Democrat Joe Manchin was supposed to easily win this thing, but Democrats refuse to do anything easily this cycle. According to one of those suspicious Rasmussen polls (but also according to a less suspicious Public Policy Polling poll), Raese is leading Manchin by 2 points.

Continue Reading...

Raese has run for Senate twice before. He almost knocked off Jay Rockefeller in 1984, and despite spending $2.2 million of his own money, he was destroyed by Byrd in 2006. Raese's family owns Greer Industries, a diverse company involved in asphalt, limestone and, of course, media. Greer publishes the Dominion Post newspaper in Morgantown, W.Va., and owns 19 radio stations across the state. It was on one of those stations that Raese announced his candidacy, by making two stupid jokes:

Continue Reading...

Republican U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito announced she would not enter the race a day after popular Gov. Joe Manchin launched his campaign to fill the remaining two-plus years of Byrd's term. The filing deadline for candidates is Friday.

West Virginia GOP Chairman Doug McKinney said he has not heard from any Republican seriously weighing a bid and noted that a candidate would likely need to raise several million dollars quickly to mount a credible campaign.

A Democratic challenger for Manchin did step forward Wednesday: Ken Hechler, a 95-year-old former congressman and secretary of state. The primary will be Aug. 28.

He said his candidacy will be a chance for voters to oppose a controversial strip mining method known as mountaintop removal that exposes coal seams through large-scale blasting. Manchin is a champion of the state's coal industry, which considers the method highly efficient.

Continue Reading...

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito made the announcement a day after popular Gov. Joe Manchin launched his campaign, making him the only candidate so far in a special election to fill the remaining two-plus years of Byrds' term. The filing deadline is Friday.

The bid marks the latest rise in profile for the 62-year-old Manchin since the former state lawmaker captured the governor's office in 2004 after a term as secretary of state. He became chairman of the National Governors Association earlier this month, enjoys high approval ratings in his state and was seen as a comforter-in-chief to victims' families following April's Upper Big Branch mine explosion and the 2006 Sago mine disaster.

West Virginia GOP Chairman Doug McKinney said he's not heard from any Republicans seriously weighing a run. He noted that any candidate would likely need to raise several million dollars to mount a credible campaign in a short timeframe.

Continue Reading...

And this Goodwin is quite the looker! It is not yet known if he has a truck, but this young blood may be all the Democrats need to turn their political fortunes around. Conservatives are already reeling (K-Lo: "is scott brown dethroned?") -- and although Goodwin will only serve while Governor Joe Manchin prepares to run for the seat himself this November, presumably West Virginia's other Senator, 73-year-old Jay Rockefeller, will also retire or pass on at some point (probably 2030 or so), and as long as Goodwin is still handsome, I think the seat is his.

Continue Reading...

Three people familiar with the governor's pick spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment ahead of an official announcement.

Manchin is scheduled to present his appointee at a Friday afternoon press conference at the Capitol. His choice is expected to be sworn in as a senator on Tuesday.

The 36-year-old Goodwin, a Charleston lawyer, would hold the seat until November. That's when the governor wants general election voters to decide who will serve the final two years of Byrd's term. The Legislature has begun a special session to consider a proposal from Manchin to allow for a fall vote.

Byrd was the longest-serving senator in history when he died last month at 92. Goodwin, the youngest among those considered potential choices, worked on Manchin's 2004 campaign for governor before becoming his chief lawyer. He served in that post until shortly after Manchin began his second term in 2009, leaving for his family's law firm.

Continue Reading...

Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, lay in repose on the Senate floor for six hours while senators, both past and present, and Capitol Hill staffers lined up to pay their final respects to the late senator and his family.

Byrd's hearse then left for Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland for a flight to Charleston, W.Va. There is to be an overnight public viewing in the rotunda of the state capitol, followed by a memorial service in Charleston Friday led by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Private services are scheduled for Tuesday at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, Va., where Byrd will be buried next to his wife of almost seven decades, Erma.

Byrd entered the Senate in 1959, concurrent with Alaska becoming a state. He served longer, and cast more votes -- 18,689 -- than any senator in history. He twice rose to become Senate majority leader and, because of his seniority, was the Senate president pro tempore, putting him third in line for the presidency behind the vice president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Continue Reading...

On Sunday, Reuters reported that Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown is having second thoughts about supporting the bill. Brown was apparently unsatisfied that he successfully managed to gain key concessions weakening the bill by threatening to withdraw his support; now he is upset that the Democrats managed to figure out a fiscally prudent way to pay for the costs that might accrue from actually winding down a troubled financial institution as specified by the legislation.

Is it really too much to impose a $19 billion dollar fee on the banks whose recklessness required that Congress come up with a new set of rules to regulate Wall Street in the first place? This is the face of the current GOP. Republicans won't just endlessly blather about how deficits are evil, while refusing to accept that some new taxes will have to be part of any kind of budget-balancing solution, but, in the case of Brown, they'll even vote for legislation that has costs embedded in it and then threaten to renege on their vote when a way to pay for those costs is found.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

I also remember that even then -- even though Robert Carlyle Byrd wasn’t yet a decade into his Senate service -- dad spoke of Byrd not familiarly, as he did most of the state’s pols, but quietly and reverentially. Dad knew Byrd, certainly. But there were no stories about him, no anecdotes of taking him to shake hands outside a local mine at a change of shift, no tales of seeing Byrd knock back a bourbon in the bar of long-gone Daniel Boone Hotel down in Charleston and craning forward as he delivered the inside dope on what those crazy people in Washington were really up to.

Continue Reading...

You can listen to the complete 2002 speech and watch highlights from the 2003 speech below. Ironically, 14 years before this riveting speech, Byrd's fellow Democrats nudged him out as their Senate leader, in part because they felt he wasn't an effective communicator in the television age.

2002 speech, Part 1:

Continue Reading...

A spokesman for the family, Jesse Jacobs, said Byrd died peacefully at about 3 a.m. at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va. He had been in the hospital since late last week.

At first Byrd was believed to be suffering from heat exhaustion and severe dehydration, but other medical conditions developed. He had been in frail health for several years.

Byrd, a Democrat, was the longest-serving senator in history, holding his seat for more than 50 years. He was the Senate's majority leader for six of those years and was third in the line of succession to the presidency, behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow West Virginian in the Senate, said it was his "greatest privilege" to serve with Byrd.

"I looked up to him, I fought next to him, and I am deeply saddened that he is gone," Rockefeller said.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Byrd "combined a devotion to the U.S. Constitution with a deep learning of history to defend the interests of his state and the traditions of the Senate."

Continue Reading...

1) Timing is important. As others have noted, the key date here is July 3 -- next Saturday. Under West Virginia law, were a vacancy to be declared before then, an appointee would hold the seat through this November, when a special election would be held to fill the final two years on the term Byrd was elected to in 2006. The winner of that special election would presumably seek a full term in 2012. Were a vacancy to be declared after July 3, an appointee would hold the seat through the 2012 election, when the full six-year term would be up.

Continue Reading...

Tucker Carlson's Internet Tendency has a story on how the advanced age of our lawmakers is hurting our nation. (They also have a slide show of "Geeky guys who landed hot women.") It's not pretty.

Robert Byrd is this Congress' Strom Thurmond: Everyone knows he is just not there. He's a  decrepit old body wheeled in to make votes only when he's needed. (He's missed 42 percent of them during this Congress.) This is ridiculous. It makes the Senate even more a joke -- that everyone pretends that increasingly incoherent hundred-year-old men are legislators instead of just names on ballots and collections of longtime staffers.

Continue Reading...

In the post, titled "All I Want Is A Byrd Dropping For Christmas," Owens wrote:

Robert Byrd has been around a very long time, and his many decades of service have made West Virginia a wonderful state in which to manufacture methamphetamine or frame the locals for murder. But it's time for Senator to do the right thing, and expire.

It isn't too much to ask for Byrd to step off for that great klavern in the sky before the Senate vote that may force this nation to accept government-rationed health care. Even a nice coma would do.

Without his frail, Gollum-like body being wheeled into the Senate's chambers to cast the deciding vote, the Senate cannot curse our children and grandchildren with crushing debt and rationed, substandard healthcare.

Noting that some people were bound to be (rightfully) appalled by what he'd written, Owens added that he'd tell those people "that the party wheeling in a near invalid to vote in favor of this unread monstrosity of a bill is the one that should feel shame."

(Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan.)

Continue Reading...

Byrd's office is saying the trip to the hospital was just precautionary, and that he likely won't be admitted. But an ambulance was called, and the 91-year-old senator has had health issues recently; he was hospitalized earlier this year with a staph infection. He's currently the Senate's oldest member, and he's served in the body for more time than any other person in U.S. history.

Update: Byrd actually was admitted to the hospital, for a stay his staff is saying should last only for a few days.

"[U}pon examination, doctors found an elevated white-blood cell count which can be an early sign of an infection,” the senator's spokesman said in a statement. “Therefore, his doctors have determined that Byrd should remain in the hospital for antibiotic treatment and observation.”

Continue Reading...

But what really struck me about Byrd's statement was the non-political part of it at the very beginning: "I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come. My heart and soul weeps at the loss of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy."

Statements from politicians are, as a general rule, not exactly the most sincere things ever written. But there's no doubting Byrd's sincerity here, because last year, shortly after Kennedy was diagnosed with the cancer that would end up taking his life, Byrd spoke about his friend on the floor of the Senate. Whatever you feel about the two men and their politics, I think it's impossible not to be touched by what ensued, an all-too-rare truly, deeply human moment in Washington. Byrd breaks down talking about Kennedy's illness, and his heart and soul truly do appear to be weeping. The video is below.

Continue Reading...

On Wednesday, the veteran senator wrote a letter to President Obama in which he criticizes the new administration's use of White House offices and "czars" to do work normally under the purview of officials who have to be confirmed by the Senate.

These new jobs “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials," Byrd said, according to Politico.

Continue Reading...

Doctors discovered a malignant tumor in Kennedy's brain this past May. CNN is reporting that paramedics are on the scene and that he's now in an ambulance after experiencing violent convulsions.

The new president opened his remarks at the lunch by expressing concern for the health of Kennedy -- or as he called him, "Teddy" -- and noting the senator's role in the struggle for civil rights.

According to the Politico's Glenn Thrush, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd also left the luncheon early with apparent medical troubles.

Continue Reading...

This Democratic primary campaign has been tough and competitive. I had no intention of involving myself in the Democratic campaign for President in the midst of West Virginia's primary election. But the stakes this November could not be higher.

After a great deal of thought, consideration and prayer over the situation in Iraq, I have decided that, as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention, I will cast my vote for Senator Barack Obama for President. Both Senators Clinton and Obama are extraordinary individuals, whose integrity, honor, love for this country and strong belief in our Constitution I deeply respect.

Byrd's endorsement carries some symbolism beyond just his lengthy tenure. As Republicans are fond of pointing out, Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan; indeed, in the early 1940s, he was a leader of his local chapter. He has spent many years since apologizing for his membership in the Klan: In 2005, he said, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/05/19/byrd_obama/feed/ 28