Senator Robert Byrd dies at 92.

Senator Byrd died today. He was the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history: 51 years. Over half a century.

I don't have much to say about him. I do like this quip, highlighted by my mom from the New York Times obituary (the first link):

In 2007, at the unveiling of a portrait of Mr. Byrd in the Old Senate Chamber, former Senator Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland, a colleague of 30 years, recalled that Mr. Byrd had taught him how to answer when a constituent asked, “How many presidents have you served under?”

“None,” was Mr. Byrd’s reply, Mr. Sarbanes said. “I have served with presidents, not under them.”

People will go back and forth about how much to hold his youthful membership and leadership in the Ku Klux Klan against him, given that he thoroughly renounced the episode. He said in 2005 (via):

"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."

Someone in this Metafilter thread skewers Byrd with merciless sarcasm:

Haven't we all done something in our past that we are embarrassed by? Haven't we all, in our mid-20s, in the folly of our youth, joined a racist terrorist militia?

I love this response:

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague from Minneapolis . . . , I imagine that you (and the rest of us), should we have the opportunity to examine our actions today in 70 years, would be taken aback at some of the things we did and believed, things that appeared to us at the time to be obviously, manifestly right. And here's the kicker: we don't know what those things will be.

We may not want to admit it, but on some issue we are all Robert Byrd. Let's just hope we have the grace, as did Byrd, to realize what that issue is when the time comes.