From Holden:

I need some help coming up with appropriately derisive nicknames for Senators Chuck Hagel and John McCain. You see, I’m getting a bit sick of hearing these two GOP “mavericks” bleat and wail whenever a new abomination of the Bush administration is revealed (Sam Maverick must be rolling in his Texas grave – Maury Maverick, too).

These guys do their regular Sunday morning talking head gigs each week, flailing their arms and gnashing their teeth over this or that Bushite excess, but do they ever do anything? What has Chucky Hagel ever done to secure adequate equipment for “our troops” in Iraq? It’s been nearly two years since the illegal invasion, yet they are still scrounging through scrap heaps for improvised armor.

What has John McCain, the former POW who was tortured by the Viet Cong, done to prevent detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay from being tortured by U.S. forces?

Not one damn thing.

Today the senators’ abundant dander has been raised by revelations that Don Rumsfeld has his own black-ops group operating without congressional oversight. First, John McCain stamps his little feet.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on a Washington Post report that the Defense Department is reinterpreting U.S. law to give the secretary broad authority over clandestine operations abroad.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has created a new espionage unit called the Strategic Support Branch, according to the news report, but McCain, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said he doubts Rumsfeld has broken any laws.

“I’m always sorry to read about things in The Washington Post when they affect a committee that I am a member of,” McCain said.

Johnnie is just sure that Rumsfeld is not violating the law, but he’s miffed because he had to read about the black-ops in the Post.

Here Hagel and McCain are both getting pouty.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, told reporters Sunday that “the concern I always have in these matters as well as others when it comes to power in government is too much power concentrated in too few hands.”

Hagel added that he did not want one individual or one department holding too much power, and he expressed concern Congress was not being kept in the loop.

A critic of Rumsfeld, Hagel said, “That’s when a country gets into a lot of trouble, when you brush back the Congress and you don’t have oversight and you don’t have cooperation, and I see too much of that out of this Pentagon.”

[snip]

“Should the Armed Services Committee look at it? Yes. And should we know more about it? Yes,” McCain told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Ooo, I bet Rummy is worried now.

So you see, I need a couple of good nicknames for these two assholes and I’m asking for your help. Ernie and Bert came first to my mind, and I do see a vague resemblance.

Particularly Angry McCain and Angry Bert, the resemblance there is pretty strong.

But somehow Ernie and Bert does not quite do it for me. So if you have any ideas, please post them in the comments. I really do need your help.