Nick Gillespie offers an unauthorized obituary for Robert Byrd

...it's Byrd's status as the Babe Ruth of pork-barrel spending and taxpayer-funded narcissism that is his real legacy and the one we should never forget or forgive. Here lies a man who pushed his home state to build a statue of him in defiance of a rule that such honorees be dead for 50 years.

Back in 2006, Citizens Against Government Waste called Byrd the "Emperor Palpatine of Pork" and gave him their lifetime achievement award, writing

In his over forty-eight years (!) in the United States Senate, Senator Byrd has achieved a pork record that is second to none. From the Robert C. Byrd Expressway to the Robert C. Byrd Freeway; the Robert C. Byrd Institute to the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building (both of them), Senator Byrd has truly left his mark on West Virginia --- and the federal budget. (And let us not overlook the proposed Robert C. Byrd rooms in the U.S. Capitol.) It would be appropriate to erect some kind of monument to his century-spanning resume --- except that he already did so himself.

He was like Radar O'Reilly in the early episodes of the TV show M*A*S*H, slowly shipping home the entire federal government piece by piece to his Mountain Mama.

It always happens that press corps and political opponents go mushy at the moment of death - even the execrable Sen. Strom Thurmond received a ton of unearned praise as he was finally being lowered into the ground. But in weak-kneed moments, it's all the more important to remember negative legacies. Byrd was famous for carrying a Constitution with him at all times. In some cases, he even used it to argue against things like the Iraq War. But mostly it was cover for an expansionist vision of government and you wouldn't catch him invoking limitations to the commerce clause if he wanted the spending or power attached. Even his supposed dedication to limiting executive power seemed to be mostly an argument for increased Senatorial power.

Characters like Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), another recently deceased pork-barrel prodigy, and Byrd might have been larger than life but they worked to corrode any integrity voters and critics of government might find in legislators. We're grown-ups here in America and we're supposed to be able to take care of ourselves with a minimum of paternalistic help.