Text 9574, 101 rader
Skriven 2005-03-03 05:28:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: "Sheets" Byrd
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050303/D88J6OG00.html

GOP Jewish Group Critizes Byrd's Remarks
 

Mar 2, 8:45 PM (ET)

By ALAN FRAM


WASHINGTON (AP) - A pair of Jewish groups accused Sen. Robert Byrd on 
Wednesday of making an outrageous and reprehensible comparison between 
Adolf Hitler's Nazis and a Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from 
filibustering. A GOP senator called for Byrd to retract his remarks.

Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin denied that Byrd, D-W.Va., had compared 
Republicans to Hitler. He said that instead, the reference to Nazis in a 
Senate speech on Tuesday was meant to underscore that the past should 
not be ignored.

"Terrible chapters of history ought never be repeated," Gavin said. "All 
one needs to do is to look at history to see how dangerous it is to curb 
the rights of the minority."

Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the Senate's No. 3 Republican, 
called for Byrd to retract his comments, saying they "lessen the 
credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate."

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the 
remarks "poisonous rhetoric" that are "reprehensible and beyond the 
pale."

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said 
Byrd's remarks showed "a profound lack of understanding as to who Hitler 
was" and that the senator should apologize to the American people.

"It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest 
that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of 
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party," Foxman said.

In his comments Tuesday, Byrd defended the right senators have to use 
filibusters - procedural delays that can kill an item unless 60 of the 
100 senators vote to move ahead.

Byrd cited Hitler's 1930s rise to power by, in part, pushing legislation 
through the German parliament that seemed to legitimize his ascension.

"We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being 
a nation of laws, not of men," Byrd said. "But witness how men with 
motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends."

Byrd then quoted historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler "turned the law 
inside out and made illegality legal."

Byrd added, "That is what the nuclear option seeks to do."

The nuclear option is the nickname for the proposal to end filibusters 
of judicial nominations because of the devastating effect the plan, if 
enacted, would have on relations between Democrats and Republicans.

The back and forth was the latest twist in the battle over Senate GOP 
efforts to free 10 nominated judges that the chamber's minority 
Democrats have blocked during President Bush's first term. The Senate 
confirmed 204 others.

The first criticism of Byrd came Wednesday when Matt Brooks, executive 
director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, issued a written statement.

"With his knowledge of history and his own personal background as a KKK 
member, he should be ashamed for implying that his political opponents 
are using Nazi tactics," Brooks said.

Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan as a young man and has repeatedly 
apologized for it. Now 87 and the Senate's longest-serving member at 47 
years, he prides himself on his knowledge of history and makes 
historical references frequently during debates.

Brooks also attacked as "disgusting" Byrd's remark that "some in the 
Senate are ready to callously incinerate" senators' rights to 
filibuster. The comment came amid several references by Byrd to the 
"nuclear option."

"There is no excuse for raising the specter of the Holocaust crematoria 
in a discussion of the Senate filibuster," Brooks said. "That kind of 
political heavy-handedness is inappropriate and reprehensible."

Byrd is a long-standing defender of the chamber's rules and traditions, 
many of which help the Senate's minority party.

"In the Senate, when a majority runs roughshod over the minority, the 
people's liberties can be in danger," Gavin said. "That majority may be 
a majority of one party or a majority of one region or a majority of one 
interest.

Brooks said his group's counterpart, the National Jewish Democratic 
Council, should condemn Byrd's comments. Ira Foreman, executive director 
of the Democratic group, declined to comment.


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