In article <Xns94CB6BDA24DD4fstone69@207.69.154.201>,
fstone69@earthling.com says...

http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21PRDodd404.html

Members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are
asking U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd to resign his seat in the
wake of inappropriate comments he made commemorating fellow senator
Robert C. Byrd's 17,000th Senate vote.

Senator Dodd said: "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to
say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great
senator at any moment. Some were right for a time. Robert C. Byrd, in
my view, would have been right for any time."

Bush has been spinning his own statements like a cyclotron and we're
supposed to be concerned about an ambiguous statement like this. It's
very clear that neither Dodd nor Byrd have racist agendas today, but
rather the opposite.

It sounds like he's saying that the person he now
knows senator Byrd to be has the right characteristics of leadership.

OTOH, Lott commented about Thurmond's candidacy for president on a
segregationist platform and commented that we might have been better
off if Thurmond had won. Clearly Dodd said nothing even close to that
sinister, nor would it be consistent with the political positions of
himself of Byrd to construe it in a way that promoted racism.

"When Senator Trent Lott made similar comments

Senator Lott was unrepentant about his own intolerance and was still
using his senatorial powers to advance racial division and
discrimination. It's the repug "southern strategy". Keep the
"crackers" and the "negroes" at each other's throats. Dodd has shown
through his voting record, that he is a friend of the black community,
whereas Lott has shown himself to be their enemy. Therefore, while
Dodd said something ambiguous, Lott was very definitely just taking
the opportunity to exploit thurmonds birthday to advance
neo-segregationist ideas.

Dodd was not advancing a racist agenda, nor
would Byrd have approved of it if he did. Neither of the men are
racists and their voting records have proven that they respect the
rights of minorities. Go dig for muck somewhere else.

about Senator
Strom Thurmond at a party, he was roundly condemned. He lost his
leadership post, and almost drummed out of the Senate.

Dodd and Byrd have both proven that they are not racists, whereas Lott
was proud to still be a bigot. Frankly, I think that Lott was
surprised that he was unable to get away with his bigotry, which he
practiced with relative impunity until that time. He eventually tried
a disingenuous denial/apology, but he was rightly not believed, since
his actions betrayed the falsity of his claims.

What Lott said
was hurtful, and he paid a price at Senator Dodd's urging.

Ah, now it becomes clear. Right wingers have been parsing every
sentence out of Dodd's mouth since that day, hoping to find something
they could spin into an attack.

Perhaps now they're hoping to cover
their tracks by feeding nonsense to bedfellows on the far left to make
the charges seem more genuine. Unfortunately, they are praying for
lightning to strike twice and it ain't gonna happen. Nice try and all
that, but repugs really aren't as masterful at the politics of
relentless attacks as they think. I'm sure Dodd will meet with his
many black friends and offer some legislation aimed at helping the
black community. Dodd can do that, unlike Lott, because his
constituency isn't a bunch of stealth racists.

Now it's
Dodd's time to face the music and resign."

Keep dreaming. You assholes don't care about civil rights. It's very
clear that Dodd never said Byrd's former racist views were acceptable.
He is talking about Byrd right now, who is not a racist, and
recommending his present disposition as a model for leadership.