James Inhofe

James Mountain Inhofe, usually known as Jim Inhofe (born November 17 1934) is an American politician from Oklahoma. A member of the Republican Party, he currently serves as the senior United States Senator from Oklahoma.

Inhofe was born in Des Moines, Iowa and moved with his family to Tulsa when he was a child. He served in the United States Army from 1955 to 1956. Several years later he became president of the Quaker Life Insurance Company. He became active in Republican politics in the mid-1960s. He was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1967 to 1969, and a member of the Oklahoma Senate from 1969 until 1977, the last four of those years as minority leader. During his tenure there Inhofe ran twice for election to other positions: for Governor of Oklahoma in 1974, losing to Democrat David Boren, and in 1976 losing a race to represent Oklahoma's First Congressional District (which was based in Tulsa) to incumbent Democrat James R. Jones.

Inhofe's political career was revived in 1978 when he was elected mayor of Tulsa, a position he held until 1984. In 1986, he made another bid for the First District after Jones retired. This time he won, and he served there from 1987 until 1994, being handily reelected every two years in the strongly Republican district. He first came to national attention in 1993, when he led the effort to reform the House's "discharge provision" rule, which the House leadership had long used to bottle up bills in committee.

In 1994, Boren, who had been serving in the Senate since 1979, was elected president of the University of Oklahoma and announced he would resign as soon as a successor was elected. Inhofe won the Republican nomination for the special election that November, and swept to victory amid a strong Republican tide that saw his party take control of the Senate. He took office on November 17 to serve the last two years of Boren's term and won the seat in his own right in 1996. He was handily reelected in 2002.

Inhofe has been chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since January 2003, and is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee.

Inhofe is one of the most conservative members of either house of Congress. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, he was among the panelists questioning witnesses about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. There he made news by claiming he was "outraged by the outrage" over the revelations of abuse, suggesting that shock at the crimes was more offensive than the crimes themselves. He also criticized the Red Cross as a "bleeding heart."

He is also known for being a particularly zealous supporter of Israel. In March 2002, he made a speech before the US Senate which included the explicit suggestion that the 9/11 attacks were a form of divine retribution against the US for failing to defend Israel. In his words: "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our Government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them." [1] (http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/news/020308c.asp)

In 2003, Inhofe called "catastrophic global warming" a "hoax" and claimed that his conclusion was supported by the "painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." [2] (http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=206907) Despite the scientific consensus on climate change, as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Inhofe voted on June 22, 2005 to reject an amendment to an energy bill that would have forced reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and created an emissions trading program, arguing that there was "no convincing scientific evidence" for global warming. [3] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062200465_pf.html)

External links

• Official website (http://inhofe.senate.gov/)
• Congressional biography (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=I000024)
• "Catastrophic global warming alarmism not based on objective science" (http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=206907) - Monday, July 28, 2003

Preceded by: James Robert Jones	U.S. Representative for Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District 1987-1994	Succeeded by: Steve Largent
Preceded by: David L. Boren	U.S. Senator (Class 2) from Oklahoma 1994-	Succeeded by: Incumbent Template:End box Template:OK-FedRep Template:Current U.S Senatorsfr:James Inhofe