If an argument can be made for a mandatory retirement age this guy may be it. Unless you're a resident of West-by-God-Virginia that is. If you're one of those, you gotta love the guy. He's brought more pork to West Virginia than Oscar Mayer. I drive to the Mountaineer State a few times a year and you can't go many places there without finding something named after him. Even if you can't find his name you can find his pork everywhere, including some prime pork like the FBI fingerprint lab in Clarksburg. It's the first time in history that the largest industry in a state is its United States Senator.
He's 87 and it's showing. I occasionally see him on C-SPAN making a speech in the Senate. That scene usually shows him prattling on with mock outrage at the latest offense committed by the Bush Administration/Republicans or waxing rhetorically about some past history--all done with increasingly trembling hands. I remember a television news report a few years ago in which some pointed questions were asked of him and you could tell he was barely restraining himself from exploding. He came across as just an angry old man. And as this article points out, he long ago lost his former majority leader's post and his history racially is less than sparkling, notably with a filibuster in 1964 against the Civil Rights Act and use of the N-word on national TV a few years ago. I suspect if he were a Republican instead of a Democrat the media would have already hounded him out of town.
Strom Thurmond overstayed his welcome and it looks like Byrd is going to do likewise. I thought we were supposed to get wiser as we got older. Yet another theory shot down.
Link via Michelle Malkin.
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