Yeah, these old farts eventually kick the bucket. Ted Kennedy will bite the wong before the year is over.

This guy and Reagan were both the leaders of this elitists racist movement. I can only hope these conservative "Christians" are rotting in hell, for all the pain they placed on minorities in the South.

This is a day to remember the TRUE roots of the conservative movement and leaders of this movement like Helms: the attempts to end the progress made by minorities in the 60's...a movement based on religious beliefs that attempted to bring back the Colonial spirit of an elite race!

Guys like Hannity and LImbaugh and their lesson minnions (on local conservative talk) received their talking points from leaders like Helms.

Look no further than Jerry Fallwells Liberty Unversity and the name of its school of Governement: http://www.jessehelmscenter...  - How can a "christian" University dedicate a school to this racist?

http://members.tripod.com/~...

They may have company.

One of the few times I agreed with McCain was we called guys like Helms, Fallwell "the agents of intolerance.."

When I was young my Dad told me about a slogan used back in FDR's day.  I'll clean it up a little here.  Franklin to Elenore "You take the n*****s and I'll take the Jews and we'll stay in the white house as long as we choose."

When you look up sources for that old saw it uses the word "kiss" instead of "take."  I never bothered to look it up until Anglos piece and one reference is here.  http://books.google.com/boo...

Good link, Anglo.  Puts the thread in perspective.

BB, you need to relax or you're going to pop a vein. If you continue to hang out at Craigs List WoPo you will be just as crazy as the rest of the LW lib nitwits. 

Funny ~first thing I thought was how poetic~ 4th of July ,his whole life given in public service. But I'm old school. I like to let the body cool before I rip into them.

Helms may not have been my favorite but RIP.

Charlie - LOL! I just ran 5 miles. I feel much better now...

CNN reports on the death of one of the most notorious lawmakers of his generation.

Former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican who became an icon to conservatives, died Friday at the age of 86, a senior congressional source told CNN.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, announced on its Web site that he died at 1:18 a.m. Friday after having been ill in recent years.

The center’s president, Ed Feulner, hailed Helms as “one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century.”

“Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people,” Feulner wrote.

In all honesty, writing about Helms’ death is challenging. I’m very familiar with his life, record, and worldview, and on practically everything, I found Helms to be an appalling individual. But is it not callous to bash a man just hours after his death?

I think I have an alternative.

The WaPo’s David Broder wrote a column in August 2001, shortly after Helms announced he would not seek re-election. Broder, who would hardly qualify as a reflexive liberal ideologue, did a fine job explaining exactly what made Helms politically significant, and precisely why he’ll be remembered.

What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life. […]

What is unique about Helms — and from my viewpoint, unforgivable — is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.

Many of the accounts of Helms’s retirement linked him with another prospective retiree, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Both these Senate veterans switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But there is a great difference between them. Thurmond, who holds the record for the longest anti-civil rights filibuster, accepted change. For three decades he has treated African Americans and black institutions as respectfully as he treats all his other constituents.

To the best of my knowledge, Helms has never done what the late George Wallace did well before his death — recant and apologize for his use of racial issues. And that use was blatant.

In 1984, when Helms faced his toughest opponent in Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the late Bill Peterson, one of the most evenhanded reporters I have ever known, summed up what “some said was the meanest Senate campaign in history.”

“Racial epithets and standing in school doors are no longer fashionable,” Peterson wrote, “but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master.”

A year before the election, when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. Thurmond and the Senate majority were on the other side, but the next poll showed Helms had halved his deficit.

All year, Peterson reported, “Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives…. On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by ‘homosexuals, the labor union bosses and the crooks’ and said he feared a large ‘bloc vote.’ What did he mean? ‘The black vote,’ Helms said.” He won, 52 percent to 48 percent.

In 1990, locked in a tight race with an African American Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms aired a final-week TV ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter, while an announcer said, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Once again, he pulled through.

That is not a history to be sanitized.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerr...

 

It was good news to hear that Jesse the bigot Helms went to hell today.

I hope its a little hotter there for him then for most folks who made it.

Some disembodied voice on the radio this morning said that, "It certainly is fitting that a real American like Jesse Helms died on the fourth of July..."

There is no such thing as hell, Wasco, except in comic books. Helms is in a funeral home.

Bakersfieldbubble wrote:   "Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired."

Well, there is Senator Lott, the guy who lauded Strom Thurmond's early stand for segregation.

Sagefield wrote: "I like to let the body cool before I rip into them."

Five minute have past.  Good riddance Jesse Helms. May you scream in hell for eternity, er, if there is a hell.

Somebody wrote: ""It certainly is fitting that a real American like Jesse Helms died on the fourth of July..."

Makes you wish Independence Day was on the 3rd of July. Truth probably is that he actually died on the 3rd and they just held off telling the press until midnight.

 "Good riddance Jesse Helms. May you scream in hell for eternity"  

Gee, another homosexual expressing his hatefilled joy over the death of someone.  I'm shocked.  You ever been to Boston?

Yup, that good ole Christian love everybody philosophy.

Nancy, how would you eulogize someone who called the 1964 Civil Rights legislation "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress"? The man was an unabashed racist and supporter of dictators and assassins.
 

If he didn't want people to hate him he shouldn't have used hate as a political tool to oppress people and further his (and others) career(s). He is reaping what he hath sown. No, strike that. We haven't come close to the hate and fear that he used in his lifetime against those he opposed. You and driln can "concern troll" somewhere else.

"You and driln can "concern troll" somewhere else."     Excuse me?    You're telling me to go someplace else?

I don't recall trolling in concern.  My comment was about the the person here making a comment like "screaming in hell for eternity.)  And even if I did, I hardly think you have the right to tell me ANYTHING about going elsewhere !

If I'm not too badly mistaken you are one of the ones who criticized Christians here for using the word "hate."

Mattloch has his heroes as well Nancy -- Sheets Byrd, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watc... 

His  "hate" just happens to come from the  "right" political place. Don't you  "get" it?