Columnist Don Surber of the Chrarleston Daily Mail e-mailed me to bring attention to his column today, which is worth a read: Sen. Byrd should not bring this up (and it fits into my post on Byrd from this morning):

Bob Byrd gave a lengthy speech on Tuesday romanticizing filibusters. Byrd cited Frank Capra’s fictional masterpiece, “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.”

[…]

His real life experience is far more insightful. When Sen. Byrd went to Washington, it was not for the high-minded idealism of the fictional Mr. Smith.

On June 9, 1964, just before 8 p.m., Byrd began the longest speech of his career. For 14 hours and 13 minutes he spoke. At 49, he did not seem to need breaks.

Byrd and most Southern Democrats had succeeded for 102 days in abusing Senate rules to delay passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, just as they had delayed civil rights legislation in 1963, 1962, 1961 and so on.

On the one hand, this was over forty years ago, on the other, since Byrd’s own speech reached back well beyond four decades to make his selective points about the filibuster’s illustrious history, this strikes me as wholly fair game. Further, it does demonstrate that Byrd’s attempt to argue for the virtue of the minority against majority tyranny is not as simple as he would have us to believe.