Daily Kos: Senator Tom Coburn's Terrible Prayer
Senator Tom Coburn's Terrible Prayer
by DowneastDem
Mon Dec 21, 2009 at 02:41:28 AM PST
Can you believe that a US senator actually prayed aloud on the senate floor for the death or incapacitation of a fellow senator? That is exactly what Sen. Tom Coburn - a medical doctor, no less - did last night.
DowneastDem's diary :: ::
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post describes how Coburn Crossed the Line.
At 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon -- nine hours before the 1 a.m. vote that would effectively clinch the legislation's passage -- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) went to the Senate floor to propose a prayer. "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray."
There was absolutely no mystery concerning which senator was being referenced by Coburn.
It was difficult to escape the conclusion that Coburn was referring to the 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) who has been in and out of hospitals and lay at home ailing. It would not be easy for Byrd to get out of bed in the wee hours with deep snow on the ground and ice on the roads -- but without his vote, Democrats wouldn't have the 60 they needed.
Senator Dick Durbin spoke expressed outrage at the behavior of Sen. Coburn. But the best revenge came from 92-year-old Senator Byrd himself:
Coburn was wearing blue jeans, an argyle sweater and a tweed jacket with elbow patches when he walked back into the chamber a few minutes before 1 a.m. He watched without expression when Byrd was wheeled in, dabbing his eyes and nose with tissues, his complexion pale. When his name was called, Byrd shot his right index finger into the air as he shouted "aye," then pumped his left fist in defiance.
Here is my prayer: I pray for the people of Oklahoma that they will someday come to their senses and elect principled men and women to office.
I am sure that afterwards Tom went home to his C Street home a tried to help a fellow Republican Senator out of a adultry scandal.
PERRspectives: The Curious Case of Tom Coburn
Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. And perhaps none is stranger than Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn. As the Washington Post reported today, the tenant of the mysterious "C Street" brownstone was a key player in both the Ensign and Sanford affairs. As it turns out, the arch-conservative Coburn also happens to be a friend and confidante of President Barack Obama.
During his nationally-televised implosion on Wednesday, disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford made passing reference to "the Fellowship," a secretive Christian group whose $1.8 million DC building is home to several members of Congress of both parties. Asked if his wife and family knew of his affair prior to his latest Argentinian adventure, Sanford responded:
"We've been working through this thing for about the last five months. I've been to a lot of different--as part of what we called "C Street" when I was in Washington. It was, believe it or not, a Christian Bible study--some folks that asked members of Congress hard questions that I think were very, very important. And I've been working with them."
As fate would have it, the C Street house has also been home to Nevada's John Ensign and his Republican colleague turned spiritual and marriage counselor, Tom Coburn. As the Washington Post detailed:
The house pulsed with backstage intrigue, in the days and months before the Sanford and Ensign scandals -- dubbed "two lightning strikes" by a high-ranking congressional source. First, at least one resident learned of both the Sanford and Ensign affairs and tried to talk each politician into ending his philandering, a source close to the congressman said. Then the house drama escalated. It was then that Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign's mistress, endured an emotional meeting with Sen. Tom Coburn, who lives there, according to the source.
