That Ol' Boy Needs A Check-Up From The Neck Up

The NYT types that:

Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, the former baseball star who clearly has little use for some colleagues and party leaders, and who keeps exhibiting what one senator calls “behavior issues”

is nuts.

Key Republicans are gently (or not gently enough) trying to dissuade Mr. Bunning from seeking re-election in 2010 out of concern that his paltry fund-raising, declining approval ratings and irascible conduct have made him something between vulnerable and unelectable. But in recent weeks, Mr. Bunning has shown no sign of stepping aside and delivered a string of incendiary pronouncements that have fed an impression that he is, to go with a baseball metaphor, a bit of a screwball.

Well, he did go former Sen. Frist one better (Terry Schiavo diagnosis) when he was kind enough to share his diagnosis of Justice Ginsburg ("cancer-stricken Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would probably be dead in nine months. (He then apologized in a statement that twice misspelled her name.") w/ the world.

As a native Kentuckian and sports legend in a solidly Republican state, Mr. Bunning long enjoyed a solid base of support. But his penchant for self-immolation nearly cost him re-election in 2004 — and set off a swirl of questions about his mental fitness. He said in that campaign, among other things, that his opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, a physician, resembled one of Saddam Hussein’s sons. He complained that supporters of Mr. Mongiardo had roughed up him and his wife at a political event (later describing the episode as “little green doctors pounding on my back”). Despite heavily outspending Mr. Mongiardo and George W. Bush’s winning the state by 20 percentage points, Mr. Bunning won by less than two.

Is it not time to demand medical & psychiatric examinations of these aging dolts, to be sure they haven't gone long beyond their sell-by dates? It's probably sheer luck that Reagan didn't actually start bombing the Soviet Union in his later days in office. Can we afford to take chances like that now, even w/ mere Senators? We think not.