Will This Senator Pay A Price?

Name the Senator who said this:

"One's life is probably in no greater danger in the jungles of deepest Africa than in the jungles of America's large cities," he writes. "In my judgment, much of the problem has been brought about by the mollycoddling of criminals by some of the liberal judges who have been placed on the nation's courts in recent years."

I'm sure all the lefty readers are listing off an assortment of GOP Senators who, in their minds, would willingly make such a politicially incorrect statement. Alas, lefties, you are wrong. The Senator making this statement in his recent book was Sen. Robert "Sheets" Byrd.

Can you imagine the outcry had a Republican said this? He would immediately be slammed by the media and every civil rights organization in the country would be protesting and demanding his ouster from public life. Do you think that will happen to Sheets? Fat chance.

Sheets is up for reelection next year and is facing a very close race in West Virginia, a state in which most of the public facilities are named for him. He's suddenly turned very conservative when it comes to judges:

Mr. Byrd essentially endorsed Mr. Bush's primary stated strategy for picking Judge Roberts and other judicial nominees. "The high court's share of the responsibility for our increasing lawlessness lies in two areas -- its zeal for bringing about precipitous social change, and its overconcern for the rights of criminals and its underconcern for the rights and safety of society," he writes.

Mr. Byrd detailed the advice he has given presidents about the importance of naming conservatives and strict constructionists to the bench.

"I urged President Nixon to appoint conservative jurists to the court," he recalls in the book. "I said that such a return to a conservative philosophy would be 'the greatest single service President Nixon could perform for his country.' I said that the court had hurt the United States with its rulings on school prayer and in criminal cases, and had given aid and comfort to subversives by refusing to bar communists from schools and defense plants."

A GOP spokesman sums up Sheets sudden interest in conservatives:

"For Senator Byrd, desperate times require desperate measures," said Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "As recent polling shows him below 50 percent and in a dead heat against a prospective opponent, he'll apparently try anything."