THE BIGGEST JERK IN CONGRESS

There are 435 Congresscritters, and choosing who is the biggest jerk among them is not easy, for there is a multitude of choices.

Many would opt for John Murtha (D-PA), but he's just the most senile.  That's not a joke – he's age 74 and actually going senile.  In a recent interview with Tim Russert, he thought Okinawa was close to Iraq, so our troops could be "redeployed" there.  Okinawa is 6,000 miles from Iraq.

He's reached that stage of senility called second-childhood, where the patient acts increasingly juvenile – like saying the most outrageous things possible in order to get attention, even if they are treasonous and spits on his own military record.

He's also a crook, but there's nothing unusual about that for a Congressman.  The Los Angeles Times revealed on June 14, 2005 that Murtha, as the top Democrat on House Defense Appropriations, has been funneling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into KSA Consulting, the lobbying company of his brother, Kit Murtha, and KSA clients.

Another choice of many would be Jerry Lewis (R-CA), but he's just the most arrogant.  As chairman of House Appropriations, he is more insistent than ever that no restrictions be placed on his power to dispense "earmarks," that there be no restraint on government spending.

Convinced that the Republicans will retain majority control of the House this November, Lewis sees no reason to pay any attention to conservative demands to reduce the spending.  He sees such demands as an affront to his power, and takes them as a personal insult.

Some, of course, would choose anti-American racist screwballs like Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), or Maxine Waters (D-CA).  But they're just bit-player kooks.

If you took a vote among the Congress members themselves for the biggest jerk among them, the most likely winner would be James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).

This will surprise a lot of you, who think highly of him for sponsoring the House immigration bill that focuses on shutting down the illegal invasion, rather than granting amnesty to illegals as the Senate's version does.

But what happened at a meeting of Republican House members yesterday (Wednesday, June 21) will lessen the surprise.

Sensenbrenner chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which was holding a closed (members-only) hearing on renewing the Voters Rights Act.  Passed in 1965, it was amended in 1975 to require state and local governments to print ballots in foreign languages (and even provide interpreters, at taxpayer expense).

Now up for renewal, 80 members (all Republicans) led by Steve King (R-IA) demanded the removal of the "bilingual assistance" provision.  As Charlie Norwood (R-GA) explained, "People are really upset about bilingual ballots.  The American people want this to be an English-speaking nation."

Further, they argued, if you can't read English, you have no business being a citizen or voting.  You'd have no way to understand the founding documents of this country, written in English, or participate in and gain an understanding of the basic issues of the day.

King argued:  "The multilingual ballot mandate encourages the linguistic division of our nation and contradicts the ‘Melting Pot' ideal that has made us the most successful multi-ethnic nation on earth."

With no explanation whatever, Sensenbrenner refused to include the language removing the bilingual provision in the bill – then walked out of the meeting in a huff.

This caused such an uproar among so many House Republicans, who were chanting "Pull the bill, pull the bill!" at a meeting of the entire Republican Conference later in the day, that Hastert had to cancel a vote on the bill.  Again, all of this happened yesterday.

The bill would renew the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years.  There will be a vote on it after the July 4 recess – but only, I'm told, if it contains the amendment repealing bilingual ballots.

The point here to this little saga is that Sensenbrenner is now openly hated by his colleagues.  He has no friends among them.  Other Congressmen tell me that for years, whenever they see him walking in the hallways, he's always alone, never with anyone else.  He always eats alone in the House Members Dining Room.

Sensenbrenner is a multi-millionaire heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune.  He has never had to work a day in his life and his been nothing but a professional politician.  Using his inherited money, he got elected to the Wisconsin legislature at age 25 (1968), then Congress 10 years later.

Stories of his pettiness towards his colleagues are legion.  He may be a Republican and may have sponsored a shut-down-the border immigration bill – but that doesn't absolve Jim Sensenbrenner from being the biggest jerk in Congress.