I am personally disgusted with Trent Lott's coments. No matter what everyone says, his racist comments are in no way related to Bill Clinton or Jesse Jackson's actions. This goes deeper and questions his authority in the Senate. I hope he resigns or i hope somebody forces him too. Even if he was truely sorry for what he has done, that doesn't change the fact that with all this media hype towards his words, all his actions as Senate Majority Leader will be kept under close , critisizing eyes, and he will not make good, educated decisions as majority leader ; he will only make decisions that will not be contraversial and will not cause the commotion that these words have. Trent Lott will be an ineffective leader. I hope he's gone for good.

I agree that Lott is racist. I just don't understand the people that say they are offended by the comments themselves. It's a little depressing that most people didn't notice or didn't care that he was, as has been said, obviously racist until there was this uproar. I find it interesting that the fairly innocuous comments he made were enough to get him in trouble now, when his words and actions of the past weren't.

However, you're right about his now being in power. That does make quite a difference. Thanks for bringing that up, I hadn't thought about it that way.

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Lott may well be a racist. However his comments at the birthday party hardly justify this uproar. Come on, Thurmond is 100 years old, it was his birthday party. Lott saying "you should have been president" hardly qualifies as terrible. It sounds more like humoring an old guy on his birthday than anything else. His remarks are being taken out of context and a lot more is being read into them than he actually said. This entire fiasco is politically motivated.

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You're right that the comments were not highly inflammatory, however, you should reread Jookly's post.

Lott's comments were not in themselves enough to cause the uproar. What the comments did was remind everyone that Lott has always been vocally racist. They were especially unacceptable at the time because of the powerful position he was in, which was never the situation before.

He basically dug his own grave and was stupid enough to fall into it.

Lott may well be a racist. However his comments at the birthday party hardly justify this uproar. Come on, Thurmond is 100 years old, it was his birthday party. Lott saying "you should have been president" hardly qualifies as terrible. It sounds more like humoring an old guy on his birthday than anything else. His remarks are being taken out of context and a lot more is being read into them than he actually said. This entire fiasco is politically motivated.

If Lott did anything wrong, it was making the politically stupid mistake that put him in this position. For that he has only himself to blame.

but wait....... wasnt it already obvious that trent lott was a racist? I mean come on, it wasnt the first time he said something like this and the fact he voted for straum thurman is enough proof in itself.

They throw him out, the Miss. state legislature selects a democrat to replace him, we go back to a 50-50 split...

Why isn't Trent Lott being hunted down like a McCarthy-Era "communist?" He's done a lot more worse than those accused during the Red Scare ever did.

Why are the Republicans postponing the meeting to decide if he should get thrown out? I mean, they're waiting until January 6 on what should be a four-second descision! Right now, Lott is like a poison to them: the longer he stays with them, the more he'll damage their image. People are starting to suspect that many Rebublicans actually agree with what Lott said - they were rather quick to accept his apology.