Bobby Byrd & The Klan

"In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.

"As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd's organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation," Baskin said. "

Just so. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Read the whole thing, which starts on the front page of today's Washington Post, and is titled "A Senator's Shame." Yet another example of why the WaPo IS NOT the New York Times, and actually seems not only to know it, but to like it that way.

(Byrd is the only member of the United States Senate to have the distinction of voting against confirmation of BOTH black Justices of the United States Supreme Court.)