Strom Thurmond's family has acknowledged that Essie Mae Washington-Williams was his daughter. Thurmond fathered her when he was 22; the mother was a 16-year-old black servant. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Thurmond didn't see his daughter until she was 16.

Amazing, isn't it? There was no rock or rap music back then, the Supreme Court hadn't yet said that mandatory public-school prayer was unconstitutional, Bill Clinton hadn't had sex in the White House and Thurmond still managed to father a child out of wedlock with a teenager and then neglect the child for years. I simply don't know how he managed it. I thought immoral personal conduct was invented in the 1960s by hippies.