Between The Feingold Lines

I watched parts of yesterday's Roberts hearings on C-SPAN 2 last night, which included Wisconsin Donkocrat Russ Feingold's Mr. Rogers-ish interrogation of the next Chief Justice. It differed from the versions offered up by "Slow Joe" Biden and "the Swimmer" primarily in that Feingold didn't outwardly display his partisan hostility, tidily concealing it behind an artfully phony mask of pleasantness instead. His appearance also reminded me of the cartoon character Dilbert, only without the, er, "erect" necktie.

The civility veneer didn't fool Beldar, however, whose punchline was a scream:

Mr. FEINGOLD: I'm hugely surprised and disappointed that you won't comply with my demand that you commit an offense which would immediately and appropriately prompt the U.S. Judicial Conference to sanction you, and probably prompt us here in the United States Senate to convene a hearing to impeach and remove you from your present office. But I'll move on (continuing to speak incredibly swiftly, because I want to squeeze in the largest number of similarly chickenshit argumentative questions that will possibly fit in between my smirks for the camera).

It all makes one wonder if Hugh Hewitt's depiction of the Dem huddle this morning is really all that parodous after all:

When Senator Leahy pulls the Judiciary Committee Democrats together this morning, do you think he might say something like "Alright, folks, let's try and not make complete asses of ourselves again. That goes double for you Joe. Stay away from sports analogies and Schumer, for goodness sakes, leave the twenty-year old references to amigos out of it. I'll try and not slur my words if you'll let him finish a sentence Ted. Alright, go out there and show the world that at least one of us knows what we are talking about!"

Rotsa ruck, Senator, rotsa ruck.

UPDATE: Here's another question from Uncle Teddy that a lot of you may have missed....