Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Who are they kidding?

Senator Robert C. Byrd, the inveterate crank from West Virginia, fell at his home recently and has been hospitalized, raising the question: is death the only way to get this crazy old coot out of the Senate?

In December, Politico blogged on rumors that Senate Democrats were looking at ways to remove Sen. Byrd from the Chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee; those rumors were quickly quashed, and Byrd retains the chair. This despite the fact that everyone in Washington knows he's not up to the job -- see this June 2007 AP report posted on MSNBC describing his inability to manage the Committee's business.

Congress has a long history of people staying too long, including former Democratic appropriations chairs Rep. Jamie Whitten and Sen. John Stennis, and House Rules Committee Chairman Claude Pepper. As Pepper's decline progressed, then-Rep. Joseph Moakley of Massachusetts used to sit next to him at Rules Committee meetings, nudging him along and helpfully pointing out when Committee Members had questions or comments. It's sad to watch legislative giants in their decline; it verges on the criminally negligent that their colleagues let them continue to chair Congress's most powerful committees in the name of collegiality.

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