You call Byrd a harmless old man, but he's a Senator for Pete's sake. Maybe like Thurmond he's largely outlived his usefulness, but I guess the people can elect anyone they want.

It's interesting how my original comment on a massive Leftist movement in this country, including the radical socialism that infests our universities, media, and government, suddenly got turned around into a criticism of two Republicans being seen in the vicinity of a backwater obsolete organization like the Council of Conservative Citizens. (Probably my fault for rising yet again to Bowser's bait.) Honestly, do you really think these leftover rewarmed Rebels are any real threat to America? One of their columnists even calls himself "Beauregarde," a name I've only seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons satirizing the Old South.

The difference in the danger to our country is, as I have pointed out before, that the socialist organizations are respected by the mainstream, and carry a lot of weight in policy decisions. Good Old Boy backwater groups like the CCC are almost universally condemned, and recognized for their racist attitudes.

To put it succinctly, I could stand up at almost any cocktail party in Washington D.C., New York, Hollywood, or wherever the movers and shakers hang out, and announce myself to be a card-carrying socialist. The worst that would happen to me is I would probably immediately get a job at a university, writing columns for some high-class journal, or pulling down a hundred thousand a year at some leftist think tank.

If I were to announce myself as a white supremacist, I would be instantly run out of town on a rail.

Only an idiot would expect some jerk like David Duke to attain a position of real power in this country. But the same is not true for socialists, which already occupy one seat in the House by name ("independent"--yeah, right), and if you go by actions rather than definitions, occupy a heck of a lot more seats than that in the House and Senate. How many active white supremacists are in the House and Senate? And that takes a little more than making a speech to a bunch of old Southern coots.