AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION HONORS EX-KLANSMAN: Ralph Luker reports:

Finally, there is that other opportunity for some of my fellow high-toned historians to get up a decent picket line: at the AHA convention in Washington this week, when Jim McPherson presents the first Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award for Civil Service to Senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd of West Virginia (scroll down to 13 December). My fellow historian, H. D. Miller at “Traveling Shoes,” and Craig Schamp at “Logographer” join me in protesting the award to Senator Byrd. Can you imagine the howl of protest that would have gone up if the AHA had chosen to give such an award to Strom Thurmond or Trent Lott?

Well, yeah. But they’re Republicans.