No tears here....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South, died Thursday...

After more than 48 years in office, promoting a rabidly homophobic, sexist, and racist agenda.

The segregationist old guard is passing: Lester Maddox, who violated the nascent Civil Rights Act in 1964 by refusing to serve 3 black students in his Atlanta restaurant and later went on the serve one term as Georgia governor, died on Wednesday.

I wish I could say there wasn't an entire new generation of more subtle, but equally diehard racists, to take their places.

NY Times obits here and here.