Bartlett, a vegetarian who has been married 38 years, has no problems with the restrictions but occasionally bends the rules when asked to make a toast.

“All wine tastes bad,” he says. “They say you have to acquire a taste for it, why would you want to acquire a taste for something that tastes bad?”

On Saturdays, Bartlett, 79, is supposed to go to church and rest — and this is when things get dicey.

“My one big problem is I’m a workaholic,” he says. “I genuinely enjoy work. My father told me when I was a little boy that changing your work is just as recreational [he pronounces this re-create-ional] as playing. I change my work, but it’s always 12-14 hours a day.”

The sixth-term congressman takes pride in long workdays. That can mean sifting through data on energy and the environment or working on the bathrooms, kitchen and solar panels of his wilderness home. (“My hands are full of calluses,” he says. “Somehow when I put screws in, this finger is under that one and it rubs and [has worn] a big blister and then the skin came off, so there’s a big raw spot.”)

His press secretary, Lisa Lyons Wright, recalls the fright she felt a few years ago when she phoned the congressman, only to hear that he was up on the roof repairing it after a snowstorm.

“It’s off the grid,” Bartlett likes to say of the home, meaning that it’s not connected to electricity lines.

He has held many jobs — everything from teaching medical school and building homes to working on the Gemini and Apollo moon missions and dipping bomb fins into paint tanks. He’s more country than urban. “If you saw him on the street I doubt you’d say, ‘Hey, that’s a member of Congress,’” says Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.).

At his core, Bartlett is a scientist, but he doesn’t look the part. He has rusty brownish graying hair that he slicks back and a small, well-groomed white mustache. The hairline begins far above his forehead and is greeted by a bald spot at the crown. His skin is pale, and his eyes are a soft, pale blue. His frame is tall and thin; his suit falls like that of a scarecrow.

He has a gritty voice that never gets too loud and a vacant stare. That doesn’t mean he’s not listening; it means he’s preoccupied with causes. The main three issues on his mind these days include oil, embryonic-stem-cell research (his bill advocates it) and electromagnetic pulse (a nuclear weapon detonated above the atmosphere). Bartlett is consumed by his own world of science, statistics and facts and reels them off to anyone willing to listen.

“What we need to do is make very serious investments in alternatives because one day there will be no fossil fuels,” says Bartlett, who bought a silver Toyota Prius, a fuel-efficient car, in 2000. “It’s not like you’re running off a cliff. Once you’ve reached peak oil, then you start downhill, and no matter how feverishly you drill you will get less and less each year.”

What is harder to discern is where his scientific world ends and his emotional world begins, where the practical ceases and religion and God take over.

“I’m religious because I’m a scientist,” he says. “I just do not think chance alone could ever create human beings. It is just too complex.”

One thing is certain: Bartlett isn’t one to be ignored. He opposed the Iraq war at its outset because it lacked a U.N. resolution. He was promptly invited over to the White House.

“I did not want my country to fail,” he says. “George Tenet [then the CIA director] came out, and I thought he was going to tell me something I didn’t know so I would be on board. He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. And then Condoleezza came out and I asked why we had to go to war and she says because they can attack us. I said, ‘How are they going to do that? What missile do they have that they can reach us?’”

And now? “The chances for success are not large.”

Bartlett knows he doesn’t fit the traditional conservative mold, but doesn’t think he’s that complicated. Asked about his differences with the president, he replies, “I like the president. I disagree with my wife on occasion, and I like my wife.”

He sprinkles his wife’s name, Ellen, throughout the interview, and mentions her in speeches and in a C-SPAN “Washington Journal” interview last week. The couple met while working at the John’s Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

They have 10 children — each has two from previous marriages. He says she also has about 30 cats, many of which are dropped off on the farm in Frederick, Md., where they live.

“We worked together and we were both Seventh-day Adventists and we were both single,” he says, explaining their union. “She’s a great lady. She gives the best White House tours in Washington. Also, she is the best goat and sheep midwife in Maryland.”

Furthermore, he says, “I’m probably the luckiest member of Congress. I always vote my conscience, and I know many members have to … violate their conscience.”

An amendment that Bartlett is currently pushing involves an issue close to his heart: animals. “I really like animals,” he says, explaining legislation that would make transporting dogs or fowl across state lines for fighting a felony.

Homosexuality is another big no-no in the Seventh-day Adventist religion, and Bartlett dismisses it along with gays in the military. “The Bible says some pretty harsh things about gays,” he says, mentioning floor speeches he gave in defense of conservative radio psychiatrist Dr. Laura, who has called gays, among other things, “biological errors.”

“Her response, I thought, was great,” Bartlett says. “She said she read it in the Bible. It’s what God said. You have a problem with that, talk to God.”

As for Bartlett’s beliefs on gays, he says, “I know that our society has come to the point where we think this is a normal kind of lifestyle choice. When you put at risk the nuclear family, you put at risk the figure of a society. I have no idea why the Bible was so adamant against homosexuality — that may be the reason.”

And gays in the military? “What you want in the military is good order and discipline. It’s very difficult to achieve that with gays.”

But he doesn’t stop with homosexuality. He also believes that men and women going through basic training in the military ought to live in separate barracks. “When you repeat the Lord’s Prayer, you ask the Lord not to lead you into temptation, and I’m having trouble putting these young men and women together in such close confines.”

As with everything Bartlett, God plays a starring role. Ask about his political future, he says, “You will have to ask the Lord that because as long as I’m healthy I’m staying here.”