The Black Republican

Last week Senator Robert Byrd took to the floor of the Senate to, in his mind, uphold a Senate tradition. In a verbal sword fight with Senator Bill Frist, Senator Byrd said:

You have a shirttail full of nominees, and you're going to wreck Senate tradition.

Wreck Senate tradition? Well let's just take a closer look at that "tradition" shall we.

At 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an address that he had begun fourteen hours and thirteen minutes earlier. The subject was the pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that occupied the Senate for fifty-seven working days, including six Saturdays. A day earlier, Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey, the bill's manager, concluded he had the sixty-seven votes required at that time to end the debate.

The Civil Rights Act provided protection of voting rights; banned discrimination in public facilities - including private businesses offering public services - such as lunch counters, hotels, and theaters; and established equal employment opportunity as the law of the land.

So blocking Civil Rights legislation is the "tradition" Senator Byrd wants to preserve? How illustrative.

Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the thirty-seven years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.

Thirty-seven years? Can that be right, that the filibuster was used successfully by Senator Byrd and his ilk for thirty-seven years to prevent the passage - or even a vote - of a civil rights bill? Wow... that some "tradition" alright. But is that a "tradition" we as Americans should be proud of and want to preserve?

Three of the nominations most vehemently opposed by the Senate Democrats are Henry Saad, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown. What do these three have in common? Well, they're all conservative, but is it such a surprise that a conservative President has nominated conservative justices? No. And that he has the right to do so is in no way illegal or unconstitutional. But more importantly, they are all minorities. In June of 1964 Janice Rogers Brown was 15 years old and living in California, her family having just moved there from Alabama. What do you think her chances of becoming a lawyer and State Supreme Court Justice would have been - even in the progressive state of California - had Senator Robert C. Byrd and his cronies been successful with the 1964 filibuster in the same way they had been for the prior thirty-seven years? And doesn't it seem ironic that the same party - even the same man - who had tried to maintain the servile subjugation status quo of her and millions of other Americans is trying to use the same filibuster tool to deny her today what they were unable to deny her then?

It seems to me that Senator Robert Byrd and the Democrats don't really seem to care for minority rights unless, of course, they are the ones in the minority. And it seems Senator Byrd specifically has a problem with strong black women. In any case, some "traditions", like slavery, keeping women at home and out of the workplace, or children going to work at age ten, were concepts whose time has come and gone. Ending judicial filibusters that allow a tyranny of the (political) minority is also an idea whose time has come.