For the latest on "Crazy Jim" Inhofe's scuffle with the FAA, see below. (We're always happy to pass along the link to Dr. Steven Best's scintillating tract on the crazyman.)

by Ken

As I mentioned yesterday, our pal Al Kamen had an update in his WaPo "In the Loop" column on the story he reported in October, which I passed on as "Crazy Jim Inhofe flies planes???" The story concerned "Sen. Jim Inhofe's little problem with the Federal Aviation Administration in October after he landed his twin-engine Cessna 340 on the main runway in Port Isabel, Tex." You may recall that "there were these huge X's on the runway showing it was closed and workmen were out there painting and doing general maintenance as Inhofe (R-Okla.) zipped by."

Al reports that the matter "seems now to be resolved in what appears to be the aeronautic equivalent of a nolo contendere plea."

Inhofe, 76, told us Tuesday morning that he was confident he did nothing wrong and had been cleared by a controller to land on the runway. But he said he agreed to what he said was "painless" remedial training rather than go through a legal enforcement action. (That might have led to a license suspension.)

The training, done in Tulsa, consisted of four hours of instruction on the ground and three hours of flight instruction by an instructor who, oddly enough, Inhofe had trained many years ago.

Crazy Jim -- oops, Senator Crazy Jim; sorry -- sent Al a copy of a January 4 letter from the FAA -- which "constitutes neither an admission nor an adjudication of a violation" -- saying that "based on your satisfactory completion of the remedial training program, legal enforcement action will not be pursued," though the letter will remain on record for two years.

Inhofe praised the FAA and said "I could not have been treated better" by the agency, though he acknowledged that his being a senator may have had something to do with the treatment he got. (We hear the FAA insists not.)

He said he would announce on the Senate floor Tuesday that he would introduce legislation that would give pilots greater access to controllers' records and provide for an appeal before a license is revoked.

This last part, presumably, is in case the FAA really did forget that it was messing . . . er, dealing with a U.S. senator.

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