BY RICHARD L. FRICKER

It is more than a little interesting, although not unexpected, to see that Sen. Jim Inhofe is “leading the charge” on boycotting senate committee hearings on environmental legislation. Sen. Jim has pulled stunts like this in the past, and most likely will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

What’s interesting is that the senator appears not to be willing to do the job to which he was elected. Inhofe seems more concerned with making points about a political agenda than getting up and going to work each morning.

The senator has said publicly he has no plans to read the final draft of the pending health care legislation. But isn’t that what senators are supposed to do – read bills, comment and vote?

Apparently he feels it is enough to predicate a vote on whether or not HE likes the president than on the merits of pending legislation. Which follows that he need not do his job simply because he’s mad that his party lost the election.

The Senator told MSN that he makes junkets around the world to Third World countries at the behest of the fellowship group to which he and fellow traveler Sen. Tom Coburn are members. In fact, “Bob,” the leader of the group, tells then which countries to visit, at U.S. government expense.

One can only wonder what transpires: “Hi, I’m Jim Inhofe. Bob sent me. Want to hear our plan for world domination?”

Time and again Inhofe has defied reason on climate change; much of what he has claimed as science has been debunked by sane people. But Inhofe is not to be detoured. He moves forward by refusing to go to work. Strange that he once headed the committee he now elects to abandon.

As a proponent of business and the every popular but fabled “free market,” one might ask, “How long would someone last at Ajax Widgets if they refused to read reports or attend committee meetings and workshops while taking vacations at company expense?”

Sad to say, Inhofe can’t be fired. Also sad to say that in his last years in the Senate he has begun to look like something wearing floppy shoes, a horn on his belt and a big red nose. He has begun to act like something that when “Bob” tosses a fish, he barks and catches it in mid-air.

All of this of course makes him look silly. What’s worse, it makes the people he was elected to represent look even sillier for putting there, again.

– Richard L. Fricker lives in Tulsa, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer