Sean Hannity tried to save Trent Lott's bacon on his show today, and Drudge, being a good right-wing apparatchik, posts the transcript of the interview on his site. There's a lot to be angry about, but here's the truly shameless part:

HANNITY: I want you to just--to address this one issue that has been brought up by your critics. You had this controversy some years ago. You spoke to a group called the Concerned Citizens Council [sic]. You want to explain that? What, if any, relationship do you or did you have with that organization, which has been accused of having racist points of view?

LOTT: Well, the event they are talking about, I presume, was an open forum for candidates running for public office. And the public was invited, the media was invited. This was not a closed thing. There were Democrats and Republicans there, and African-Americans there. And it was one of those events that you have almost every two years when you have important elections at a small community--you have them all over the state.

You don't usually ask who's sponsoring this thing. Now, in this case, I knew some of the people that were involved, but I also knew that a lot of political candidates were going there, and I said, you know, the things that we support in terms of opportunity for people there that I'd say anyplace else. But the main thing was, it was an open forum.

First off, the correct name is Council of Conservative Citizens, Sean.

Now for the truth. Here's The New York Times, in 1999, on Lott's ties to the CofCC:

One of the Mississippi council's major events is the Black Hawk rally, held in Carroll County before elections every four years and a mandatory stop for most politicians seeking statewide or county office. It was originally a fund-raiser for the white Citizens Council, but is now used to raise money for the all-white Carroll Academy, which was set up to avoid desegregation.

Lord, the events organizer, said Lott had appeared at the last two rallies.

A black state legislator, Rep. Willie Perkins, a Democrat whose district crosses several counties around Greenwood, said in a telephone interview that he had been invited to the last event in 1995, but refused to attend because "it takes you back to the days of the Klan."

In 1992, Lott gave the keynote speech to a semiannual national board meeting of the council in Greenwood. The account in The Citizens Informer said he wound up by saying: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries."

As recently as 1997, a smiling Lott was pictured in The Citizens Informer in his Washington office with Baum, the council's executive officer, Lord, the state organizer, and Tom Dover, the group's president.

Literature distributed by the council cites endorsements by a number of conservative politicians....

The endorsement attributed to Lott says, "America needs a national organization to mobilize conservative, patriotic citizens to help protect our flag, Constitution and other symbols of freedom."

Lott's newspaper column, which is distributed by his office as a release, is also a regular feature of The Citizen Informer.

LeanLeft has a list of fourteen columns Lott published in the CofCC newsletter, plus other information.

Merely for deviously, meretriciously trying to deny his deep ties to the CofCC, Lott should resign.