Michael Tomasky: More on Byrd and race, and the here and now

Reading through the last thread kind of amazed me.

In his earlier years, Robert Byrd was a racist. No one denies that. Then, by about 1970, he was not. He changed. So for the last 40 years of his life, or more than half of his adult life, he wasn't a racist. What's so complicated? People change. Our friend Wiki put it quite nicely at 3:35.

What conservatives are angry about here is this alleged double standard, expressed by gwillikers:

If a Republican who had been a Klan member and had screwed...