Edited from a longer article....

Biden calls for removal of Confederate flag
POSTED: 5:27 p.m. EST, January 15, 2007

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful joining fellow Sen. Christopher Dodd at Martin Luther King Jr. holiday events, said Monday he thinks the Confederate flag should be kept off South Carolina's Statehouse grounds.

"If I were a state legislator, I'd vote for it to move off the grounds -- out of the state," the Delaware senator said before the civil rights group held a march and rally at the Statehouse here to support its boycott of the state.

More than six years after the Confederate flag was taken down from the South Carolina Capitol dome, its location in front of the Statehouse remains an issue at the heart of events celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy.

Jim Hanks stood across from the Statehouse with about 35 Confederate flag supporters.

"We love this flag. We love our heritage," said Hanks, of Lexington.

Some carried signs saying: "South Carolina does not want Chris Dodd," referring to the Connecticut senator who, along with Biden, attended the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People rally at the Statehouse.

Hanks said that Dodd, Biden and other Democrats running for president "would probably say most anything if it would get them votes."

In 2000, as the NAACP began its South Carolina tourism boycott, the flag was flying on the Capitol dome and in House and Senate chambers. Legislators agreed to take the flag down that year, but raised the banner outside the Statehouse beside a Confederate soldiers monument.

In November, Biden joked about South Carolina's Confederate past at a Rotary Club meeting in Columbia after organizers said their Christmas party at the Department of Archives and History would include a chance to see the state's original copy of the Articles of Secession.

Biden noted Delaware was "a slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South -- there were a couple of other states in the way."

Biden expects legislators here will eventually move the flag. Pointing to his heart, he said, "as people become more and more aware of what it means to African-Americans here, this is only a matter of time."

On Sunday, Dodd told The Associated Press at a King remembrance service in Greenville that the Confederate flag belongs in a museum.

"I don't think it belongs on the Capitol grounds," Dodd said.
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Since Sen. Biden was involved in the plagiarism incident a few years back, I have a hard time taking anything that he says as an "original" thought.

Mark