WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats challenged the White House on Friday to provide "documents" stemming from
U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' work as an attorney in the first Bush administration and lawmakers announced his confirmation hearings would begin on Sept. 6.
The White House had declared the documents the Democrats want off-limits, but Democratic lawmakers said the Senate Judiciary Committee would need them to scrutinize Roberts properly. Like the documents that describe a young Mr. Byrd as a Klan recuiter? 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. Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation's history.
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