After his role in the John Ensign scandal I'm not sure why he's still in Congress, but yesterday he turned into an AM hate talk radio host and attacked Congress, Obama and Medicare:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) ripped his colleagues during a tour of northeast Oklahoma, calling them “career elitists,” “cowards” and said, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

Coburn’s gun-on-the-floor comment comes less than a month after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) made a triumphant return to the Capitol and the House floor following her shooting in the head in January outside a Tucson supermarket.

OK, threatening to shoot members of Congress is never a good thing. Maybe there should be a bill that forbids this kind of thing being said in DC. You know, if Louie Gohmert's crazy bill which wanted to arm these Congressman was passed maybe they could have had an old fashioned shoot out --OK Corral style right in the Capitol. But he was on a roll that Rush Limbaugh would have been proud of. Next up, he made up the claim that health care for seniors was better before Medicare ever came along.

He said the nation’s health care system was better before Medicare existed, even as he noted that some people received poor care at the time and doctors often accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.

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Sen. Tom Coburn is a busy man. Not only is he preparing to attack Social Security, but he's been pivotal in helping to destroy jobs, airline security and force Americans to foot the bill in the process with his blocking of the new FAA reauthorization. Now you know why I threw up when he stepped into the Gang of Six negotiations. C&L has been covering the tea party's crazed crazed attacks of the FAA because of their anti-union agenda and now the Senate has joined in their madness.

Political Correction:

The House of Representatives adjourned for summer recess last night without resolving a dispute over Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding, meaning that almost 4,000 FAA employees will remain furloughed for another month and that dozens of construction projects will remain on hold. Furloughing thousands of employees and delaying construction projects can only hurt a sagging economy, and CNN reports that tens of thousands of workers could be affected:

The work stoppage will have a direct impact on about 24,000 construction workers engaged in those projects, indirectly impact 11,000 others and hurt 35,000 support workers, such as food service vendors, said Steve Sandherr of Associated General Contractors of America.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) blasted her party for causing the impasse by insisting on including "extraneous" provisions in the funding bill:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, breaking with her party, called on Congress to pass a temporary extension that was devoid of any complicating policy issues.

"We're getting ready to leave for a month. We should not shut down the FAA because of a rider put on the extension of the FAA legislation that has not been negotiated," Hutchison said.

"It is not honorable for the House to send an extraneous amendment" on a funding extension, she said.

In addition to the negative economic impact on FAA employees and tens of thousands of others, the dispute could cost the federal government $1.2 billion in lost revenue due to uncollected taxes on airfare. (That lost revenue isn't staying in taxpayers' pockets, by the way: Airlines are raising fares to offset the decrease in taxes, so customers aren't saving any money — they're just paying more to the airlines rather than funding the FAA.)

As is often the case, the Senate failed to pass the necessary legislation in large part due to the obstinacy of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK):

On Monday, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the committee that oversees the FAA, and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee, floated a proposal to restore full operating authority to the FAA while cutting air service subsidies $71 million. The plan fell apart when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he would use parliamentary procedures to tie up the Senate in an effort to prevent a vote on the measure.

Coburn's refusal to allow a vote, thus costing the government $1.2 billion in revenue, is remarkable for a senator who has made a career of showboating about the budget deficit.

Coburn was not the only Republican who threw a wrench into these un-American activities which are motivated by their hate of unions more than anything else:

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL), in a fit of spite, attached extra cuts to rural airports (in mostly Democratic states) to his version of the bill, which he admitted was merely meant to tweak Democratic senators for not going along with the GOP’s union busting. If the FAA shutdown continues for another month, it will cost the government about $1.2 billion. But for the GOP, that seems to be an acceptable price for advancing an anti-union agenda.

Last night, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) attempted to pass a clean FAA reauthorization through the Senate by unanimous consent. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) objected.

So much for worrying about the federal debt. What a sham. This Congress is what the administration thinks they can shame into raising revenues in any way possible? Or to even promote job growth in America?

Programming note: (I'll be on the Thom Hartmann show at 10 am PST today right after Sen. Bernie Sanders)

Murray Waas broke a story yesterday about the John Ensign scandal in Reuters which Nicole wrote about here. I've been pushing for the media to force Sen. Tom Coburn to explain his actions in the matter, since he was in the middle of the whole thing as some sort of a go-0between.

Well, he finally commented after Waas broke some news on Ensign:

The Senate Ethics committee report portrayed Ensign as intermediary in negotiating a potential seven figure payment from Ensign to his former campaign treasurer, Cindy Hampton, who he had the affair with, and her husband, Doug Hampton, who was Ensign’s closest friend and administrative assistant. The Senate Ethics committee quoted several people who gave sworn testimony in the case. Coburn said today that they were lying.

Regarding the Senate Ethics Committee report’s conclusions, Coburn said: “That’s a totally inaccurate characterization of what happened. What the story you hear is not an accurate reflection of what happened.” Ensign made the comments during an interview for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” which will air Sunday.

Coburn told C-SPAN that he never negotiated on Ensign’s behalf, but instead simply passed information along from the Hamptons and their attorney and Ensign. He also said that he was proud of what he had done and would do “exactly” the same thing all over again:

“We put two families back together with multiple children — both marriages are stable right now,” Coburn said. “I’m proud of what I did and the way I did it. There’s nothing unethical about what I did.”

In fact, the Hamptons have said they are divorcing, and Cyndy Hampton recently filed for bankruptcy.

It is unclear why Coburn broke his long silence at this point in time and provided C-SPAN with his most extensive remarks on the entire matter since disclosure of the affair. One likely reason is that instead of the story fading, Coburn’s role might face renewed further press scrutiny if and when the Justice Department reopens its probe of Ensign.

Coburn has previously said that he was a witness about his role before the Senate Ethics Committee, but has never commented as to whether he was asked for information by the Justice Department.

How exactly did he put two families back together again? Does he believe divorce and bankruptcy is "mending the fences?' Will the media finally force Coburn to answer publicly for his involvement in this scandal?

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At present, only one of these senators will face prosecution for improper use of funds involving an extramarital affair

You know, on one level, I'm happy that the DOJ is no longer the overtly partisan and retaliatory entity it was during the Bush years. However, I'm flummoxed by this seemingly overarching extension in the other direction. Reuters' Murray Waas breaks the story:

Ensign's once promising political career was over because of the disclosures, but he was no longer in any legal jeopardy.

The Justice Department had informed him in December 2010 that he would not face criminal charges. An aggressive Senate Ethics Committee investigation was still pursuing Ensign, but that probe would be shelved once he resigned.

As Ensign was preparing to leave the Senate, investigators for the Senate Ethics Committee were attempting at the 11th hour to obtain a trove of email correspondence concerning the payments to the Hamptons. The trouble for the committee was that Ensign's attorneys insisted the emails were privileged.

The committee had unsuccessfully battled for 18 months to obtain them.

A Reuters examination of the Ensign probe shows the case then took a sudden turn: Ensign reversed course and handed over more than 1,000 sensitive emails between himself and his attorneys and other top advisers. The decision "puzzled" congressional investigators who thought they would never see the emails and baffled even most of his own closest advisers, say people close to the case.

Those emails are apparently very incriminating, including ones by Ensign himself acknowledging that his coverup of the affair effectively ended his Senate career and by his attorneys that the payments to the Hamptons would inevitably trigger notice of the Senate Ethics Committee. Why Ensign released the emails is somewhat of a mystery. Did he assume he was out of the woods since the DOJ had already told them they were closing the books on this? Then he wasn't paying attention to his attorneys, who have warned him that this could instigate a re-opening of the investigation. If that's so, no investigation on Ensign's coverup could be complete without a full investigation of Tom Coburn and the part he played to broker the deal between Ensign, his parents and the Hamptons.

Ironically, this news comes the same week as the DOJ announced that they would seek an indictment against John Edwards for improper use of campaign funds to keep his own extramarital affair quiet. Of course, when you're a Democrat, you can expect much more stringent investigations by the Department of Justice.

The unexpected last minute developments in the Ensign case raise serious questions as to why the Justice Department closed its file on the Senator without first obtaining the crucial emails later seen by the Senate.

A senior Justice Department official told Reuters that the decision to publicly say that they were no longer pursuing Ensign displayed bad judgment, harmed the investigation, and will likely leave lingering effects on the Department's reputation in prosecuting public officials.

The Department is already smarting after the dismissal of charges against the late Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, after disclosures of prosecutorial misconduct.

My initial reaction was to roll my eyes at the lackluster and careless performance once again by Attorney General Eric Holder, but I've been corrected by journalists that this likely never did get to Holder's desk. I'm not sure if it is helpful, but here is the contact information for the DOJ, and certainly, having citizens demand that the DOJ re-open the case in light of these new revelations can't hurt.

ABC News' Jonathan Karl sat down this week for this gimmicky "Subway Series" interview with Sen. Tom Coburnof Oklahoma. Coburn opined on Grover Norquist, the tax structure (where to his credit, he was surprisingly honest, admitting that our taxes are at a 100 year low) the deficit, leaving the Gang of 6, effectively killing it, and the debt ceiling.

But note what wasn't mentioned: Coburn's role in the Ensign sex scandal:

Contained in the 67-page report {written by the Senate Ethics Committee investigating John Ensign's conduct}, however, is troubling evidence of the central role that current Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) played in trying to keep Ensign’s mistress and her husband quiet — evidence that contradicts Coburn’s previous public statements on the matter. In July 2009, Coburn said he was consulting with Ensign “as a physician and as an ordained deacon” and he considered it a “privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody.” Asked about the claim from Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign’s mistress, that he “urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons millions of dollars,” Coburn said, “I categorically deny everything he said.”[..]

Coburn eventually agreed to cooperate with the Ethics Committee; their findings on the level of his involvement are startling. According to the committees report, Coburn actively assisted in the discussions of a hush money package, negotiating a proposed package from $8 million down to $2.8 million.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that sounds like some seriously ethically-challenged behavior to me. Ensign left office the day before the report came out and had the unbelievable luck to do so just before Osama bin Laden was killed, so the entire event flew under the radar of the media. But Coburn continues his luck that no one in the media bothers to ask him about his role whatsoever.

So what will it take? What will make the media wake up and do their job? Or is it just okay to be brokering hush money to your colleagues mistress if you're a Republican?

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This is such good news. I was pleased when Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday that this Gang hadn't gotten very far in their negotiations, and now Tom Coburn has quit the bipartisan group of Senators trying to negotiate a budget deal altogether.

Washington Post:

The most outspoken Republican member of the Senate's "Gang of Six" abruptly dropped out of bipartisan debt-reduction talks Tuesday, declaring negotiations at "an impasse."

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told reporters that the group, which until Tuesday had three Republican and three Democratic members, was talking “about the same things over and over and not getting any movement.”

“It’s just a recognition that we can’t get there,” Coburn said, suggesting that the emerging debt-reduction plan doesn’t do enough to control spending on federal retirement programs.

Coburn spokesman John Hart later issued a statement saying Coburn “is disappointed the group has not been able to bridge the gap between what needs to happen and what senators will support” and has decided to take “a break from the talks.

“He still hopes the Senate will, on a bipartisan basis, pass a long-term deficit reduction package this year,” Hart said in an e-mail. “He looks forward to working with anyone who is interested in putting forward a plan that is specific, balanced and comprehensive.”

Coburn has come under fire lately for his role in the Ensign scandal, but most of the Beltway media are more interested in their bipartisanship fetish than looking deeper into Coburn's activities. In any case, Andrea Mitchell almost couldn't keep a straight face when she talked about the new Gang of Five on MSNBC earlier today.

The remaining members of the group made plans to meet again Wednesday, saying they will keep trying to agree on a plan to reduce projected borrowing by $4 trillion over the next decade. But the departure of Coburn, the most prominent of the three conservatives, deals a severe blow to the effort. And it puts additional pressure on the two remaining Republicans, who have already come under fire for their willingness to discuss a plan that raises additional tax revenue.

As I've said, no news is good news on a deal that will hurt American families -- and if raising taxes is not on the table, then it's impossible to have an adult conversation about fixing deficits.

Sen. Levin grills Goldman Sachs execs during the long investigation into financial crash.

Is this the time, finally, when we see some of these bastards go to jail for crashing the economy to feed their own greed? Finally? I wouldn't hold my breath:

WASHINGTON -- Goldman Sachs executives deceived clients in order to profit off the brewing financial crisis and then misled Congress when asked to explain their actions, concluded a top lawmaker who led a two-year investigation into Wall Street's role in the meltdown.

Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will recommend that Goldman executives who testified before his panel, including chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, be referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the Michigan Democrat announced Wednesday. Members of the subcommittee will now deliberate Levin's proposal.

A Goldman spokesman said its executives were truthful in their testimony, adding that the firm disagreed with many of the panel's conclusions.

Two and a half years after a historic crisis that has yielded not a single criminal conviction of anyone who played a leading role in causing it, the prosecution of such a high-profile Wall Street executive may satisfy the public's desire to see culprits brought to justice. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a lawsuit it had brought against Goldman.

But the firm was just one target of a sweeping, 639-page report by the Senate panel into the causes of the crisis. Hardly a fluke occurrence, the meltdown was the product of a deeply corrupt financial system, one fueled by profit-hungry banks that deceived their clients, and overseen by lax regulators who were complicit in the firms' chronic abuse of the most fundamental rules of the game, the report concludes.

The investigation found a "financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing," Levin said.

More than any other government report produced in the wake of the crisis, this account names names, blaming specific people and institutions: Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, the Office of Thrift Supervision and others. It targets four types of institutions, all of which it says played key roles in causing the crisis: mortgage lenders that offered prospective homeowners booby-trapped loans; regulators that were paid by the institutions they were regulating and cooperated in widespread deception; rating agencies that gave seals of approval to products they knew to be especially risky, all in the pursuit of market share; and Wall Street banks that duped investors into buying securities that only the insiders knew were destined to go bad.

"Blame for this mess lies everywhere from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight," said the panel's ranking member, Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican.

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It's interesting to see the two strawmen arguments continually put up by right wingers in response to the tragic shootings in Tucson. The first one is a variation of the "But...but they do it too!", pointing fingers at the left. I've yet to see anyone confront a right winger using that excuse as you would the second-grader equally as apt to employ it: if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you do that too? Whether or not you agree with the premise that everyone does it (and for the record, I don't agree), that doesn't absolve you of your contribution.

The second strawman tactic is to dismiss any discussion because there's no evidence that accused shooter Jared Loughner was influenced by Sarah Palin's crosshairs map or Glenn Beck's 20+ hours of broadcasting each week, railing at the tyrannical impulses of progress and equality in this country. While it is true that we can't really know the motivation of a troubled brain like Loughner's, can anyone dispute that as soon as we heard about this shooting, our collective minds--left and right alike--went immediately to the state of political debate in this country and think, "it was just a matter of time before it happened"? And why is that? Because the tenor of debate in this country HAS degenerated into "I'm right and I want you to die/get hurt/be eliminated for not seeing it my way."

And surprisingly, David Gregory appeared to have gotten that this Sunday. He asks Sen. Tom Coburn no less than three times if he agrees that the political rhetoric has become dangerously apocalyptic. He even acknowledges that it is especially coming from the right (My goodness!!! What did they put in Gregory's coffee this morning?). But Coburn--the same man who said that doctors who performed abortions should be subject to the death penalty--doesn't think it's a conversation worth having and that we're all missing the real problem. Certainly, he doesn't like the media's role in this, although it's unclear if that is the real problem of which he speaks.

Finally, on his third try, Gregory gets Coburn to acknowledge that yes, there's no place for the kind of ratcheted up rhetoric that we're seeing.

DAVID GREGORY: --its fine to take-- it's fine to take on the media. And-- and a lot of people would support you in that. That's fine. But I asked you a very specific question. Do you reject those who believe that the President wants to injure the country and that will-- that will deny Americans liberty? And do you think-- violent metaphor of any kind is simply over the line in political discourse?

SENATOR TOM COBURN: Of course I reject that. But the point is, is we're spendin' all this time talkin' about-- something that i-- has nothing to do with the events, and what the real problems are, we're not spending time working on.

What a big concession from Dr. No. We're not getting to work on the bigger issues either, thanks to him and his penchant for putting a hold on everything.

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Evidently, Bill O'Reilly's idea of defending his network's journalistic honor is to lie blatantly -- not just to his national TV audience, but to a U.S. Senator to boot.

Last night on his Fox News show, BillO -- incensed by Sen. Tom Coburn's suggestion that Fox News' coverage of the health-care debate was misleading and biased -- tried to claim that no one on Fox had ever suggested that you'll get thrown in jail if you don't buy health insurance.

O'Reilly claimed it three times in the course of the interview, each time with escalating falsity, culminating with the claim that his staff had carefully researched the question and found that no one at Fox had ever said it.

Oh really? Because as you can see, we have the video that demonstrates clearly otherwise.

Glenn Beck, as a matter of fact, said it on his own Fox News show -- and he said it on Bill O'Reilly's program too, directly to O'Reilly's face. And O'Reilly made a joke about it.

Nor was Beck alone among Fox anchors saying it.

Here's how O'Reilly put it to Coburn:

O'Reilly: OK, but can you tell me one person on Fox News, just one, who has told this audience that they'll go to jail if they don't buy health insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, why then was it legitimate to bring in Fox News in the discussion, when, No. 1, you don't know anybody on Fox News -- because there hasn't been anyone -- that said people will go to jail if they don't buy mandatory insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, tell me, what -- because it doesn't happen here. And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it.

Of course, none other than O'Reilly's sometime stagemate, Glenn Beck told his audience on Nov. 12, 2009:

Beck: But if you don't play by their new rules on health care, oooh, here's a new little twist. Have you heard this? You're going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail.

... But if you don't play ball with them now, if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was fair.

The next day, Nov. 13, in his weekly appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, chatting over his then-recent appendectomy, Beck repeated the line, and O'Reilly responded by asking Beck if he intended to go to jail over health insurance (transcript courtesy Media Matters):

O'REILLY: Couldn't they do [liposuction] at the same time [as your appendectomy]?

BECK: No, they wouldn't. No. I don't have universal health care.

O'REILLY: Well you will soon.

BECK: Or I'll go to jail.

O'REILLY: Are you going to be a conscientious objector to health care?

BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.

That's some crack research squad O'Reilly has there -- they can't even rustle up the times this lie was repeated on O'Reilly's own show.

No wonder the fact that not only did they miss the Beck claims, they missed that Sean Hannity made the same claim (citing Dick Morris), as did Judge Andrew Napolitano. All on the Fox News Channel.

O'Reilly clearly got away with lying to Coburn to his face.

But as for defending Fox's honor, well, let's just say that it worked about as well as it should.

This just cheered me up. Some youthful activists are sitting in at Tom Coburn's office until he allows the Uganda Recovery Act to pass the Senate. (Boy, the Senate really is the place where good ideas go to die - or get obstructed.) Go sign the petition, donate money for coffee, and cheer these guys on!

The momentum is building and more people just keep coming to join dozens of activists refusing to leave Senator Tom Coburn's office in Oklahoma City until he allows the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act to pass the Senate. Click here to help from wherever you are.

Here's the low-down: After impassioned lobbying from tens of thousands of activists, historic legislation aimed at ending Africa’s longest-running war is on the verge of passing the Senate unanimously. In fact, the bill has more bipartisan support in Congress than any bill focused on sub-Saharan Africa in American history. But Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, nicknamed “Dr. No”, is single-handedly blocking this landmark legislation because the bill authorizes new funds to assist victims of the violence (you can read more about why in the Campaign FAQ).

As Senator Coburn prevents this bill from passing, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is terrorizing communities across three countries in central Africa. In the past two months alone, Joseph Kony's rebel army has massacred hundreds of people and abducted hundreds more, including children who are forced to become soldiers.

That's why we are holding the Oklahoma Hold Out, and we're not going home until Senator Coburn agrees to a compromise.

The most committed activists - who know that Senator Coburn's obstructionism is preventing the action needed to end this senseless violence - are "holding out" outside Senator Coburn's office in downtown Oklahoma City until the Senator allows the bill to pass.

People are driving and flying from all corners of the country to join in person.

We invite you to join as well, or if you can't join them in person, we need your support from right where you are.