For the biggest jackass in congress award. It's a tough competition, lots of people vying for top spot, but there can be only one (cue Christopher Lambert).

Well Conrad Burns may have taken the lead, not just for his ties to Jack Abramoff, but now with his barrage of attacks on firefighters. But Burns doesn't just attack those lazy-ass city firefighters who twiddle their thumbs and play switch all day, he attacks forest firefighters who flew in from around the country to help put out fires in the midwest.

Tom Roach, a division group supervisor on the Bundy Railroad fire, wrote he was walking on the airport tarmac past Burns, who "was staring at the NRIMT logo on my shirt." NRIMT stands for Northern Rockies Incident Team.

"He began following me as I passed and began yelling at me, 'Are you from Boise? Are you from Boise?' " Roach wrote. "I replied, 'No, sir.' He responded, 'Good, your life has been saved.' " Roach wrote that he walked away from Burns.
...
The report contained an account by Gabe Templeton, one of the Augusta Hot Shots, describing what happened to him and fellow team members Jeff Cleek and Jude Waerig. It said the three men were sitting in the Billings airport waiting for their flight when Burns approached them with an outstretched hand and asked if they were firefighters.

"I shook his hand and replied yes," Templeton wrote. "He shook my hand introduced himself and then replied, 'What a piss poor job' we were doing. I replied, 'Have a nice day.' The senator mentioned that we were 'wasting a lot of money and creating a cottage industry.' He also told us that we needed to listen more to the ranchers. I replied that 'we are pretty low on the totem pole.' Then he walked off."

Wow. Now, I have no doubt that it's possible for the wildfires to have been mishandled (although that doesn't sound like the case) or for their to have been some bureaucratic SNAFU that upset him about management of the emergency, but what does that have to do with attacking the grunts who were doing all the hard work? And it is hard work, it is probably the most physically challenging type of firefighting work there is. Just think about the joy of combining the jobs of clearing brush, digging, heavy lifting and firefighting all performed in heavy fire gear next to all the smoke and heat of a wildfire. It's a blast.

So, huzzah for Burns! I think he's blown his competition out of the water, and that's tough to do. After all he's up against Ted "the Internet is a series of tubes" Stevens, Cynthia "Cop Slapping" McKinney, William "Cold hard Cash" Jefferson, Bill "The Insider" Frist, Joe "Bush Smoochies" Lieberman, Rick "the Fetus Fondler" Santorum, James "the Denier" Inhofe, Bob "Representative no. 1" Ney, Virgil "MZM Whore" Goode, Katherine "Unsupported by her own party, staff" Harris, Jerry "The Earmarker" Lewis...Am I forgetting anyone?

These guys make Clin-ton's BJ look like public service.