Byrd back in Senate chamber after injury

Take that, Washington rumor-mongers.

Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in history, defied a whisper campaign about his declining health by showing up Thursday, very much alive and able to vote, for a marathon session on the federal budget.

"Yes!" Byrd shouted, defiant as ever, from a wheelchair on the Senate floor as the chamber opened a vote-o-rama expected to last late into the evening.

It was a pushback that recalled the Monty Python sketch in which supposed victims of the plague are prematurely loaded, protesting, onto carts.

"No!" Byrd shouted later, rejecting a subsequent amendment.

The 90-year-old chairman of the Appropriations Committee has been in and out of the hospital since a fall last month in his Virginia home. That was enough to set off rumors that he might soon step down from the post or relinquish his position as third in the line of presidential succession.

Senior Democrats are considering some contingency plans, according to several officials close to the matter. But the officials, who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said no decisions are imminent.

Aging senators have been eased out of leadership positions and chairmanships before. At age 96, then-Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., was persuaded to give up his chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee after 40 years on the panel. Republican John Warner of Virginia took it over in 1999.

As president pro tempore, Byrd is third in the line of succession to the presidency, behind Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

That post, by tradition, goes to the longest-serving senator in the majority party. Byrd has been in the Senate since 1959. Edward Kennedy, 76, of Massachusetts, elected to the Senate in 1962, is next longest-serving Democrat and would likely succeed Byrd in that post.

The chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee is less certain. The Senate Democrat in line for it is Daniel Inouye, 83, of Hawaii, but Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a spry 67, also would like it.

Byrd might call this a lot of familiar flim-flam. Last year, news outlets including The Associated Press ran stories documenting his increasing tremors and shaky voice, as well as a wistfulness since the death of his wife, Erma, in 2006.

Byrd appeared on the Senate floor in June to defend his mental acuity in a classically eloquent, but frank, address.

"I may not like it," Byrd said of growing old, but "I will continue to do this work until this old body gives out. Just don't expect that to be anytime soon."