SENATE NEWS: ...AND THEN THERE WAS 58

A glass half-empty to one man may be half-full to another.

West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd (D), who is the third in the presidential line of succession (after House Speaker and ultra-frightening Nancy Pelosi), was rushed to the hospital this morning after falling, according to Politico.

As a former Exalted Cyclops (no kidding!) of the Ku Klux Klan, the 93-year old Byrd is the longest-serving senator in U.S. history but has been missing in the Senate much of this year due to health issues.

According to Politico:

Byrd, a pillar of the Senate who has first elected in 1958, has become increasingly frail in recent years. After running the powerful Appropriations Committee, he relinquished his gavel in January but continues to chair a powerful homeland security spending subcommittee. He was hospitalized in May for what his aides described as a “minor infection,” but was admitted for nearly two months after his ailment turned into a much-worse staph infection.

Since then, he’s been recovering at his McLean home, and his presence in the Senate
has been exceedingly rare. On Sept. 10, Byrd delivered a speech on the Senate floor in honor of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died last month after a 47-year Senate career.

“As I look at his desk, draped with black cloth and covered with flowers, I still have difficulty believing he is gone,” Byrd said in an emotional tribute, delivered in a quivering voice as he sat from his chair. “My ebullient Irish-to-the-core friend has departed this life forever. How bleakly somber. How utterly final. How totally unlike Ted Kennedy in life.”

While we are no predictors in matters of life and death, it does seem that Byrd may not be quick in returning to the Senate chambers, thereby continuing to temporarily deprive Democrats of another vote in shoving their statist agenda down the throats of ordinary Americans.

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