Remember the tirade that Senator Conrad Burns (R) of Montana threw at firefighters in a Billings airport last week? Well, still more juicy details have just emerged today about it.

Burns, who's in the midst of a tight race against Jon Tester (D), told one firefighter that the smoke-eaters had done a "piss-poor job" and harangued another in similar terms. More on Burns' rant after the jump.

From today's Billings-Gazette:

The Gazette State Bureau on Friday requested and received Monday three pages of internal Forest Service reports on what happened at the Billings airport the morning of July 23, when Burns complained about how the Bundy Railroad fire was fought.

Tom Roach, a division group supervisor on the Bundy Railroad fire, wrote he was walking on the airport tarmac past Burns, who "was staring at the NRIMT logo on my shirt." NRIMT stands for Northern Rockies Incident Team.

"He began following me as I passed and began yelling at me, 'Are you from Boise? Are you from Boise?' " Roach wrote. "I replied, 'No, sir.' He responded, 'Good, your life has been saved.' " Roach wrote that he walked away from Burns....

The report contained an account by Gabe Templeton, one of the Augusta Hot Shots, describing what happened to him and fellow team members Jeff Cleek and Jude Waerig. It said the three men were sitting in the Billings airport waiting for their flight when Burns approached them with an outstretched hand and asked if they were firefighters.

"I shook his hand and replied yes," Templeton wrote. "He shook my hand introduced himself and then replied, 'What a piss poor job' we were doing. I replied, 'Have a nice day.' The senator mentioned that we were 'wasting a lot of money and creating a cottage industry.' He also told us that we needed to listen more to the ranchers. I replied that 'we are pretty low on the totem pole.' Then he walked off." (Emphasis added.)

Curioser and curioser.