Emily Langer reporting on the death of former U.S. Senator Conrad Burns for The Washington Post writes:

“Conrad Burns, a onetime cattle auctioneer who parlayed his down-home appeal into three terms as a Republican senator from Montana, reaping federal dollars for his state as well as criticism for his impolitic, at times offensive, off-the-cuff remarks, died April 28 at his home in Billings, Mont. He was 81.

“The cause was complications from a stroke in 2009, said a daughter, Keely Godwin.

“Mr. Burns served from 1989 to 2007 in the Senate, where he made “weighty speeches on foreign policy and the future of the Internet,” it was observed in the Almanac of American Politics, even while cutting “the figure of a stereotypical Westerner, picking his teeth with a pocketknife, chewing tobacco, telling deadpan jokes.”

“He lost his seat in 2006 to a Democratic challenger, then-state Senate President Jon Tester, after revelations that Mr. Burns had received $150,000 in campaign contributions — among the highest amounts of any member of Congress — from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates.”

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The above gives you an idea of who Burns is if you didn’t know already. The rest of the story doesn’t mention his deadly relationship with America’s Mustangs.

Horse lovers know Mr. Burns as the author of the hideous Burns Amendment that doomed thousands of America’s wild horses to the slaughterhouse using devious methods and underhanded tactics to get it passed.

• Read about Burns’ actions and his thoughts about them in a Tuesday’s Horse post from September 15, 2009.

• Read about one of the many destructive repercussions of the Burns Amendmment in “BLM Auctioning American Icons in Online Mustang Sale.”

PHOTO CREDIT

Sen. Conrad Burns in his Capitol Hill office in 2005. (Adele Starr / Associated Press)

2004 BURNS AMENDMENT

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