That's right, folks. It's Senator "Tubes" Stevens who is responsible for putting the hold on the Coburn-Obama bill requiring public disclosure and accountability for federal spending:

Download | play - WMV Download | play - QT

From CNN:

"He does have a hold on the bill," Stevens' spokesperson Aaron Saunders told CNN. "At the time he placed the hold he notified Sen. [Tom] Coburn and his staff and identified several questions we had with the bill. Two weeks ago Sen. Coburn named Stevens as having a hold on the bill, so we don't consider it a secret."

Senate tradition allows any senator to keep a piece of legislation from reaching the Senate floor by placing a hold on the bill.

Coburn's office confirmed that Coburn had revealed Stevens' hold during a town hall meeting in Oklahoma two weeks ago.

The bill has become a cause célèbre for both liberal and conservative bloggers as they tried to uncover the "secret senator" who had blocked passage of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590). The bill was introduced earlier this year by Sens. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and Coburn, R-Oklahoma.

Read on...