"Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason--the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races--there can be no quarrel there."  --Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1925President, 1933-45  "This passport which you have given me is a symbol to me of the passport which you have given me before. I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the 'Junior Senator from Alabama.' "  --Hugo Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937  "Mr. President, the crime of lynching . . . is not of sufficient importance to justify this legislation."  --Sen. Claude Pepper (D., Fla.), 1938Spoken while engaged in a six-hour speech against the antilynching bill  "I am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County. . . . The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union."  --Robert C. Byrd, 1946Democratic Senator from West Virginia, 1959-presentSenate Majority Leader, 1977-80 and 1987-88Senate President Pro Tempore, 1989-95, 2001-03, 2007-presentHis portrait stands in the U.S. Capitol.  "President Truman's civil rights program "is a farce and a sham--an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill. . .. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill."  --Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1948U.S. Senator, 1949-61Senate Majority Leader, 1955-61President, 1963-69  "There is no warrant for the curious notion that Christianity favors the involuntary commingling of the races in social institutions. Although He knew both Jews and Samaritans and the relations existing between them, Christ did not advocate that courts or legislative bodies should compel them to mix socially against their will."  --Sen. Sam Ervin (D., N.C.), 1955Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, 1971-75  "The decline and fall of the Roman empire came after years of intermarriage with other races. Spain was toppled as a world power as a result of the amalgamation of the races. . . . Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent."  --Herman E. Talmadge, 1955Democratic Senator from Georgia, 1957-81Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, 1971-81  "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."  --Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957  "I have never seen very many white people who felt they were being imposed upon or being subjected to any second-class citizenship if they were directed to a waiting room or to any other public facility to wait or to eat with other white people. Only the Negroes, of all the races which are in this land, publicly proclaim they are being mistreated, imposed upon, and declared second-class citizens because they must go to public facilities with members of their own race."  --Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. (D., Ga.), 1961The Russell Senate Office Building is named for him.  "I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes."  --Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961Kennedy later authorized wiretapping the phones and bugging the hotel rooms of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  "I'm not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. . . . I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."  --Jimmy Carter, 1976President, 1977-81Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2002  "The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. . . . There were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans."  --James Webb, 1990Now a Democratic Senator from Virginia  "Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva."  --Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., S.C.) 1993Chairman, Commerce Committee, 1987-95 and 2001-03Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1984  "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation."  --Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004  Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban AffairsCandidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008  "You cannot go into a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent."  "My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything [but] a Northeastern liberal state."  "I mean, you got the first mainstream African American [Barack Obama] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."  "There's less than 1% of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4% or 5% that is, are minorities. What is it in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with." Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., (D., Del.), 2006-07  (Referring to Barack Obama as a) "light-skinned" African-American who lacked a "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." -- Senator Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader  (Referring to Barack Obama in discussion with Ted Kennedy) "A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."  "The only reason you are endorsing him is because he's black. Let's just be clear." -- Former President Bill Clinton  "You know, get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun. If there's ever a great video, it's you standing in the middle of the New York State Thruway saying, you know, 'Read my lips -- the law of the land is this, and we're going to enforce the law.'" - New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in response to Governor David A. Paterson's request for guidance on how to deal with the sensitive issue of the sale of tax-free cigarettes on sovereign Indian lands within New York State  Referring to Barack Obama: "“Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate,” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.” -- Dan Rather
PARIS -- A neo-Nazi linked to Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was arrested in southwestern France on Tuesday after investigators decided he might stage a large