WTF Is It Now?!?

Byrd unleashed
"I have never in my political career been so concerned about my country as I have been for the last two years." - Sen. Robert Byrd.

Angry phone calls - urged on by conservative radio blowhards - followed the senator's criticism of the Deserter-in-Thief's orgasmic, cheesy photo-op onto the USS Abraham Lincoln, but Mr. Byrd was amused that thousands of CNN viewers backed his position 61%-39% in an unscientific "Question of the Day" poll.

"They think they can intimidate me just by ridiculing me," he scoffs. He bitterly recalls the November defeat of Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat and Vietnam veteran attacked by Republicans for not showing more "courage" in support of the president's homeland-security legislation. "They politically lynched this guy who had given three of his limbs for his country."

"There are Tories up there today," he says of colleagues who he sees as supporting Mr. Bush as if he were some latter-day King George. The Iraq war resolution, which Mr. Byrd fiercely resisted and which gave Mr. Bush unprecedented advance authority to strike Baghdad at his will, was a "giveaway of power by people who should know better" and "a blotch" on the Senate. "To me that was a mortal wound," Mr. Byrd says. "That had more impact on me than any other vote I have cast."

"Too many senators come believing, 'We have to help the president. We have to hold him up.' That's terrible, there is no king here. [T]hey ought to learn their first responsibility is not to him but the people through the Constitution and this institution. This branch, the people's branch, forgets the people." - Damned if you do, damned if you don't: link takes you to Fretard Central, because I'll be damned if I'll register at the WSJ. {.....!}