No Principles. None.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has announced that he will exert a "blanket hold" on every single Obama administration nominations until he gets billions of dollars in earmarks for his state. In carnivore talk, that's PORK. Additionally, Shelby has lashed out at the president.

One of the earmark items, apparently, is an FBI improvised explosive device lab for which Shelby secured a $45 million earmark in 2008. According to a Shelby spokesperson:

The Obama Administration wants to read terrorists our Miranda rights and try them in U.S. courts but is impeding the processing of evidence that could lead to convictions. If this administration were as worried about hunting down terrorists as it is about the confirmation of low-level political nominations, America would be a safer place.

As Stan Collender writes, "This is a senior senator from a political party that routinely rails against earmarks, government spending and deficits in effect saying...the deficit be damned, I demand that additional billions of dollars be spent for projects."

Harry Reid, if he has any balls, will call Shelby out and publicly humiliate him by making him filibuster each and every one of these appointments over the earmark issue. Oughtta keep that hick ass busy for a spell. I worry that Reid will not use Shelby's silliness effectively and will make a deal to let Shelby hold a symbolic number of them hostage while he presses for the earmarks.

I say let him have the lab -- $45 million is chump change. The other is a $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers in Mobile, AL. Now that is some serious money and I think Reid needs to get Mitch McConnell to muzzle his colleague and stand down or step up and filibuster every appointment (there are about 70 in all).