GOP Senator To Propose Vote of No Confidence -- In Congress

Those wacky Republican Senators from Oklahoma…

If it's not James "Ice-Age" Inhofe raving like a crazy man on a street corner about climate change being a big liberal hoax, it's his colleague, Dr. Tom Coburn, trying to divert attention from Republican corruption with childish legislative games.

The no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, scheduled to take place in the Senate Monday afternoon, is as straightforward as a Congressional resolution can be, simply expressing "...the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people."

It should be, if you'll pardon the expression, a slam dunk, right?

Enter Coburn with an amendment to the Gonzales no-confidence resolution, which is the legislative equivalent of something I would expect to see in my son's fourth-grade class.

In the face of his fellow Senators pushing to express a lack of confidence in George W. Bush's boy, Gonzales, Coburn essentially says "Oh yeah, well I'm going to express no confidence in you."

Coburn's amendment to S.J. Res. 14 gives a laundry list of 19 items, intended to demonstrate wasteful spending and a lack of fiscal responsibility on the part of the Congress and ends with this:

No Confidence.--It is the sense of the Senate that Congress neither has the will nor the desire to cut frivolous, excessive, or wasteful spending and therefore the American people should have no confidence in the ability of Congress or its members to balance the budget or protect the long term financial solvency of Social Security, Medicare, or the Nation itself.

He even wrote a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announcing his intention to make a fuss about the Gonzales vote and saying that he wants to be "… consulted before the Senate enters into any unanimous consent agreements regarding a vote on any resolution or other legislation expressing a lack of confidence in any federal official."

"If such a resolution comes before the Senate, I plan to offer an amendment expressing no confidence in Congress' ability to cut wasteful spending or balance the budget," Coburn writes.

I can't wait for the chance to watch a United States Senator step up to the microphone Monday, in front of the entire country and basically say "takes one to know one!"

I'm sure he will accept the thanks of a grateful nation for his noble service -- or a time-out in the corner.