By now you likely know that Senator Robert Byrd passed away this morning. Other than pointing you to this article on West Virginia’s strange succession laws, I don’t have much to add to the news, but it would feel wrong not to mark it in some way. The natural death of a 92 year old man is never a tragedy, but our thoughts and condolences are with his family, friends, and colleagues today.

Byrd, who was raised in coal country and lost his mother when he was just one, was the longest serving Member in Congressional history and perhaps the greatest master of Parliamentarian rules in the country. The man served in the Senate for so long that when I gave tours of the Capitol Building as a Senate intern in 2008, I mentioned him by name at three points along the way: at an exhibit of an old-school subway car, the amendment room, and the Appropriations suite. No other Senator mattered along the tour that way – when you serve for that long, you become a part of the building itself.

I always admire a man who can admit his mistakes, and his was a doozy: he joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1942. But to his credit, he was renouncing it as early as 1952, well before membership in the Klan was a liability in a place like West Virginia and well before national civil rights laws were passed. Of course, a renouncement isn’t a denouncement – that would come much later, but come it did. “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened.” And, "My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision -- a jejune and immature outlook -- seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.” Those were Byrd’s words in 2005. He didn’t need to say them; he did not face a serious re-election challenge in 2006. They were heart felt.

Here is part two of his floor speech regarding the Iraq War, from 2003.

From The Hill:

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has been admitted to a Washington-area hospital and is in "seriously ill" condition, his office said in a news release Sunday.

The statement said that Byrd, 92, "was admitted to the hospital late last week suffering from what was believed to be heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as a result of the extreme temperatures." The region has experienced a stretch of temperatures in the 90s with high humidity.

Byrd's office said he was not expected to remain in the hospital more than a few days, but "other conditions have developed which has resulted in his condition being described as 'serious.'"

Here's wishing both Senator Byrd and former VP Cheney speedy releases and full recoveries.

UPDATE from desmoinesdem: From Nate Silver's post on West Virginia vacancy laws: "we are within a week of the threshold established by West Virginia law. If a vacancy were to be declared on July 3rd or later, there would not be an election to replace Byrd until 2012. If it were to occur earlier, there could potentially be an election later this year, although there might be some ambiguities arising from precisely when and how the vacancy were declared."

Today is all about health care, as well it should be - but I want to take a minute to look not at how we can cure sick people, but at one way we can help prevent them from getting sick in the first place. According to the NRDC, "Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually."

From the Clean Water Act violations caused by mountaintop removal mining to the hurricanes and droughts that global warming will cause to the thousands of lives shortened every year by coal-fired power plants and mines, there's no two ways around it: coal kills. And yet because of the thousands of jobs coal provides in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming, coal is also king. Legalized prostitution and drug markets would also create thousands of jobs, and yet they stay banned, as well they should. Job creation is not a valid excuse for destroying the lives of children and the future of the planet - something coal state politicians seem to have forgotten.

Until now. Politico had this jaw-dropping story yesterday:

In an early December op-ed piece released by his office -- also recorded on audio by the frail 92-year-old senator -- [Senator Robert] Byrd argued that resistance to constraints on mountaintop-removal coal mining and a failure to acknowledge that "the truth is that some form of climate legislation will likely become public policy" represent the real threat to the future of coal.

"Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry," Byrd said in the 1,161-word statement. "West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear: The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose."

In almost any other state, Byrd's remarks might not have caused such a stir. But in West Virginia, where the coal industry -- even in its currently diminished form -- accounts for 30,000 jobs and more than $3.5 billion in gross annual product and provides roughly half of all American coal exports, according to the state coal association, his statement reverberated across the political landscape.

Earlier this month, I suggested donating to the Senate campaign of Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway as a way to help stop mountaintop removal mining, given that his primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, is an unabashed supporter of the method that creates floods and destroys drinking water. I've made my (small) contribution; have you?

Here's another, easier way you can help stop mountaintop removal mining. A new Sierra Club action alert says that the Interior Department is poised to reverse some Bush-era coal regulations but is facing pressure from the coal industry and asks readers to send the Department a public comment urging them to proceed with strengthening the rules. Please take the ten seconds to forward the Sierra Club's comments to the Department, or to write your own.

The Department of Interior and its Office of Surface Mining have publicly stated that they intend to revise the "Stream Buffer Zone Rule," a decades-old prohibition on surface mining activities within 100 feet of flowing streams, which was gutted by the Bush Administration.

But Big Coal is already pressuring the Obama Administration to keep the destructive Bush policies in place. We need your help to flood the Department of Interior with messages supporting the restoration of these necessary safeguards.

Interior Secretary Salazar needs to hear from you before the December 30th deadline for public comments.

Communities throughout the Appalachian region suffer daily from contaminated drinking water, increased flooding, and a decimated landscape resulting from the damage and destruction wreaked on thousands of miles of streams by mountaintop-removal coal mining.  Reinstating and enforcing the 100 foot prohibition in the Stream Buffer Zone rule will rein in the reckless mining that has ravaged Appalachia.

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Is it really our job or our mission in life to change the behavior pattern and belief system of the Afghan leadership class and people?

What are we doing in Afghanistan? According to Rahm Emmanuel, we have committed ourselves to a "process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need[.]" For Rahm, then, our job over there is to build a nation. Arlen Specter has already said the right thing about that:

While I think it is laudable to want to protect the Afghan people and to provide good governance there, it is my view that is not of sufficient national interest for the United States to put our troops at risk or to expend substantial additional sums there. The principal question, as I see it, is whether Afghanistan is indispensable to be secured to prevent al-Qaida from launching another attack against the United States.

And I think President Obama wants us to think he agrees with Specter, and so (whatever Rahm says) Obama's official rationale for the Afghanistan occupation and Af-Pak war is to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda, its allies, and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan." Two weeks ago Secretary of State Clinton repeated the phrase as our reason for fighting there, that the goal "is to disrupt, dismantle, defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies" (she added that not every Taliban may be an extremist ally). And in his most recent comments on the war and occupation, Obama has "omitted mention of the Taliban and Afghan nation-building."

But does the second rationale, the official one, pass the laugh test, when there are fewer than a 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Let's ask Senator Byrd:

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Politico reporting:

Ambulances and fire trucks were dispatched to the Northern Virginia home of Sen. Robert Byrd Tuesday morning.

The reason for the emergency call was unclear, but a neighbor of the 91-year-old West Virginia Democrat said several ambulances were outside his residence in McLean, Va.

An officer at the McLean Fire Department said that a unit was dispatched at 9:10 to the address where Byrd lives, but he declined to comment on the substance of the response.

Our thoughts with Sen. Byrd and his family.

More as we hear it...

Update [2009-9-22 11:5:19 by Josh Orton]: Looks like we dodged a bullet:

“Byrd apparently stood up too fast this morning in his home and fell down,” said Jesse Jacobs, a spokesman for the senator. “To err on the side of caution his caregiver called an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital where he is currently being checked out. At this point in time there is no indication that he will be admitted.”

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