Sen. Byrd's Jungle Fever

The one time "Exalted Cyclops" of the Ku Klux Klan, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) took a break from mailing the federal government back to the Mountaineer State piece by piece to weigh on the pressing question of jungles foreign and domestic:

"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."

Whole thing here.

In the same interview, he boldly endorses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, thus putting Jacob Sullum's sympathetic analysis of the judge to a brutal is-the-friend-of-my-friend-really-my-enemy test.