Richard Shelby
Richard Shelby was first elected to the Senate as a Democrat,. Then, in the mid-term elections of 1994, the Republicans won back control of the Senate and Shelby changed his party affiliation to Republican, where it has been ever since.
Senator Shelby boasts that he is a watchful guardian of our country’s defense concerns who can be trusted with the care of them. Recently, however, he was mad at the federal government for some unannounced reason — gossip says it was because he had been denied two porkbarrel “set-asides” in a new bill — so he placed a “blanket hold” on all confirmations of new presidential appointments to federal office. This meant that, for about 70 functions of government, nothing could be done, since no one could be confirmed to do them.
This stopped progress on such defense-related activities as procuring new tanker planes for the Air Force and creating a big new intelligence facility. Because of the outcry that arose concerning this action Shelby quickly rescinded most, but not all, of the holds.
(We should bear in mind, though, that Senator Shelby isn’t the only clown here. There is no law, presidential directive or other enablement which gave Senator Shelby the single-handed power to “hold” back action on presidential appointments. It’s just a custom of the Senate’s. It’s quite likely that if any single Senator had spoken up to oppose it, it would have disappeared.)
All the same, by his act in capriciously and singlehandedly putting a stop to 70 of the functions of the U.S. government with one single blow, Senator Shelby has shown himself to be clown enough to have earned his listing as Senate Clown No. 1.
