And his death is, thankfully, the end of an era that was allowed to continue much too long.

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side...
Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled
in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours
become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest
specimen from the wilds." -- Senator Robert Robert Byrd (1917-2010)

I won't be a hypocrite here and speak glowingly about the career of Robert Byrd, a former leader of the paramilitary terrorist wing of the Democrat Party whose presence befouled the halls of the US Capitol for over half a century. If the above words (written in 1944, during the height of WWII) had come from the pen or mouth of any Republican, that individual would have been rightfully driven from public life. Yet Robert Byrd, the only man to vote against every African-American to ever serve on the US Supreme Court, was allowed to continue in office unmolested by the Left Stream Media, despite his documented history of treasonous writing in the service of racial segregation during time of war.

Michelle Malkin Doug Powers provides links to information about the filling of the now vacant Senate seat. Betsy's Page links to Jim Geraghty, who suggests that West Virginia's governor might wait to declare the seat vacant so as to deny the people of West Virginia the right to select their own Senator. As is pointed out at QandO, "in a sane world, the seat would be declared vacant now, since the moment he died was the moment the seat actually became vacant. But that’s not necessarily how it works in the insane world of party politics." Politico sorts out the options well.

Cassy Fiano supplies a roundup of conservative reaction. I respectfully disagree with her call "o refrain from trashing Senator Byrd too much and stay respectful." After all, Kluxers merit no respect.

Don Surber, who is, after all, a working journalist and columnist, provides a fine roundup of Byrd's entire career, with pictures. Ed Driscoll notes that MSNBC is praising Byrd as a "champion of civil rights" -- certainly enough to make anyone with an ounce of common sense see that the Olbermann-Maddow-Schultz network need not be taken seriously as a source of information or opinion.

Moonbattery provides this overview that I think rather neatly sums things up.

Senator Robert Byrd has died at 92. White n----rs everywhere have declared a day of mourning. Byrd didn't invent pork spending, but he did play a huge role in making it the central operating principle of the U.S. Senate. From open racism in the civil rights era, to a narcissistic obsession with having things names after himself, to destructive levels of spending in the service of vote-buying, Byrd epitomized much of the worst of the Democrat party's tendencies.

We don't need to speak ill of the dead, but if we are honest, we must acknowledge there is little if anything to be proud of in Senator Byrd's long senate legacy. To his credit, however, he never killed a campaign worker while driving drunk over a bridge or joined another senator in making a waitress sandwich. His personal and family life seem to have been relatively decent for a Democrat senator.