Tell me this is a joke.

Joe Barton of Texas—ranking minority member of the House Energy Committee who’d love to be chair again—wants to repeal a law phasing out the old-fashioned incandescent lights.

They’re energy hogs, but it makes no differences to Barton.

Barton hates “the little, squiggly, pig-tailed ones” intended to reduce energy consumption. He’s telling people that they’re more expensive—conveniently ignoring the economies of longer-lasting bulbs.

I’m late to this story, originally reported some weeks ago, but it’s too good to pass up.

As the author of a conspiracy novel, I wonder if we have a real-life Manchurian candidate here—out to destroy the United States along with the rest of humanity for good measure.

By the way, he holds an industrial engineering degree from Texas A&M.

This is hardly the first beaut out of Barton. He apologized to Tony Hayward, then CEO of BP, for the White House’s “shakedown” on behalf of victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Related: Tony Hayward’s diary.