Ah, to hell with it.

I'm starting to suspect that the entire Senate should be abolished. Purge the lot of 'em. Their drivel may be no less meretricious than their House counterparts, but it's usually slathered with sanctimony about the Noble Nature of their particular chamber, how they're the saucer into which passions are poured to cool. (By "cool," they often mean "frozen to the consistency of a glacier layer laid down when the Bourbons were still a going concern.") Such airs! They're the only branch of government that regularly advertises its special nature and higher purpose — it's like having a special branch of the Kiwanis made up entirely of bankers who announce, before each meeting, that they're better than the realtors and insurance salesmen. And why? Because there are fewer of them. Well, there are fewer experts in quantum physics than there are Special Forces soldiers, but I know who I'd want to drop at night into a warzone.

Meaning, uh, what? Oh, nothing. And yes, I know that the genius and virtue of the Senate is the way in which it makes Rhode Island equal to California, so the Big and Strong cannot roll over the Small, at least not until they've promised the Small they'll vote for Maple Syrup price supports in the next session. But the Senate, as currently composed, seems to attract people who have that potent & fatal combination of dimness and self-regard, and when you elevate those sorts to the Great National Saucer, you get idiocies like the Bolton hearing. On one side, a charmless babbler like Joe Biden, whose instinct upon finding a bad metaphor is to attenuate it until it is three microns wide; on the other side, George Voinovich, who finally showed up for a hearing and pronounced himself Disturbed by the allegations. This is like a guy skipping class on the origins WW2 for a month then raising his hand to ask why they haven't covered how this Hitler fellow came to power.

You can find more on the Troubling Allegations here, at the Corner, which took the trouble to make some phone calls. (Scroll down; look for Rich Lowry's remarks.)

I am not impressed by those who want to shiv Bolton to collect a scalp, but that's their job; I do not understand the useful idiots on the Republican side who want to hand them the knife. ("It's all sharp the way you like it! Can I come to your party now? I'll help with the dip and everything.") I don't have to like Bolton, and I certainly don't approve of his moustache, but I want someone who will stand up to the UN. And by "stand up" I don't mean the cut-rate back-alley hooker method of leaning against a brick wall and hiking up the skirts. I mean, someone who doesn't give the Syrian ambassador the old collegial nod in the break room or say "How's it goin'" to the Zimbabwe attaché when you're standing at adjoining urinals, and consider it a promising diplomatic overture.

There are good & decent people of either party, but they would be more impressive if they took big hard whacks at their colleagues, in public, without fear of seeming "unsenatorial." If this goes on, "Senatorial" is the last thing they'll want to be, because the word will by a synonym for blind preening egotism matched only by mulish cluelessness.

Don't get me started on DeLay.