In recent years, Democrats have displayed immense self-serving interest (hypocrisy?) in the public comments and private indiscretions of congressional Republicans, and have used the power of their friends in the mainstream media to discredit them, to destroy their careers and reputations, and to drive them from office.

Democrats drove Sen. Bob Packwood (R-OR) out of office after it was disclosed that he had planted uninvited kisses on several of his female aides. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was publicly scourged and discredited because of a $4 million book advance received prior to his retirement from public office (unlike Hillary Clinton who received an $8 million book advance less than a week before she became a member of the U.S. Senate). Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), Gingrich’s anointed successor, was forced out of office shortly after being elected Speaker because of alleged extramarital affairs.

Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) was forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader after paying a gratuitous compliment to Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) on the occasion of Thurmond’s 100^th birthday. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment hearings, was exposed to public ridicule for an extramarital affair many years earlier. Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) was forced into retirement after being indicted by a Texas Democrat prosecutor on bogus campaign finance charges.

In none of these instances were any laws broken. In each instance the charges and the "personal destruction" were politically motivated. That being the case, and since columnist Bruce Bartlett will provide us with an unprecedented amount of ammunition in his soon-to-be-published book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past," it appears that it’s time for some serious payback… particularly at a time when Bill and Hillary Clinton find themselves sparring with Barack Obama and tiptoeing ever-so-clumsily around their party’s racist past.

For example, while serving as editor of the Raleigh (NC) News and Observer in 1912, Ambassador Josephus Daniels wrote, "The South is serious with regard to its attitude to the Negro in politics. The South understands this subject and its policy is unalterable and uncompromising. We desire no concessions. We seek no sops. We grasp no shadows on this subject. We take no risks. We abhor a Northern policy of catering to the Negro in politics just as we abhor a Northern policy of social equality."

Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1913 by Democrat Woodrow Wilson, he was appointed Ambassador to Mexico in 1933 by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in 1965 Democrat Lyndon Johnson had a Navy warship named after him.

The missile cruiser USS Josephus Daniels was decommissioned in January 1994 and was subsequently reduced to scrap metal. The NAACP and the National Black Republicans Association (NBRA) should demand that every black sailor who ever sailed aboard the "Joey D" should be provided with a transcript of Daniels’ racist speeches, accompanied by a letter of apology from the Secretary of the Navy.

In a 1923 speech, William Jennings Bryan said, "Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when – and only when – brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy – it ought to be sufficient to convince even the blacks themselves."

Bryan was the presidential nominee of the Democrat Party in 1896, 1900, and 1908, and was appointed Secretary of State by Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1913. His statue, donated by the State of Nebraska, now stands in the U.S. Capitol. The NAACP and the NBRA should demand that it be removed and reduced to gravel.

In a 1926 speech to the Ku Klux Klan upon the occasion of his election to the U.S. Senate, Klan member Hugo Black said, "… I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the ‘Junior Senator from Alabama.’ "

Black was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt where he served from August 1937 until September 1971. To have the portrait of a former Klan member displayed in the gallery of the U.S. Supreme Court, where Associate Justice Clarence Thomas now serves with great distinction, is an affront to all black Americans. The NAACP and the NBRA should demand that it be removed and publicly destroyed.

The National Black Republicans Association is now in its third year of existence and is slowly beginning to attract members in the black community. If they are looking for dramatic measures with which to attract the attention of the mainstream media and a broad cross section of the black community, they might want to take up these causes as their contribution to the rectification of black history in America. It’s time to set the record straight.