing that out on his site for a week, John did what any honest liberal would do -- banned me and deleted all my comments so that no one could go back and check. I guess he doesn't like having folks note that he is a John-ny-Come-Lately to the issue of passing an actual law banning lynching.

OOPS! My bad! He still hasn't called for the passage of anti-lynching legislation, but instead wants to score cheap political points over a do-nothing resolution that takes no action to actually rectify the Senate's failure to pass legislation against lynching. I wonder if it has anything to do with his taking advertising dollars from Bobby the Klansman's campaign?

Posted by: Greg at 10:32 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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