THUMBS XV: Goodbye, Martha, We Hardly Knew You; Byrd Wasn't Calling Republicans Nazis: Can't We All Get Along?
by David M. Kinchen
Editor, Bluefield News Network
Hinton (BNN) — This is the fifteenth installment of an occasional series expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc. Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the item. The contributions can come from within the BNN family or from our readers - I welcome them all. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com or send the contributions/suggestions to stories@huntingtonnews.net.
THUMBS UP — To Martha Stewart, who brought a little positive notoriety to West Virginia, as well as boosting the economy of the delightful little community of Alderson. Here in Hinton, the impact was minimal, although there was some increase in Amtrak activity as visitors to Martha's temporary home at Federal Prison Camp Alderson arrived at our station, to continue the 22-mile trip to Alderson by car. Greenbrier Valley Airport in Lewisburg also benefited, as many visitors used the airport on U.S. 219 north of the city to visit Martha. I've flown out of this airport and recommend it to anyone in southeastern West Virginia who wants who wants a low-pressure alternative to larger airports. To those lamenting the "media circus" aspects of Martha's early morning release from Camp Cupcake, I say, forget about it! I enjoyed the over-the-top helicopter tracking of the Stewart convoy to Lewisburg — it reminded me of my time in L.A. watching the almost constant stream of TV police chases. Martha has become an advocate of sentencing reform — and that's a good thing, too. All in all, I think Martha Stewart is a better person for having spent five months in West Virginia. As I approach my 13th year in the Mountain State, I appreciate West Virginia even more.THUMBS DOWN — To all those who are piling on Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-WV, for his March 1, 2005 remarks in the Senate. I went to the senator's web site and extracted the complete news release and recommend a thorough reading of it by those who've been misled by print media reports and online blogs. In the interest of journalistic integrity (yes, there is such a thing!) I'm including a link at the end of this column to the full text of the March 1 remarks.
Contrary to the statement of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, Byrd DID NOT call the Republican majority Nazis — he merely stated that throughout history, dictators like Hitler and Mussolini — both legally elected — have used existing constitutions to ram through horrible legislation.
Essentially, Byrd decried the "plot afoot in the Senate to curtail the right of extended debate in this hallowed chamber, not in accordance with its rules, mind you, but by fiat from the Chair."
Bear in mind that Byrd is the author of several well-regarded books on the U.S. Senate. Also bear in mind, he's a legislator of the old school, well versed in classic rhetoric (in the good sense). He continues: "The so-called 'nuclear option' purports to be directed solely at the Senate's advice and consent prerogatives regarding federal judges. But, the claim that no right exists to filibuster judges aims an arrow straight at the heart of the Senate's long tradition of unlimited debate."As a history buff, I found it significant that Byrd says that it wasn't until 1917 — during the furor over the U.S. entry into the World War in the Wilson Administration that "any curtailing of debate was attempted, which means that from 1806 to 1917, some 111 years, the Senate rejected any limits to debate."
In my humble opinion, the U.S. never should have joined that unilateral war started by maniacal Europeans: We should have let them exhaust themselves in their bloody exercise in mass hysteria. It's my theory that our entry into the war virtually guaranteed the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and Lenin and Stalin and the whole ugly mess that led to the Second World War.
Many historians have chronicled the heavy hand of the Wilson Administration during that "red scare" period. Wilson wasn't the saint so many have portrayed him. He was racist in the extreme and allowed attorneys general like A. Mitchell Palmer to ride roughshod over civil rights. Palmer could be called the father of the American Civil Liberties Union, since the ACLU was formed in response to Wilson's and Palmer's infringements on civil rights.
This is probably the passage that led many to make the leap of Nazis = GOP: "Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that 'Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.' And he succeeded.
"Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.
"And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do to Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate.
"It seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule. Employing the "nuclear option", engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our nation's core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process."
I think those who dredged up Byrd's membership in the Ku Klux Klan, which I have long deplored, are wrong. He has long since apologized for his KKK membership. I personally, as a libertarian, think Byrd has made several valid points about the Senate and the necessary separation of powers in our country. I have sensitivity toward anti-Semitic remarks, and I fail to see anything of the sort in Byrd's speech.
Read Senator Byrd's actual remarks to the Senate and American People.
Thumbs Archives:
10/16/04 — Part I
11/10/04 — Part II
11/26/04 — Part III
12/15/04 — Part IV
12/24/04 — Part V
12/31/04 — Part VI
01/08/05 — Part VII
01/14/05 — Part VIII
01/21/05 — Part IX
02/04/05 — Part X
02/11/05 — Part XI
02/18/05 — Part XII
02/25/05 — Part XIII
02/28/05 — Part XIV
03/06/05 — Part XV
03/10/05 — Part XVI
03/18/05 — Part XVII
03/26/05 — Part XVIII
03/30/05 — Part XIX
04/09/05 — Part XX