Since everyone is jumping on the Burn Mike Vick Burn Bandwagon, our esteemed Senator from West Virginia felt the need to chime in. Apparently Senator Bob Byrd didn't get his Cream of Wheat, or whatever takes his usual edge off this particular morning.
Barbaric. Barbaric. Barbaric. Inhuman. Dastardly. Shame. Shame. Shame. Inhuman. Cannibalistic. Sadistic.
Lest we not forget, this is indeed the same Bob Byrd who was once damn near Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Just a few highlights of his Wiki...
In 1942, 24-year-old Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose parades in Matoaka, West Virginia, he had witnessed in his childhood. He was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops, or leader, of his local chapter.[2]So, killing a dog is barbaric, but Negroes don't get the same charity extended to them?
Byrd, in his autobiography, attributed the beginnings of his political career to this incident, although he lamented that they involved the Klan. According to Byrd's recollection, Klan official Joel L. Baskin told him "You have a talent for leadership, Bob ... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation." Byrd recalls that "suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities. I was only 23 or 24, and the thought of a political career had never struck me. But strike me that night, it did."[2] He participated in the KKK during World War II, holding the titles Kleagle (recruiter) and Exalted Cyclops. He did not serve in the military during the war, working instead as a welder in a Baltimore, Maryland shipyard, where he helped build warships.[citation needed]
Byrd commented on the 1945 controversy about racially integrating the military. Byrd, when he was 28 years old, wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo, of Mississippi, vowing never to serve in such a military:
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.[3]
He had earlier written Bilbo "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side".[4][5]
Barbaric! indeed.
