Conservatives who are not declared "respectable" by the media are banned from having their say not only in those media but in conservative outlets too.

Respectable conservatives are given or denied that precious "respectable" title by the liberal media. So all respectable conservatives have done some really serious groveling before liberals.

In bowing down before the left, no group of conservatives does a more professional job than those in today's United States Senate. I discussed Orrin Hatch's dubiously heterosexual worship of and sellouts to Teddy Kennedy on July 1, 2000 in ORRIN STILL LOVES TEDDY.

Outside today's Senate, Orrin would be special. But in the Senate, he is only middling. Orrin's worship of Kennedy cannot put him in the same category with the behavior of John McCain. I described that on March 31, 2001 in FIFTH COLUMN CONSERVATISM.

But even in the Senate sinkhole of wimpishness, Trent Lott deserves special mention because he is a SOUTHERN perversion. The old Southern senator combined gentility with a steel-hard devotion to principle.

Lott has perverted gentlemanliness into pure squishiness.

In his landmark book on the Senate, "The Citadel," published in 1951, William White discussed the Senate as the World's Most Exclusive Club.

White discussed the fact that there was the whole Senate as a club and then an even more exclusive Inner Club that was closed to most of the Senate itself. He said that every one of those old Southerners was an automatic member of the Inner Club.

Old style Southerners fulfilled two requirements to be members of the Inner Club. First, they fought like lions for the South and for their own constituents. Secondly, they remained gentlemen while doing it.

Lott and his followers have totally dropped the first characteristic. When Teddy Kennedy and his buddies are handing out that "respectable" label, nobody is more ready to sell his people out than the Modern Southern Conservative. And they do it while perverting the concept of a Southern Gentleman.

A real Southern senator was first of all a MAN. He was known for his willingness to fight ferociously for what he believed in. Trent Lott has twisted that into a pure perversion, where "gentleman" means a simpering, grinning, absolutely wimpish weak grin as a substitute for principle.

Lott loudly denounces liberal media bias when he's talking to conservative groups. But when he faces them, he simpers about how fair they are.

The Old Southerner had his feet rooted in Senate Tradition, and he used it as a weapon. Lott's idea of Tradition is described on March 31, 2001 in REAL HISTORY IS STILL NEWS TO SENATE WIMPS.

Lott, McCain, Hatch, what a monster gallery of wimps and sell-outs!

But it gets even better. The Senate is a center of superpathetic respectability, but they have produced one man who has recently come to stand out ahead of the rest.

Dick Morris, Clinton's longtime chief political advisor, has no doubt about Clinton's misdeeds. He said that the last real chance to find out the real scoop on the Chinese campaign contributions scandal was the Indonesian moneyman, John Ryadi.

Ryadi was the man who arranged the gifts of money to the Democrats and he, as Morris put it, "knew where all the bodies were buried." Pressure on Ryadi was our last chance to find it all out.

Janet Reno had arranged a nice little plea bargain to let Ryadi off the hook with some public service. A conservative legal group had managed to get a court to discuss reconsidering that bargain.

Then our new Attorney General John Ashcroft told the court that the Reno deal was all right with him.

Morris was devastated. He said that that gave up the only chance to really get to the bottom of the campaign finance scandal. Morris could not understand how Ashcroft could let that obvious Reno cover-up go forward. He said that Ashcroft must have lost his nerve in his confirmation hearings.

Remember Ashcroft? He was the Great Hero of the Right Bush appointed as Attorney General.

It's easy to forget that this Ashcroft was the one the whole left went crazy about, and the whole right fought for. Until this year he was a United States Senator. But, incredible as it seems, in the midst of such competition, Ashcroft even stands out among the Senate's wimps and sellouts.

I discussed Ashcroft's falling down at Kennedy's feet on February 3, 2001 - THE ASHCROFT GROVEL. His worship of Kennedy matches poor little Orrin's.

In FIFTH COLUMN CONSERVATISM I discussed how McCain has devoted himself entirely to taking on issues liberals would otherwise have to spend time on, but which don't sound specifically liberal, like gun show checks for gun control or the pro-liberal campaign finance "reform." That is exactly what Ashcroft is doing with the Department of Justice.

Ashcroft is out to prove racial profiling, so liberals can use it. Actually, as I discussed on July 17, 1999 in RACIAL PROFILING IS THE FAULT OF BLACK CRIMINALS; a conservative would be defending law enforcement from these charges.

Likewise, Ashcroft has increased the effort to prove racial discrimination in voting by a twenty percent increase in funding.

As with McCain, these offensives are not specifically liberal, but they go after the sort of thing that liberals want to prove.

He is in there fighting for "reverse" discrimination in court.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft made sure that the Reno deal with Ryadi went through.

These are some of the things he has done for liberals in a matter of a couple of months. Meanwhile, he has done nothing whatsoever for us. He gave the Clinton-appointee in Chicago the go-ahead to investigate the pardons, but even Reno would have had to do that.

So, even in the competition to fall at Kennedy's feet in the United States Senate, Ashcroft has fallen down so fast and so hard that he leaves even other Modern Conservative Senators trailing behind him.

When a man hits his knees that fast and that hard there should be a special recognition. I hereby award John Ashcroft the First Whitaker Online Ragged Knee Award.