Three cheers for historian Douglas Brinkley for mouthing off to the GOP equivalent of Maxine Waters, the doltish Alaska Congressman named Don Young. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The Rice University professor is also a man unwilling to be intimidated by a blustering congressman.

Brinkley went before the House Natural Resources Committee on Friday to advocate national monument status for mountains, tundra, rivers and coasts of Alaska’s vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

He incurred the wrath of Alaska’s Congressman-for-life Don Young, who has fought nearly 40 years to cut down his state’s national forests, build open pit mines and drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge.

Young referred to Brinkley as “Dr. Rice” and sneered that his testimony was “garbage.”  (Known for outbursts, the congressman once brandished a walrus penis at the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

“It’s Dr. Brinkley, Rice is a university, and I know you went to Yuba Community College and couldn’t graduate . . .” Brinkley shot back.

A fiery Young then interrupted Brinkley, saying:  “‘I’ll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that (witness) chair.  You just be quiet.”

“You don’t own me,” Brinkley replied.  “I pay your salary.  I work for the private sector and you work for the taxpayers.”

I conditionally support ANWR drilling, by the way. But I also support standing up to ill-mannered, nitwit Congressmen.