Just when you think the Dems couldn't get any more pathetic.

[Diogenes]

Appearantly performing free deliveries is a violation of Senate ethics.

Either that or Coburn is doing his job too well.


Coburn renews battle with Ethics over baby deliveries
By Susan Crabtree
Posted: 07/28/08 06:15 PM [ET]

Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) office hit back Monday at new attempts to prevent him from delivering babies for free, arguing the Ethics panel might as well investigate Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) cameo in “The Dark Knight.”

Coburn has come under new pressure from the Ethics panel for delivering babies at the Muskogee Regional Medical Center, which changed from a public to a private institution in April last year after it was acquired by Capella Healthcare.

Because of potential conflicts of interest, Senate rules prohibit members from receiving compensation for practicing a profession that involves a fiduciary relationship. Coburn’s work as an obstetrician has been a subject of interest for ethics panels in the Senate and the House when he was a representative.

Sources said the fact that Muskogee is now a private hospital has renewed the ethics panel’s interest in Coburn’s work.

In May, Coburn received a strongly worded “final determination” memo threatening him with a Senate censure if he did not stop delivering babies for free. The letter prompted several heated meetings between Coburn and the Ethics Committee in June over the matter, according to two knowledgeable Senate sources.

Coburn spokesman John Hart agreed to discuss the issue only after The Hill contacted his office several times over the past two weeks. He called the Ethics panel’s logic “absurd” and its argument “inane.”

“Just as parents don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, parents don't choose to receive his services at a particular hospital because Dr. Coburn has somehow endorsed that hospital because he is a senator,” Hart said in a statement e-mailed to The Hill. “The committee has shown us zero empirical evidence to back up its flimsy claim.

“Has Sen. Leahy provided an improper endorsement to Warner Brothers for appearing in Batman?” Hart asked. “Will millions of Americans now see Batman not because it features stars like Christian Bale or the late Heath Ledger, but because Patrick Leahy, a distinguished United States senator, has offered his illustrious endorsement to this motion picture?

“If Sen. Coburn can only deliver babies for free at a public hospital, shouldn't Sen. Leahy only be allowed to donate his notable thespian skills to a public entity like PBS?”

Leahy spokesman David Carle pointed out that his boss gives any proceeds he receives from movie appearances to the Kellogg-Hubbard children’s wing of the Montpelier Public Library. Leahy received $2,000 for his appearance in “The Dark Knight,” all of which was given to the children’s fund, Carle said.

The new fight comes as Coburn is engaged in a battle with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the Senate’s legislative agenda. Reid was forced to dedicate the majority of the Senate’s time this week to overpowering the holds Coburn has on 35 bills.

Hart suggested someone had leaked information about the Ethics panel’s memo to the media, and took issue with the The Hill’s ability to acquire “privileged information about this case.”

“We'll let others decide why this information is now suddenly becoming public,” Hart wrote.

Hart also said the Ethics panel should investigate Reid and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Ethics panel, for book signings they’ve had at privately owned bookstores if they are going to investigate Coburn’s baby deliveries.

“If the committee wants to walk down this path, we would expect they will investigate Sens. Reid and Boxer, who have both held books signing [sic] events at privately owned book stores,” Hart wrote. “After all, their events endorsed one book store over another. If Dr. Coburn can only deliver babies for free at public hospitals, Senators should only be permitted to sign books at public libraries.”

Reid’s and Boxer’s offices declined to comment. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Ethics panel, also refused to comment on private ethics matters.

Hart estimates that Coburn has delivered dozens of babies since last receiving an ultimatum from the Ethics panel in 2005. Coburn has received no compensation for his work and paid “tens of thousands of dollars” out of his own pocket for medical malpractice insurance and other costs related to his medical practice, Hart said.

Other physicians in the Senate, such as former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart surgeon, voluntarily gave up their medical practices when they joined the Senate.

Coburn, however, wants to remain a true citizen-legislator and has long argued that the Senate should allow him to keep serving his patients because he plans to return to the practice when he leaves the Senate in 2016, consistent with his pledge to serve only two terms. He would like to keep up his medical skills if he is going to continue being able to earn a living in his chosen profession.

Frist, by contrast, had no plans to return to his practice when he retired from the Senate.

Asked about the recent Ethics Committee action, Coburn said he doesn’t believe he is in violation and will continue to fight any action taken against him.

“All I’m going to say is that’s a fight I would relish,” he said.

Hart said Coburn has no intention of abandoning his medical oath to his patients under threat of censure.

“The parents of babies Dr. Coburn delivers don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, and they never have,” Hart said. “In the 10 years Dr. Coburn has provided free healthcare to his neighbors while serving in Congress, the Ethics Committee has never pointed to a single conflict of interest. No lobbyist or any individual has ever attempted to infiltrate his medical office under the guise of an invasive medical exam to discuss Senate business.”

Coburn’s work as an obstetrician was controversial during his House career, but the House allowed him to continue to practice and make enough money to cover his medical bills. When he joined the Senate, the Ethics Committee issued him a letter prohibiting him from practicing medicine.

Coburn found allies in Frist and former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who chaired the Rules Committee at the time. Changing the Senate’s rules to allow Coburn to continue his work would have required 67 votes, which Frist and Lott knew would be difficult to reach.

Instead, in September 2005 they decided to offer a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that essentially let the Ethics Committee know the Senate wouldn’t back up any finding it made that delivering babies while a sitting senator was illegal. That resolution only needed 60 votes to be approved.

It failed, however, garnering only 51 votes. Only four of the body’s then 44 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, and Boxer was not one of them.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/cob ... 07-28.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Mikey]

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Ethics panel, also refused to comment on private ethics matters.

You really are a dumbfuck.

[Diogenes]

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Ethics panel, also refused to comment on private ethics matters.

You really are a dumbfuck.

If you think Cornyn is the one behind these charges, you're even stupider than I thought.

And that would be an accomplishment.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) office hit back Monday at new attempts to prevent him from delivering babies for free, arguing the Ethics panel might as well investigate Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) cameo in “The Dark Knight.”

Because of potential conflicts of interest, Senate rules prohibit members from receiving compensation for practicing a profession that involves a fiduciary relationship.

Okay, Coburn, go ahead and tell me how Leahy's cameo involves a fiduciary relationship. I'll be waiting with baited breath.

[Diogenes]

Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) office hit back Monday at new attempts to prevent him from delivering babies for free, arguing the Ethics panel might as well investigate Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) cameo in “The Dark Knight.”

Okay, Coburn, go ahead and tell me how Leahy's cameo involves a fiduciary relationship. I'll be waiting with baited breath.

Does this help?

Or maybe you want to explain the fiduciary relationship and corrupting effect of an obtetrician delivering babies for free?

[Diogenes]

Coburn for VP?

Sounds good to me.


Boarding the Tomnibus
By George Neumayr
Published 7/31/2008 12:08:20 AM

Beware of any pol with an airport named after him. Will Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport now have to be renamed? As the Alaska senator flies into it with seven graft-related indictments trailing him, his old nemesis, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, emerges from this week looking better than ever.

Truth is the best policy and the best politics, Coburn's example reminds his pork-bloated colleagues. Where their power rests on hoarding government money, his power is based upon refusing it -- and that has proven much more potent.

Stevens, shrieking on the Senate floor in anger at Coburn for opposing his "Bridge to Nowhere," threatened to resign if he didn't get it. Had the Republican leadership displayed some sense, they would have let him go. But instead of choosing Coburn as their brand, they embraced big government, making the scandals of Randy Cunningham and Ted Stevens inevitable.

Coburn now receives some opportunistic support from fellow Republicans who see that he is useful in fumigating the Republican image. Coburn single-handedly won a victory for them by drawing Harry Reid into his ill-advised "Tomnibus" bill, which aimed to dislodge Coburn's hold on 34 Senate pork bills.

Reid's legislation failed, exposing the Dems' purported distaste for excessive spending under President Bush as a sham and publicizing ludicrous expenditures with which Congress routinely saddles the American taxpayer.

"You go home and explain to your folks [voters] about stroke legislation," Reid blubbered on the Senate floor, draping one of his pork bills in the most tired demagoguery.

"You go home and tell people...in a wheelchair you voted against moving forward on something that could get them out of their wheelchair."


COBURN'S OBSTRUCTIONISM might cost his graft-ridden colleagues a Viking gas grill or two, but that's about the extent of the damage. He has saved the American taxpayer millions of dollars that would normally slosh down special-interest corridors.

John McCain, if he wanted to challenge Obama's pretensions as a reformer and "change" agent, wouldn't bother with any of the business-as-usual Republicans on his VP shortlist; he would select Coburn. The only change in Washington not rattling around pols' pockets comes from Coburn's office.

By asking simple questions like Why exactly does the federal government need to spend millions of dollars on a Battle of 1812 commemoration commission? Coburn has done more to challenge the ethos of Capitol Hill than Obama ever will. Dr. No would expose Obama's "yes, we can" mantra as nothing more than the continuation of corruption.

Obama bemoans the corrupt culture of Washington while planning to deepen its cause, the size of the federal government. If Congress is avarice writ large, that's because corruption grows in proportion to the size of government spending. No Oklahoman fat cat would even bother to bribe Coburn, because he has no federal money to give him.

Even the crock Senate "ethics" investigation into Coburn is edifying. While Ted Stevens is investigated for among other things his suspiciously funded "wraparound deck" at his Alaska chalet, Coburn is investigated for...delivering babies.

According to Harry Reid and company, who are applying Senate rules with comic pettiness in retaliation for his obstructionism, Coburn's baby deliveries at a private hospital pose a "conflict of interest."

"In May, Coburn received a strongly worded 'final determination' memo threatening him with a Senate censure if he did not stop delivering babies for free," according to the Hill.

What is the conflict of interest? That the babies might grow up and vote for a self-term-limiting senator?


IT IS NOT clear, but this is apparently the radical "ethics reform" the Democrats had in mind after winning in 2006 and promising to sweep away the "culture of corruption." Coburn's conception of ethics reform is a little different: that senators actually take their oaths seriously.

One of the ironies of history is that the politicians most well-remembered by it are the least political ones. Ted Stevens got an airport named after him for delivering pork to his state; he may also lose that honor for the same.

Whatever is named after Coburn is likely to be more secure. If there is ever a Tom Coburn Airport, it will be because he didn't bring home the bacon.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13616" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Smackie Chan]

I'll be waiting with baited breath.

You eatin' chum for lunch?

If you're gonna use trite phrases, at least know what you're saying and why you're saying it.

It's bated breath, as in abated.

Hope you're not too close to the jury box when presenting your cases. The smell of rotting cod coming from your cakehole might not bode well for your clients.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) office hit back Monday at new attempts to prevent him from delivering babies for free, arguing the Ethics panel might as well investigate Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) cameo in “The Dark Knight.”

Okay, Coburn, go ahead and tell me how Leahy's cameo involves a fiduciary relationship. I'll be waiting with baited breath.

Does this help?

Or maybe you want to explain the fiduciary relationship and corrupting effect of an obtetrician delivering babies for free?

Some of my work involves representing clients on a pro bono basis. Other work I get paid for, but not by the clients (e.g., Assigned Counsel work).

Not to go to the IKYABWAI card, but if you think I don't have a fiduciary relationship with those clients, . . ..

[Terry in Crapchester]

Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) office hit back Monday at new attempts to prevent him from delivering babies for free, arguing the Ethics panel might as well investigate Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) cameo in “The Dark Knight.”

Because of potential conflicts of interest, Senate rules prohibit members from receiving compensation for practicing a profession that involves a fiduciary relationship.

Okay, Coburn, go ahead and tell me how Leahy's cameo involves a fiduciary relationship. I'll be waiting with baited breath.

Jesus Fucking Christ in a Chicken Bucket, you are a dumb motherfucker. Way to miss the point completely, you fucking tard.

If you want to argue that it's a stupid rule, that's one thing.

But that's not what Coburn is doing. He's trying to argue that a double standard is in place where there isn't one. Leahy's appearance clearly is outside the purview of this particular rule.

[Diogenes]

If you want to argue that it's a stupid rule, that's one thing.

But that's not what Coburn is doing. He's trying to argue that a double standard is in place where there isn't one. Leahy's appearance clearly is outside the purview of this particular rule.

So is Coburn's. The double standard is that Coburn is not only a Republican, but one who is fighting the systemic corruption within Congress.

You still haven't explained exactly how delivering babies is unethical. Afraid they'll grow up to vote Republican?

[Smackie Chan]

You know what pisses me off?

Coming to this board only to find fukkken lawyers posting here on company time all the while charging their clients exorbinate rates per hour.

Yeah, I hate those exorbinate rates, too.

But you're failing (nothing new there) to see the bigger picture. Look at it this way: relative to the percentage of the general poulation blacks represent, they get arrested at a much higher rate, meaning on a percent basis, they need lawyers more than you lily-white types do. Also, there are far more white lawyers than black ones, so chances are the lawyers posting here on company time are white guys who are charging their exorbinate rates to black clients! That should bring a smile to your face almost as toothy as the one you sport at your Klan rallies.

Gotta look for the silver lining, Trikkkle.