Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, brought a snowball in a plastic bag onto the Senate floor Thursday, carefully removed it from the bag, and lobbed it at a congressional page. This was the kind of spectacle I never want my preschool child to see.
Why did it happen?
As heavyweight boxer Larry Holmes once told Larry Merchant when asked why he let a lighter Michael Spinks push him around the ring, “I dunno Law-ry, why do anybody do what they do? Why do Gaddafi do what he do? I dunno Law-ry.”
It had something to do with there being snow on the ground outside the Capitol Building, and he might have remarked about it being unseasonably cold for a February day, which it really wasn’t. As far as the Senate historian knew, however, this was the first time a senator had used a snowball while speaking from the lectern.
Technically, the Oklahoman violated the rules of the Senate, not by lobbing an icy projectile at an unsuspecting aide, but by using a prop without asking for and obtaining the unanimous consent of the other 99 senators.
Confident in his own sanity, he proceeded to question the president’s mental acuity.
“It’s just another illustration that the president and his administration are detached from the realities that we are facing today and into the future,” he said. “His repeated failure to understand the real threat to our national security and his inability to establish a coherent national security strategy has put this nation at a level of risk that has been unknown for decades.”
A sparse crowd of touristy onlookers in the gallery muttered among themselves, wondering what exactly was going on and how it might affect the future of the country.
