Tee-Hee.

Talk about a thin skin!

In the genteel club that is the United States Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) had a screaming temper tantrum yesterday.

Minutes after his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid (Nev.), used a surprise parliamentary maneuver to throw the Senate into a rare closed session, Frist burst from the chamber and approached the cameras in the hallway.

Without counting to 10, as anger-management experts recommend when you are very, very mad, Frist exploded.

"About 10 minutes ago or so, the United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership!" he announced. Never, he said, have "I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution." Epithets flew from his mouth: "They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas. This is a pure stunt."

Frist was now sputtering. "This is an affront to me personally. It's an affront to our leadership. It's an affront to the United States of America!" Turning sorrowful, he vowed that "for the next year and a half, I can't trust Senator Reid."

"Mr. Leader," one stunned journalist observed, "I don't remember you being so exercised over something before."

"You've never seen me in heart surgery," the senator, a transplant specialist, replied.

Dr. Frist's patients -- not to mention the Tennessee medical licensing board -- may be surprised to learn that he had operating-room rage. But his reaction to Reid's provocation was predictable.

The Senate follows a strict script, written by the majority leader himself, who decides what legislation will be debated and who will speak when. But yesterday, using the arcane provisions of Standing Rule 21 for the first time in 25 years, the minority party seized the agenda and forced the chamber to close its doors until Republicans agreed to a probe of how the administration handled prewar Iraq intelligence.

This was the same man who that very morning was boasting that he would not hesitate to change Senate rules to permanently stifle the voice of the minority by using his deceptively named 'constitutional' option. He dishes it out, but he can't take it.

(I'm still trying to figure out that comment about seeing him in heart surgery. Did he really mean to suggest he pitches hissy-fits in the OR? I guess maybe it's good he's retired to merely making long-distance video diagnosis of vegetative patients. Though if he wants to talk about stunts, I guess he has some experience.)