PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Alaska Rep. Don Young (R-AK) isn’t getting much love at home for his pork-loving ways:

The occasion for his latest tirade? A Republican colleague’s effort to cut a federal program that adds extra education money for indigenous students in Alaska and Hawaii.

It’s a helpful program for Alaska, where we struggle to find effective ways of educating Native students. But at a time when federal spending is under lots of scrutiny, it’s not beyond the pale for colleagues to wonder if this special program is necessary or appropriate.

Rep. Young decried this legitimate debate as “fighting each other” and compared it to how “mink in my state kill their own.”

He might have been OK if he’d stopped there. But he went on:

“There’s always another day when those who fight will be killed too, and I am very good at that.” . . .

Alaska has been tagged as a pork-swilling backwater that gobbles up federal money for “bridges to nowhere.” Congressman Young has drawn scrutiny in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He has drawn criticism for two different instances where he did favors for Outside businessmen who also happened to raise about $60,000 for his re-election campaign. . . . If anyone in this case is helping to call the honor of the House into question, it’s Congressman Don Young.

Indeed.