Just when you think they can't get dumber, they do.

The Many Faces of Dr. Coburn: "On the first day of hearings on Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, before a Russell Senate Office Building Caucus Room overflowing with members of the media and Congressional staffers, with klieg lights shining and flashbulbs popping all around, and with seventeen other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee arrayed beside him, Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn busied himself with a crossword puzzle.

On April 7, five months prior to this hearing, Michael Schwartz, Coburn's chief of staff, told me, 'Tom doesn't know anything about this judiciary stuff, so I'm feeding him piles and piles of memos every day.' Though Schwartz didn't specify the nature of his memos to Coburn, I assumed they were made up of primers on legal jargon and history, not word games, puzzles or other such brainteasers.

I met Schwartz outside a downtown Washington hotel, where a gathering of Christian-right activists called 'Confronting the Judicial War on Faith' was taking place. In a speech earlier that day, Schwartz told conference attendees he favored 'the mass impeachment of judges' and denounced the Supreme Court for giving Americans 'the right to commit buggery.' Later, while a think tank researcher and I accompanied him to the Dupont Circle subway station, coincidentally located in the heart of one of America's most vibrant gay neighborhoods, Schwartz held forth with his vision for the judiciary."