The resting place of Senator Claghorn. Does a similar political epitaph await Trent Lott?

If Trent Lott remains as Majority Leader, he does so as a hostage of the Congressional Black Caucus and at the cost of his party's legislative agenda, not to mention its name. But if a move is made to replace him as leader, he reportedly threatens to quit the Senate entirely, leaving his seat to be filled by a Democrat and disrupting the balance of power held by his party.

This is the Voice of the Old South? Whatever happened to the chivalric code of honor?

Andrew Sullivan has been putting the case as eloquently and convincingly as anyone: Lott must go as Majority Leader. US News is reporting he may soon be gone.

If anything has been gained from the Lott fiasco, it's an appreciation of how far the nation has come since 1948.

The Smoking Gun has a copy of the segregationist Dixiecrat platform from 1948 as well as newsreel footage of the convention that nominated Thurmond for president.

At NPR, hear a clip of Thurmond in 1948 offering a rousing defense of segregation as a bulwark against "Nigra" infiltration of churches, homes, theaters and swimming pools.

By far the largest portion of the Dixiecrat platform is an extensive endorsement of states' rights, writes Dave Kopel at NRO. This defense was couched in strongly stated appeals to constitutional values, such as "the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one's living in any lawful way." Yet state segregation laws interfered with all these rights, and with the Constitution.

Has Strom since repented? Timothy Noah says no.

Here's a site on the history of Jim Crow that suggests old times in the Land of Cotton ought not be forgotten – or repeated.

And here's a pip of a column by the inimitable Mark Steyn on the senior tomcat from South Carolina:

But not for the first time Strom had the last laugh. This week he became the only 100-year-old senator in the Republic's history. He's also the only American to have been elected to national office by a write-in campaign. And the only senator to have spoken for 24 hours and 18 minutes continuously, back in 1957 when he filibustered the civil rights bill and had an aide standing with a bucket in the adjoining cloakroom so he could relieve himself while keeping one foot on the Senate floor and still speaking. And he's the only circuit court judge in South Carolina history to have made love to a condemned murderess as she was being transferred from the women's prison to Death Row.

This was Sue Logue, the only woman in the state ever to be sent to the chair, but not before she'd been sent to the back seat of Strom's car for a lively final ride. (It was a particularly bloody murder case that had begun when Mr. Logue's calf had been kicked to death by some other feller's mule.) I mention this not merely to be salacious and gossipy, but as an example of the extraordinary pageant that is Strom's life. If this were an appreciation of John Kerry, we'd have exhausted all the interesting stuff a couple of paragraphs up and you'd already have flipped to the sports section.

Steyn manages just fine in a subsequent column on Senator Kerry: The news that the Massachusetts senator, Democratic presidential candidate, Vietnam veteran, Big Ketchup spouse, Vietnam veteran, amateur guitarist, Vietnam veteran and Vietnam veteran gets a $75 coiffure from Cristophe has riveted the Beltway and distracted from his message. ("As a Vietnam veteran, I know what it's like to wake up in a jungle full of terrifying bangs.")