<From MSNBC

"In a related development, MSNBC Cable uncovered footage from October 2000 in which Lott is heard saying Thurmond “should have been president.”

As Thurmond, who was the Senate president pro tempore at the time, puts his signature on a defense spending bill, Lott is heard in the background saying, “now this is a famous signature right here.”

A woman’s voice then praises Thurmond’s pro-military record, to which Lott replies that Thurmond “should have been president.”

Thurmond ran for president on a states’ rights, segregationist platform and carried four states, losing the election to President Harry Truman.

A Lott spokesman told MSNBC that the footage proves Lott was praising Thurmond for his staunchly anti-communist and pro-military views in 1948, and not for his former segregationist ideology"

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The assumption that Lott was making a racist statement is somewhat preposterous on the face of it, here is another example of Lott's obvious tendency to praise Thurmond by saying he should have been President.

The Martin Luther King day holiday is explainable as well - heck I would've voted down a MLK holiday in a second. His motives were saving expenses - I would say there are a heck of a lot of Americans - including Black Americans - who deserve a federal holiday sooner than MLK. Where do you draw the line? Arsenio Hall was a barrier breaker and did a lot for African Americans - should there be an Arsenio Hall Holiday? Clarence Thomas broke enormous barriers too - and actually has served our country - certainly he deserves a federal holiday?!

It's preposterous. The evidence against Lott is circumstantial. No rational jury would convict a man by willfully reading racism into words which are not clearly so.

Lott never was, IMHO, as sharp as Newt was, yet to see him die the death of a thousand paper cuts is an insult to every American - or should be.

The left gets riled about due process and terrorists being held in detention facilities. Yet these same folks are the first to throw all presumption of innocence to the wind on the remarks made by a 60 year old Senator on the occasion of a 100 year old Senators birthday.

Rove thinks he's a liability. Perhaps he is. However, I think it may be even more damaging for the Senate as an institution, and the US as a country, if he is pushed aside for thinking he said something he probably never did.

I don't care what legislation get's passed if it means sacrificing the principles I believe in to get it

Climbing on Lott's picked clean bones as some ladder to redemption just doesn't sit well with me.

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