Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia announced today that he is officially endorsing Barack Obama for President.

Many had speculated that Byrd may endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton since she won an impressive victory in Byrd’s home state of West Virginia, but today Byrd announced quite the contrary.

“I believe that Barack Obama is a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history. Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support.”

I don’t believe that you can say it much better than that.

Obviously, one cannot look at this endorsement without an immediate sense of irony. It is well known that Robert Byrd was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan(KKK), as well as a one-time opponent of civil rights legislation. Byrd clearly no longer follows that path that he once did long ago, and it is great to see an endorsement for Obama that truly does bridge racial divides, even if they are long in the past.

Sen. Byrd is the longest serving Senator in the U.S. Senate with almost 50 years of service and he is also the oldest member of the U.S. Congress, being born in 1917.