Idiot Pol of the Month

English: US Congressman Michael McCaul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago, US House Homeland Security Committee chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) opined that ball bearings are "the signature" of an improvised explosive device. They're not, of course -- lots of IEDs don't have ball bearings, and at least some mass-produced explosive devices do.

Now he's back with a conflicting opinion -- far from being IEDs, the pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston Marathon attack were so sophisticated that the Tsarnaevs must have received training to build them, rather than just copying the widely available (including in al Qaeda's magazine) plans for doing so.

Oh, and he also accuses the Obama administration of "rushing to judgment" (which he, of course, would never do and then have to reverse himself only two weeks later, right?), and complains -- citing his experience as a federal prosecutor -- that having government law enforcement agents like, obey the law and stuff, is just a really, really bad idea.

Not that any of this should be surprising: McCaul is exactly the kind of "cradle to Harvard to government 'service' without ever having to live in the real world" bureau-rat that Republicans bellyache incessantly about, right before appointing them to congressional committee chairmanships. If he hadn't got on the government gravy train and then married money, he'd probably be operating a booming street-corner squeegee operation  and falling asleep every night wrapped around a pint of MD 20/20.