A Senator's Shame

WaPo reorted In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter. As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd's organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation," Baskin said.

And Democratic Politics was the place for him, since at time Southern Democrats were most likely to appreciate a KKK leader.

The young Klan leader went on to become one of the most powerful and enduring figures in modern Senate history. Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate. Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation's history.

Cori Dauber: blogged I just don't see how people can deny that the Post is the best paper in the country. I mean, can you imagine an article like this appearing in the Times, on the front page? And yet, a statement like, "it is our histories that define us," is one you'd easily find in any section of the Times, don't you think?

Tom Maguire blogged A front pager in the WaPo on Byrd's KKK days. (Hmm, did you get that message from my headline, too? The Department of Redundancy Department is reviewing this post. And checking it.)