Sen. Lott expresses regret for remarks, court papers

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republican leader Trent Lott tried to help Bob Jones University keep its federal tax-exempt status despite the school's policy prohibiting interracial dating two decades before his recent comments stirred a race controversy.

"Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy," Lott, then a congressman from Mississippi, wrote in a 1981 friend of the court brief that cited prior court rulings upholding affirmative action programs at colleges. Lott's filing unsuccessfully urged the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the Internal Revenue Service from stripping the university's tax exemption.

The old court papers surfaced on a day when Lott tried to quell criticism, fueled by Democrats, over remarks he made at a birthday party last week for 100-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. Lott had suggested the country would have been better off if Thurmond, running for president on a pro-segregationist ticket in 1948, had won.

White House officials said President Bush found the remarks indefensible but said they expected Lott to weather the storm.

Making the rounds on television news shows, Lott said Wednesday his comments were a "mistake of the head and not of the heart" and added "the words were terrible and I regret that."

Bob Jones University is a fundamentalist Christian school in Greenville, S.C., and its ban on interracial dating among students has long stirred controversy.