Your typical pickpocket shows at least some restraint. He’s not shouting from the rooftops about what a great rip-off artist he is. He fears discovery.

We don’t usually arrest our politicians for picking our pockets. Still, many politicians also fear discovery. But others have no shame whatever. Like Senator Dan Inouye, Democrat, and Senator Ted Stevens, Republican.

On the Senate floor, Inouye bragged about what a slick operator he and Stevens are when it comes to pork provision. How they’d earned the soubriquet of “pork men of the year. We are the number one add-ons in the United State Senate.”

Hey…they’re Number One…they’re Number One!

Former Congressman Pat Toomey, president of Club for Growth, says it’s a “sad day in America when the longest serving Republican in U.S. Senate history is praised by an even longer serving senator for setting the record for fleecing American taxpayers of their hard-earned money.”

In response, an Inouye spokesman tells reporters that if folks like Toomey “believe that only budget proposals coming out of the White House are legitimate, then that would suggest that there is no need for a legislative arm of government.”

Oh. So the only need for a legislature is porkbarrel legislation?

But who cares whether your words make any sense, right, Mr. Spokesman? The boss is going to get away with it anyway. Right?

Club for Growth says these guys are arrogant. But that adjective just doesn’t quite cover it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.