Grassley Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot

Chuck Grassley has been on a roll. First, he told AIG execs to commit seppuku, then he accused the company of "sucking the t— of the taxpayer." Then, in a back-and-forth with Kent Conrad, he had his YouTube moment: "Oh, you’re good," the Senate budget committee chairman said, to which Grassley replied, "Your wife said the same thing." But the Iowa Republican is utterly unrepentant, Politico reports.

"I’m not in Hollywood, where you’re given a script to read," he says. "Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me—I don’t read off what my press secretary says." He says that in Iowa, no one’s really criticized the remarks. "Those are the kinds of things you might hear him say in a grain elevator out here," said one Iowa journalist. His biographer agrees: "This has been vintage Grassley." (More Charles Grassley stories.)