(Continued...)

8. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT)
Burns, Jack Abramoff"s favorite Senate bag man, raked in a cool $137,000 in tribal casino money for his political action committee, a congressional record. In exchange, he pushed through a $3 million earmark on behalf of the Saginaw Chippewas in the form of an education grant the wealthy tribe neither wanted nor needed. But in his current re-election campaign against Montana State Sen. John Tester, Burns reminded Big Sky voters why he was a civic embarrassment long before Abramoff came courting. One favorite was his reference, in an immigration speech, to the "nice little Guatemalan man" who does yardwork around his estate (the long-suffering Burns press office was forced to issue a follow-up statement clarifying the cute little brown fella's legal status).

Casting his myopic gaze toward terrorism this summer, Burns offered a helpful clue to law enforcement officials: Be wary of "faceless" Arabs who "drive taxicabs by day and kill at night." But this minor bit of sociological skylarking actually represents progress, of sorts, considering his 1999 outburst blaming "ragheads" for rising gas prices and additional episodes in 1994 in which he delivered a casual joke from the podium about "niggers" and told another audience that living in Washington with so many blacks "is quite a challenge."

But he saved some scorn for the working class, too. This summer, Burns incautiously told a team of firefighters who had been battling a raging Montana wildfire that they did a "piss poor job" and that one in particular "hadn't done a goddamned thing." He then wrote a public letter to governor Brian Schweitzer requesting that he declare a state of emergency. Schweitzer had done so 45 days earlier.