"NewsMax hears from Washington sources that [Trent Lott] reportedly was told in no uncertain terms that if he were to resign entirely from the Senate and that resignation led to a Democrat takeover, many doors would effectively be closed to him in private life. That possibility was envisioned as the firestorm mounted over Lott's remarks two weeks ago. If Lott's Senate seat were to be vacated, Mississippi's Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove would likely have replaced him with a Democrat... NewsMax Washington correspondent Wes Vernon cites well-sourced information that movers and shakers in the GOP told Lott that if he resigns from the Senate in an act of petulance over losing his leadership post, he can forget about offers of cushy corporate jobs in private life. Usually, a former United States senator can write his own ticket after he leaves. Some were determined to deny that option to Trent Lott if his departure resulted in a Democrat Senate." Don't mess with Karl Soprano!

CBS reports that Rove gave Lott an ultimatum - "this week marked Lott's last chance to resign from his leadership post and still secure a good committee assignment." Rove also engineered a quick poll of RNC members. "A CBS News/New York Times poll of members of the Republican National Committee -the party's ruling body - released Thursday found 45% of them thought Lott should go, while just 20% thought he should stay on as Senate leader." Why do we suspect Rove just made up this data?

Writes Andre Achong for YellowTimes.org: "I do not want incoming United States Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) to resign because of his racially-insensitive remarks at Senator Strom Thurmond's one hundredth birthday party last week. I want him to keep his job so he can galvanize the American people into taking a more aggressive stand against racism and segregation. I want him to be a constant reminder that certain powerful American leaders have not yet emerged from the darkness of racism into the light of tolerance and inclusiveness. The Republican Party chose Senator Lott to represent it and to further the goals of the Bush administration. What he said ('I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either') is just another chapter in the shameful civil rights record of the GOP."

W. David Jenkins III writes: "Okay, so Trent Lott isn't really a racist because he said he was sorry for making racist remarks, right? Actually, he didn't really say he was 'sorry' - he just said he felt bad for anyone who took his racist remarks 'out of context.' Oh, give me a break. Trent, you're a racist. Go ahead. Just admit it. It's okay, the world needs ugly people too. You've spent your life idolizing Jefferson Davis and Strom Thurmond. They are racists. So are you. It's okay. We understand. You don't have to do that despicable balancing act that the Republicans have been doing for decades. We all know when you say state's rights you really mean segregation. It's really not a big secret out here so you can stop making excuses - most of us know better. This is just another example of what I mean concerning the difference between conservatives and the right wing." Check out the other editorials by W. David Jenkins III at America Held Hostile.

WashPost reports, "Lott, working the phones from Mississippi, says he has no plans to resign and believes he can survive a vote by his colleagues. He would need 26 votes to survive, and, based on what senators are saying publicly, he has a chance. The following senators have said they will vote to keep Lott as their caucus leader: Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Rick Santorum (Pa.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), Mike DeWine (Ohio), Ted Stevens (Alaska) and John Ensign (Nev.). DeWine said several others shared their belief that 'one incident where he made a very stupid statement should not ruin his career.'" Lott's one "stupid statement" was repeated at least 3 times over 20 years, and his entire CAREER has been devoted to racism. Any Senator who embraces Lott is embracing racism, the same way Lott embraced racism by embracing Strom Thurmond's 1948 campaign. Bill Clinton was impeached for his "very stupid statement" about Monica - so why should Lott escape punishment?

Mississippi Sun-Herald writes, "If his apology for racially divisive remarks is sincere, Trent Lott should push for the Rebel flag's removal from public display in Mississippi, local NAACP officials said Tuesday. At a news conference on Beach Boulevard, the officials said Lott should ask state leaders to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. They said he should also push to remove the Rebel flag from the Eight Flags display, the Harrison County beach landmark that served as the backdrop for the news conference. Lott's office did not return calls for comment. Previously, the senator has refused to address flaps about the state flag and the Eight Flags display. Last summer, when local student Jason Whitfield staged a 77-day sit-in at the Eight Flags display, Lott called the Rebel flag's inclusion there 'a local issue.' 'I don't see how he can call it a local issue,' NAACP board member Kathy Egland of Gulfport said Tuesday. 'He is from Mississippi.'"

Democratic strategist and Crossfire co-host James Carville "faxed a letter to Lott's office Wednesday, both accepting the senator's apology and pledging not to criticize him further for comments made recently or for comments Lott has made in the past on the issue of race. 'If, as you have claimed, your recent troubles have truly spurred you to seek redemption and find ways to improve race relations in this country, I applaud you,' Carville wrote." Of course, Carville's letter just makes Lott's political situation within the Republican Party worse. Republicans could forgive Lott for groveling to Democrats for forgiveness, but they could never forgive Lott for receiving a ringing endorsement from someone they loathe as much as Carville. You go James!

Said good ol' boy Trent, You misconstrued Just what I meant. 'Twas but a toast to a friend, Cause he still is not yet dead. But Trent's line didn't fly, Cause bloggers knew That Trent Lott lied. They tracked his lengthy racist ties, Kept the scandalous tale alive. Print media woke, Around the facts Began to poke. The rest is here:

Why on Earth would any human being with a drop of compassion for their fellow humankind - most especially for children, FAIL to support a convention seeking to protect the rights and insure the safety of children, especially in nations where children are brutally and routinely exploited? Hard to imagine? Yet that is exactly what Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and George Bush have done. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was the most rapidly ratified treaty ever to be introduced - nearly 200 nations have signed. Only two - the U.S. and Somalia - have not. And guess who vowed not only to block ratification, but to make sure Congress never even got a chance to vote on it? Trent "I'm really a nice guy" Lott, Jesse Helms and George "Compassionate Conservative" Bush. See last paragraph of http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000002/00000271.asp. Is that the sort of America we want?

"The point here is that Lott's statement was NOT a stupid black joke, or a slip of the tongue because he'd had one too many. It was a clear and pointed statement. There is no way you can turn his comment around and give it a different meaning (unless maybe you're Trent Lott's mother). The reason he felt empowered to make the comment at all, I firmly believe, is that the GOP has become so overempowered by weak Democrats and pushed to such blinding 'illusions of grandeur' by its small but worshipful claque of narrow-minded, and thus totally unquestioning, supporters, that Lott believed no one would take exception. Worse, he may have felt that most of his fellow Republicans agreed." So writes Cheryl Seal.

The AP reports that Trent Lott's supporters "have produced records showing that Nickles and Lott are ideological compatriots. In 1983, for example, both Lott, then in the House, and Nickles opposed a new federal holiday commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. That same year both Lott and Nickles backed a Jesse Helms amendment that would have preserved the tax-exempt status of private schools, such as Bob Jones University, which then banned interracial dating. The measure was defeated. In 1990, the two senators both voted to uphold the first President Bush's veto of legislation to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban workplace discrimination. The president contended it would lead to racial quotas. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in its scorecards of the past six Congresses, found Nickles and Lott voted identically in four Congresses on the votes it tracked, and differed by one or two votes in the other two Congresses."

Karl Rove called NBC's Tim Russert to tell him that Trent Lott "doesn't have the 26 Senate Republican votes needed to retain his job as majority leader." That could be a bluff by Rove, but the message to Lott is crystal clear - even if Rove doesn't have the votes to dump Lott today, he'll have them tomorrow or the next day. Lott's allies are desperately trying to play their last chip - that Lott might quit the Senate altogether if Rove dumps him, and that would leave Democratic governor Ronnie Musgrove choosing his replacement, making the Senate a 50-50 tie. But Rove isn't in a bargaining mood: "White House officials have told Republicans that Bush is willing to accept the consequences if Lott quits and allows Musgrove to replace him, GOP officials said." The game is over, Trent!

On 12-13-02, neo-Klansman Richard Barrett held a press conference in Jackson, MS to thank Strom Thurmond for leading white racist Democrats into the Republican Party, to extol segregation, and to urge Trent Lott to "Stand Fast" for racism. Barrett was joined by Lott's daughter, Tyler Lott Armstrong. "My father is a wonderful man, who has always stood tall. The news-media has twisted his words. He has good character, he's a Christian man and a good man and has been a wonderful family man, with his children and all." Tyler, like her dad, must have been raised by Trent's mother, who once wrote a racist letter to the editor of The Pascagoula Chronicle, whose office windows had been shot out by Klansmen. The letter warned that if he did not publish her letter it would prove "you are truly an integrationist and I hope you not only get a hole through your office door but through your stupid head." (See http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/national/15LOTT.html)

On his political deathbed, Trent Lott embraced across-the-board affirmative action, instantly repudiating an entire career devoted to carrying on the proud legacy of Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 campaign. Of course, that won't be good enough for George Bush and Karl Rove, since they can't steal the 2004 election unless black folk are kept quiet and stay home. But here at Democrats.com, we're full of compassion for the brand new Trent Lott. So we say: hey Trent, don't just sit there while Rove twists the knife in your back - come on over to OUR side! If you've repudiated racism, then you can certainly repudiate misogyny, homophobia, and militarism. If you've embraced affirmative action, you can certainly embrace environmentalism, campaign finance reform, and progressive taxation. Be bold, and go all the way - become a Democrat!

David Von Drehle writes, "Roughly halfway through the interview... Lott briefly stunned his interviewer by announcing his support for affirmative action. 'I'm for that,' the Mississippi Republican told BET newsman Ed Gordon. 'Across the board?' Gordon asked, incredulous. 'Absolutely,' Lott replied." Since when, exactly? "In 1990, Lott voted against a law to restore affirmative action programs struck down by the Supreme Court. In 1997, Senate Republicans - with Lott as their leader - blocked the nomination of Bill Lann Lee to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, citing Lee's advocacy of affirmative action. The following year, Lott voted for an amendment that would have eliminated one of the largest federal affirmative action programs. The program, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, directs a percentage of federal construction contracts to minority-owned firms." Hey Trent - now tell us how you marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham!

Strom Thurmond's campaign in 1948 was about one and only one thing - racist segregation. But Lott thinks he can play Americans for fools by pretending his ringing endorsement of Thurmond's 1948 campaign was about something else. "When I got to know Strom Thurmond--really know him, was in the--I guess, in the '80s--late '70s or '80s, I saw a senator that was committed in the fight against communism, that had fought Nazism, a senator that was for fiscal responsibility, you know, and one that also thought that law and order was very important, protecting people of all races against crime. That's what his focus was... I was talking about the problems of the defense and communism and budgets and governments sometimes that didn't do the job." Lott, you're lyin' - put your white sheet on and go back home - and take the rest of the Republikkkan Klansmen with you!

Just as Trent Lott was begging for his political life on BET, Karl Rove was burying the final dagger deep into Lott's back. Rove sent an anonymous associate with an unmistakable message to the NY Times, to be planted prominently on its front page: that Lott's departure was "inevitable." Message to Lott: don't make your political death any more painful than it needs to be. But who can Rove replace Lott with, given the domination of right-wing zealots in the GOP? Rove is terrified of Don Nickles (R-OK), who even his mouthpiece called "a traditional Southern conservative who is against everything" - affirmative action, abortion, gay rights, health care, unemployment compensation, etc. Rove desperately wants Bill Frist (TN), who the mouthpiece called "urbane" and "sophisticated" - which is exactly why he cannot win a GOP caucus vote. Other circling vultures include Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the GOP's champion of cancer and corruption, and Rick Santorum (R-PA), the GOP's Mr. Right-to-Life.

Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, President and CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice has demanded that Trent Lott resign immediately. "As an African-American pastor and the president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith, non-partisan coalition dedicated to social justice for people of all races and ethnicities, I urge all who believe in equality-including racial, religious, gender, and social equality-to stand together in demanding the removal of Sen. Trent Lott from the position of majority leader of the United States Senate," said Veazey. "To allow Sen. Lott, who advocates separatism and inequality, to have a leadership position in our government would be a mockery of this nation's historic commitment to justice for African Americans, women, and others who have been denied full participation in this nation."

NY Times reports, "As a young lawyer making his start in politics in 1967, Trent Lott stunned a racially moderate friend running for governor by campaigning instead for an archsegregationist rival. The next year, a month after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Lott went to work as a top aide to one of the staunchest segregationists in Congress - a powerful Mississippi lawmaker who two journalists say greeted Dr. King's death by grumbling that it would probably bring about passage of a fair housing bill. In 1972, Mr. Lott was that congressman's hand-picked successor. His first piece of legislation was an anti-busing bill." Now Lott insists that he repudiates racism - that's BUSHIT!

Republicans have claimed that President Clinton's immoral behavior with Monica Lewinsky "was the natural and inevitable result of the Democratic Party's liberal political values." Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., says that Trent Lott is "the Republicans' Monica Lewinsky" -- only worse. With few exceptions, the Republican Party has turned a blind eye to years of evidence of Trent Lott's political immorality, and are excusing the latest evidence of his unfitness to lead. Jackson also wonders why, since George W. Bush claims to be a "uniter, not a divider", Bush wants a divisive character like Trent Lott to lead the Senate Republicans. If Trent Lott is not removed as majority leader, we will know that his consistent record of opposition to civil rights is the natural and inevitable result of the Republican Party's values.

From the Black Commentator: "Trent Lott hopes that the furor will soon pass away as usual, forgotten like yesterday's racist outrage, and the one the day before that, and so on, the past and future stretching to an infinity of forgetfulness. How strange and utterly illogical are the thought processes of white American racists. They are insane. The oppressed and dispossessed are urged to put the past behind them, when the present holds no promise but a return to past injustice. The Trent Lotts remind us so, daily, in ways big and small. Three times in 20 years he has shouted without fear of reproach that he desires a return to Mississippi lynch law, rule by terror. If that is not what he meant, then it must be assumed that Trent Lott has forgotten what every Black person from Mississippi remembers and every American who can read has learned."

Write Jim Abrams for the AP: "Former Vice President Al Gore said Monday that Senate Republican leader Trent Lott should be censured for his 'racist statement' that the nation would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency when he ran on a segregationist ticket in 1948."

"Senator Lott's statement that the election of Strom Thurmond in 1948 would have cured 'all of these problems' was not a 'joke.' Rather, it expressed Senator Lott's true feelings that segregation and oppression of African-Americans would be preferable to integration and equality. Nor is this the first time Senator Lott's racist views have become an issue. His endorsement of the neo-KKK 'Council of Concerned Citizens' was also outrageous and an insult to all Americans who believe slavery and segregation were wrong. We, the undersigned, call on Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) to resign for his support for racism in America." Sign the petition!

"Speaking Thursday at a 100th birthday party and retirement celebration for Sen. Thurmond (R-S.C.), Trent Lott said, 'I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Say what??? Thurmond's 1948 platform said, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race." Lott's spokesman - and reactionaries like Bob Novak (on Meet the Press) said Lott didn't mean what he said, but Gordon Baum, CEO of the neo-KKK Council of Conservative Citizens, said "God bless Trent Lott." Call talk shows and write newspapers demanding Lott apologize - and resign - for embracing segregation in 1948 AND 2002!

"To the victors go the spoils." And since for the GOP, what goes on in Congress is not politics but ideological warfare, it's to be expected that Trent Lott's cronies are lining up to divvy up the spoils of war like the Greeks sacking Troy.

Joe Conason writes, "The relationship between Mr. Lott and former WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers aptly represents the larger corporate symbiosis with Republicans. Three years ago, Mr. Ebbers chaired a gala evening at the Kennedy Center that raised some $8 million for a Trent Lott Leadership Institute to be built at Ole Miss, the Senator's alma mater. WorldCom also donated at least a million dollars to this worthy edifice of higher learning, where aspiring young leaders presumably learn to orate, count votes and present their palms to be greased. So far, no group of executives has taken up a collection to construct a monument to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on the plains of South Dakota. There is, however, an outfit called the Club for Growth that raised at least $500,000 from high-flying New York financiers to smear Mr. Daschle with negative TV advertising in his home state." We demand a Torricelli-like Ethics Committee investigation of Bernie Ebbers' payments to Trent Lott!

Rollcall.com reports: "Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) wanted money from local phone giant Verizon Communications Inc., and he wasn't going to take no for an answer. Seeking donations for a big Sept. 25 fundraiser for Senate Republicans, Lott called Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon's president and CEO, and made his pitch. Lott was polite but insistent. Having the GOP in charge of the Senate will be good for corporate America, Lott said, and with $67 billion in annual sales, Verizon could afford the donation. There was also another, more subtle message coming from Lott. With control of the Senate resting on just one seat, Seidenberg and Verizon could not afford to alienate the man who just might be Majority Leader again come Nov. 6. In the end, Lott got what he wanted. Verizon cut a $50,000 check for next week's dinner." Cancel your Verizon phone service - and Defeat ALL Republicans!

The Chicago Tribune reports: "Three years ago, when executives of WorldCom Corp., then a swaggering telecommunications giant, wanted to show their appreciation for their home-state lawmaker, Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, they did more than make a run-of-the-mill campaign contribution. Instead, they pledged $1 million to a University of Mississippi center for leadership named in his honor. Just as Kenneth 'Kenny Boy' Lay took a special interest in the Bush family, and especially George W. Bush, so the corrupt executives at WorldCom, led by former CEO Bernie Ebbers, took a special interest in Trent Lott . And Lott - who has now got a lot of hard questions to answer -- took a very special interest in WorldCom. For WorldCom, the way to get things really done was have one big fixer on Capitol Hill. That fixer was Trent Lott." We demand a Congressional investigation!