Look for Harry Reid to start the ball rolling today on the "Coburn Omnibus" (what's an "omnibus?") today:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a "Coburn Omnibus" for July that would wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate, according to a Coburn aide and two Democratic leadership staffers.

Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support. By placing a hold, Coburn prevents the bills from passing quickly through the Senate under a unanimous consent request. With floor time at such a premium, Reid would have trouble bringing up each bill for an individual debate and vote.

But in a stroke of legislative creativity that may have no precedent, Reid could lump all of the bills into one package and bring up the Coburn Omnibus for a single vote. Coburn can still object, but the broad popularity of the bills means that there would likely be more than enough support for veto-proof passage.

Reid will likely start with a motion to proceed and an immediate filing of a cloture motion on that motion to proceed. It will take two days for the cloture motion to "ripen" so that there can be a vote.

By the way, do you want to see some seriously crazy Senate-ese? Look at how they express the fact that it takes two days to get to a vote on cloture:

[O]ne hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, [the Presiding Officer] shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question....

One hour after they meet on the following calendar day but one.

Or to you and me, "two days later." But because both the House and the Senate will sometimes play with the time-space continuum for procedural reasons, creating "legislative days" that don't coincide entirely with the "calendar days" you and I recognize as being the standard measurement of time, we have to have a definition like this one.

So that means it will take until one hour after the Senate convenes on Wednesday before they can even vote on whether or not to end debate on the question of whether or not to begin debate on the Coburn package (that is, a vote on the motion to proceed to consider the omnibus bill). Should there be 60 votes for cloture, Coburn (and any allies, if he has any left) will still be entitled to 30 hours of post-cloture debate. The number of allies Coburn can round up will determine how far he can push it:

Thereafter no Senator shall be entitled to speak in all more than one hour on the measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, the amendments thereto, and motions affecting the same, and it shall be the duty of the Presiding Officer to keep the time of each Senator who speaks.

After no more than thirty hours of consideration of the measure, motion, or other matter on which cloture has been invoked, the Senate shall proceed, without any further debate on any question, to vote on the final disposition thereof...

So if Coburn has 29 other supporters, that could bring us into late evening Thursday or even Friday before we get done with post-cloture debate on the motion to proceed, and get to the actual Coburn package itself. Then, the package too is subject to yet another filibuster by Coburn, if he's so inclined. Reid will likely file immediately for cloture on that, too. But that will take two days to come to a vote also, meaning they'll still be waiting to vote for cloture until Tuesday of next week, barring a weekend session (which we may actually see) or Coburn's early surrender. Should cloture be invoked, Coburn and any allies get another 30 post-cloture hours, possibly dragging the vote on final passage out until at least Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

If it's literally only Coburn, the chances of him staying on his feet long enough to get to "the next calendar day but one" is virtually nil, and the moment he sits down, an opponent can ask for unanimous consent to proceed right to the bill, and Coburn will be unconscious and unable to object.

More likely, though, is a scenario in which very few of Coburn's colleagues are willing to join him in chewing up the clock. If it's Coburn and just a handful of allies and no alternative arrangement is agreed upon by unanimous consent beforehand, then Coburn and each of his friends get an hour after the cloture vote on Wednesday. That would mean just a few hours of post-cloture debate thereafter, and then on to the omnibus bill, with the second cloture vote able to be scheduled on Friday, and a final vote after each member of the Coburn gang uses up his or her one hour of post-cloture time late on Friday.

Last time I wrote about how I consider America's efforts to battle childhood cancer to be a national tragedy. Today let's consider the "compassion" of Republican senators.  S911 is the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2007.  It’s in the Senate, having been passed UNANIMOUSLY in the House.  It funds $30 mil/yr for 5 yrs for research & awareness for the #1 killer disease of our children, childhood cancer.  [For comparison, that's 2-1/2 hrs of the Iraq war. So our war is vastly under-funded and under-publicized.]  BUT – the bill is stuck in the Senate!  WHO would NOT support such a non-controversial, bi-partisan effort that passed the House unanimously and has more than enough support to pass on the Senate side? Hmmmm...I KNOW!...it's gotta be that they want to INCREASE the funding - right?

The Senate is moving closer to a vote on PEPFAR, but there is still time to fix the bill allowing the work horse of prevention to pull the cart of treatment, lightening the load by reducing the number of people infected. Congress has burdened the horse with ideology, and put the cart in front.

Originally posted at RH Reality Check.

It has been 248 days since the ALS Registry Act passed the US House of Representatives by a 411-3 margin.  However, unlike the unicameral Nebraska legislature, Congress has two bodies that must approve a bill before the president can sign it into law.  Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has done everything that he can to prevent the legislation from passing.  About 200 days ago, he placed a hold, a procedural maneuver that allows a single senator to prevent a bill from being passed quickly without a roll-call vote or floor debate.

One of The bills held hostage is the ALS Registry Act S.1382. This legislation would authorize the establishment of an ALS Registry at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the bill.  Time is running out on this congressional session, but there might be something in the works that will save this legislation which is critically important to people affected by ALS.  

Nearly going unnoticed for the past two and a half months, a Leonidas-like last stand has been taking place on Capitol Hill. However, unlike the glorified Battle of Thermopylae, the last stand currently being perpetuated by Sen. Tom Coburn, is anything but worthy of panegyrics.

One of the most frequently asked questions about Senate procedure these days is, WTF with these "holds?" Or more accurately, "How come Harry Reid blew off Chris Dodd's hold on the FISA bill, but Tom Coburn gets to have 100 bills on hold and nobody bats an eyelash?"

Well, aside from the fact that eyelashes are, in fact, now batting on the Coburn holds, it seems clear that not all holds are created equal. Here's my attempt to explain why. I tried making this more formal, but it just kept getting bogged down. So here it is, quick and dirty, pretty much the way I discussed it with a friend in e-mail.

Holds, like everything in the Senate, actually have a lot of moving parts. When you put a hold on a bill, the Majority Leader does a private mental calculus, sometimes informed by other political intelligence, whip counts, outright threats, or what have you, and sometimes not.

It goes something like this:

A Senator tells Reid (or tells McConnell to tell Reid) he wants to put a hold on a bill.

Reid asks himself whether enough people give a shit about the bill for him to spend the amount of time it's going to take either to: 1) figure out how many Senators give a shit, or; 2) go through the process of voting on it despite the hold.

Why might Reid want to go through the process of voting on it despite the hold? Well, he might not want to, per se, but the job of Majority Leader in the Senate is different from that of Majority Leader in the House in that in the House, bills come to the floor backed by a decision of a majority. That is, bills that come to the floor under a rulehave already had a vote in which some majority has said they want it there. So majorities routinely tell the minority that it's tough luck if they don't like it, it's coming anyway. In the Senate, the normal mode of bringing something to the floor is by unanimous consent.

That's where the hold comes from. It's just an indication to the Majority Leader, whose job it is to keep the schedule moving, that a Senator will, if necessary, object to a unanimous consent request to bring the bill to the floor.

Now, that's not the only way bills get to the Senate floor. It's just the preferred way. Because if you have a unanimous consent agreement, you can build the equivalent of a House rule into it -- how much debate time will there be, how many amendments, which ones, and so forth. But if you don't have such an agreement, then everything's under the Senate's very open debate rules, including the possibility of a filibuster. If the Senate agrees to a unanimous consent agreement limiting debate time before bringing a bill to the floor, it can't be filibustered after that. Without the agreement, there's a danger of filibuster.

So if one Senator says he'll object to a unanimous consent agreement, it's also an implied signal that if the Majority Leader brings the bill to the floor anyway, the objecting Senator may filibuster.

Now the Majority Leader starts calculating. One Senator filibustering all by himself is a pain in the ass, but nobody can stay on their feet forever. And if the filibustering Senator sits down and stops talking, the floor is open to make a motion that the Senate immediately proceed to a vote. So the next question is, does he have allies? Will they also stay on their feet for hours or even days at a time if necessary? How many allies are there? Enough so that nobody will really even have to work all that hard, and can just take, say, a two hour shift and keep the debate going forever? Or more importantly, does he have so many allies that the Majority Leader would lose a cloturevote? In considering this, the calculation has to include not only how many allies the Senator has on the substantive issues, but also how many Senators would support the filibuster just to screw with the Majority Leader? Or because they have a hold on something too, and need the other Senator's support for it?

The other calculation is about time. If the schedule is busy, and especially if there are any deadlines looming, even a failed filibuster with no allies at all can ruin your week. If the Majority Leader can't get a unanimous consent agreement, his only other choice if he wants to move the bill is to make a motion to proceed to consider. That's just a motion that the Senate start debate on whatever the bill is. The problem is that the motion to proceed is itself subject to a filibuster. So the same calculations have to be made.

Even if the Senator is almost entirely alone, getting a bill to the floor is a pain in the ass. Because the motion to proceed is subject to a filibuster, the Majority Leader will make the motion and then immediately file a motion for cloture on the motion to proceed. That's because a cloture motion must, by rule, wait two days before there can be a vote on it. So it's two days from making the motion to proceed before you can even have a vote on whether or not to vote on that motion to proceed. Then, even if you trounce the objecting Senator in the cloture vote, the rules also allow up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate, if the objecting Senator(s) choose to claim them. So all told, it can take 78 hours of Senate time to overcome the objections of a Senator with a hold. And that's just to get to the start of debate on the bill, which will itself then be subject to a filibuster. As would all amendments to the bill.

If the objecting Senator is still making a stink, you'll want to file for cloture on the bill, too, which means waiting the same 78 hours to get that over with. So it can take a full week of the Senate's time to get to a vote on a bill that's being held -- and that's only if there are no amendments to it. If there are amendments and you file for cloture as soon as the actual bill's debate starts, it can have the effect of precluding debate on amendments, because once cloture is invoked on the bill, that ends debate, including debate on amendments. And some of those amendments are going to be things you and your colleagues want to vote on. You might even find that if you file cloture right away, some Senators who have important amendments but oppose the filibuster will vote no on cloture anyway, just so that they can get a chance to offer and debate their amendments. So you can't file cloture right away. Instead you have to let debate on the amendments begin. And if the objecting Senator just wants to blow up the whole thing, he can filibuster the amendments, and then again you take three days to get to a vote on that amendment. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Of course, someone in the position that Senator Dodd was in last December might want to filibuster the motion to proceed, and filibuster the underlying bill at the end of the process. But he wouldn't want to filibuster his own amendment to strip the immunity provisions from the FISA bill. In fact, a lot of Senators who opposed Dodd's amendment and supported the bill probably wanted to file cloture on the whole bill right away, so that very few if any amendments could have been considered. In the negotiations preceding consideration of the bill, then, that provided leverage for the other side in getting concessions back from Dodd. For instance, the 60 vote requirement for passage of certain amendments might have been something that Dodd found he had to agree to, just to get the other Senators to agree not to file for cloture on the whole bill right away, thereby preserving his opportunity to offer his immunity-stripping amendment.

So the rules actually don't allow a single Senator to simply block a bill forever just by putting a hold on it. But the practical effect of a hold and the threat it implies -- depending on how many allies the Senator has to help him hold the floor -- is that the Senate may have to spend weeks on end dealing with this one bill and its amendments. And if it's a dumb-ass bill that nobody really needs to pass, even if it would be nice to have it, the Majority Leader's mental calculus on the question of should he tell the holding Senator to go jump in the lake, is an immediate "no." It sucks, but it's better just to "honor" the hold and not bother with the time they would waste pushing this bill through. That's the case with some of what Coburn held. Everybody wanted to pass them, they were very popular (i.e., not "dumb-ass" at all), but ultimately nobody wanted to spend a whole week on it.

With Dodd and FISA, the situation was different. A large majority of the Senate wanted to pass it, didn't much care if it took two weeks to do it, and felt it was a reasonable trade-off to have to do it, since the Protect America Act was "expiring" and they'd just have to bite the bullet and be bored for two weeks.

Once that became clear, the question was whether Reid should take the responsibility of making the motion to proceed, or whether he should refuse on principle, only to see Rockefeller make it and win it over Reid's objections (assuming he really was opposed to it). Staying on top as Majority Leader is a delicate balance. The Senate Democratic Caucus is relatively small, and it's filled with egos who all believe they could and should be Majority Leader instead of you. So you want to avoid situations where sizable majorities of your own caucus side with someone else and override you because they perceive you as standing in the way of their voting on a bill that they think will save their asses from Republican attacks. If you get between them and the magic potion they think will win them reelection, they will find themselves a Majority Leader who won't do that to them.

So Reid counts the votes, sees that it's inevitable that this bill is coming to the floor in three days or less, and he can either sacrifice his leadership position on that altar, or read the writing on the wall and move it to the floor and vote against it if he doesn't like it.

And that's the story of the Senatorial hold.

But keep in mind that that whole thing is too complex for any traditional media reporter to write about. No editor would ever give a reporter that much space to explain something that complex, when he's supposed to be covering the actual bill. Instead, it's much easier to just tell people that a hold can magically keep a bill off the floor forever, since in the overwhelming number of cases, that's what the practical effect of it looks like from the outside. So people get used to believing that, and then are stunned when a hold they actually favor goes the other way.

And that's why blogs were invented, and people like them better than newspapers. The end.

"Crossword Tommy" Coburn, scourge of bathroom lesbians everywhere, is notorious among his colleagues for being a serial abuser of the Senatorial "hold," used to block legislation from coming to the floor for a vote.

Lots of people have wondered how it is that Coburn is able to hold up so many bills, many of them extremely popular on both sides of the aisle. Well, the truth is that a hold by itself doesn't actually stop legislation. A lot of other factors have to come together to make it work, but that's a subject for another day.

Today, let's just enjoy the anticipation of seeing what happens when those other factors begin to unravel:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a "Coburn Omnibus" for July that would wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate, according to a Coburn aide and two Democratic leadership staffers.

Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support. By placing a hold, Coburn prevents the bills from passing quickly through the Senate under a unanimous consent request. With floor time at such a premium, Reid would have trouble bringing up each bill for an individual debate and vote.

But in a stroke of legislative creativity that may have no precedent, Reid could lump all of the bills into one package and bring up the Coburn Omnibus for a single vote. Coburn can still object, but the broad popularity of the bills means that there would likely be more than enough support for veto-proof passage.

Ha-ha!

This would really be a terrific play by Reid. Individually, these bills -- though they enjoy popular, bipartisan support -- aren't by themselves a high enough priority for the use of Senate floor time to justify jumping through the hoops of Coburn's objections, motions to proceed, cloture votes, etc. But lumped together, they can all be moved at once, and lean on one another for the support of a large majority of Senators, many of whom have had e-friggin'-nuff of Coburn's shenanigans.

Kudos to Reid for the idea, and a backhanded thanks to Crossword Tommy for illustrating for us why, once upon a time at least, Senators didn't just put holds on everything under the sun.

Do the Democrats want to lose? That seems an odd question to ask. But they do it so well you begin to wonder. Now, they are about to lose to Bush and the grossly unpopular Republicans again on FISA and telecom immunity. But are they really losing? That depends on what your objective is. Let me explain.

There's more to public health than pandemic preparedness. On an international scale, for example, there's HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria (being concerned about one thing doesn't mean ignoring the others). So, here's an interesting story.

President Bush’s program to fight HIV/AIDS is considered by Republicans and Democrats alike to be one of the unvarnished foreign policy successes of his presidency.

So why has broad bipartisan legislation seeking to more than triple the program’s funding to $50 billion caused such a rancorous fight?

Ask Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D.

Why indeed?

Now, let's give some background. The Senate bill in question is S. 2731: Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 and it's equivalent in the House is H.R. 5501: Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008. The House bill passed with 100% of Dems and 60% of Republicans supporting it. The Senate bill is considered "in committee" and not yet brought to a vote. That's because Tom Coburn and six other GOP Senators have blocked it from being voted on, or even discussed.

What the bill does is reauthorize the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (also known as PEPFAR), "a five-year, $15 billion American Government initiative to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic." That is the one foreign policy initiative that this administration has bipartisan backing on.

As Avenging Angel diaried on Friday

As Politico detailed, Coburn and a group of six other socially conservative GOP Senators have placed a hold on the reauthorization of one of President Bush's few popular initiatives, the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  Enjoying broad bipartisan in Congress, the Senate has proposed boosting funding to $50 billion over five years.  But the Senate bill would do away with the previous requirements "that 55 percent of the HIV/AIDS appropriation be spent on treatment and drugs and that about 30 percent of prevention funds be allocated to abstinence education."

In other words, the legislation would:

• Authorize $50 billion to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis during the next five years.
• Provide treatment for at least three million AIDS patients.
• Prevent 12 million new HIV infections.
• Provide care for five million AIDS orphans.
• Train and support 140,000 new health professionals.
• Authorize $4 billion for the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis.
• Authorize $5 billion to fight malaria.  

Now, what could possibly be wrong with that? It's that "abstinence education" thing. Politico spells it out quite clearly:

The Oklahoma Republican, along with six other social conservatives, has put a hold on the bill in the Senate, unless a provision is added to direct most of the spending toward treatment for HIV/AIDS rather than toward prevention and other priorities. Otherwise, Coburn said, "the vast majority of the money is going to get consumed by those wanting to help people with HIV, rather than [by] people with HIV."

Coburn argues that treatment of HIV/AIDS-affected individuals usually drops their viral load to the point where they will not infect other people, and thus, it’s "the No. 1 prevention protocol we have."

But many other Republicans and Democrats, as well as outside public health experts and AIDS charities, dispute Coburn’s math. With the program, called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, set to expire in September, they are very concerned.

"Most experts agree that treatment is only one small part of the prevention agenda," said Denis Nash, director of monitoring, evaluation and research at the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs at Columbia University.

Nash, whose work includes studying the efficacy of PEPFAR programs, said that while anti-retroviral medication does considerably reduce the viral load, fewer than 10 percent of the 33 million people infected with HIV are receiving treatment.

"The prevention effect of treatment is not likely to be anywhere near the magnitude of prevention through prevention," including safe-sex education and condom distribution, said Mead Over, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

It's that "safe-sex education and condom distribution thing" that has the conservative Republicans all screwed up. See, the conservatives don't like condom use, even though it has proven effectiveness. They like abstinence, even though it's incomplete by itself, and has been remarkably controversial when applied to PEPFAR. So, they gin up objections that have no grounding in science. Here's Lancet on the topic:

"Many more lives will be saved if condom use is heavily promoted alongside messages to abstain and be faithful."^*

^{* "HIV prevention policy needs an urgent cure", The Lancet 367(9518), 15-21 April 2006}

And that's where Tom Coburn comes in. He and his buddies are so far out on this they even have Republicans like Michael Gerson upset.

How much do seven members of the U.S. Senate weigh?

Eyeing them -- Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, David Vitter, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr -- I'd guess they probably come in at about 1,300 pounds. These are the Republicans who have signed a hold letter, preventing action on the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Now, how much do 3 million HIV-AIDS-infected people -- the treatment goal of a reauthorized PEPFAR -- weigh? This is a more difficult calculation. Adults with advanced forms of the disease can weigh about 60 pounds. Children with AIDS are like shadows falling on a scale. Maintaining weight becomes difficult with vomiting and diarrhea, with tuberculosis and fungal infections, with cancers such as Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma.

Coburn's response:

Part of Gerson's moral outrage is focused on my controversial stance that AIDS treatment dollars be spent on treatment. I want to preserve PEPFAR's original formula that sends at least 55 percent of all dollars to AIDS treatment so widows and orphans and actual patients, not program officers and consultants, will be the primary beneficiaries of the program.

It's not just Gerson that's ticked, it's also Richard Luger and 13 other Republicans who think this bill needs to get passed. There's are other consequences of not reauthorizing PEPFAR in a timely manner, including losing the ability to convince other nations in the G8 to cooperate and be generous with their own funding. More importantly, there are people who will die for lack of prevention and treatment.

What's scary about Coburn is not just how wrong he is (see the comments above from Denis Nash and Mead Over; they are public health experts, which Coburn is decidedly not), and how far out of the mainstream he is, it's that he's John McCain's chief medical adviser and functions as a medical adviser for Republicans (like Bill Frist on the Terri Schiavo debacle, Coburn is way over his head on this but Republicans turn to him anyway). John McCain in particular relies on Coburn to tell him what to do about medical issues (this reference is about condoms and AIDS):

Q: "But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?"

  Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) "Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before."

and despite having a year to read "Coburn's thing", on this issue said:

"I'll be glad to assist.  I'm sorry to tell you I'm not that familiar with the process of this legislation.

making Coburn's position – right or wrong –  all the more influential.

Be that as it may, the issue on the table is reauthorizing PEPFAR and saving lives, millions of them. The Senate needs to do what's needed to get this bill to a vote (it will pass overwhelmingly, just like in the House where it passed 308-116).

This is a story we will continue to follow.  And if you want to do something about it now, you can sign this petition. While we get to vote in November for people that understand public health and science, some things can't wait until November.

Update [2008-6-15 15:39:18 by DemFromCT]: For clarification, Coburn's main stated objection is removal of fixed allocation for funding treatment (55%) in favor of local flexibility. The Institute of Medicine has recommended against fixed allocation because it does not support sustainability. My own suspicions of conservative objections remain, but the public battle will be over the allocations provision.

Update [2008-6-16 0:20:15 by DemFromCT]: More on condoms.

The seven conservative Republicans are critical of the program's higher spending level and prevention programs that include condom promotion

A year after he admitted "you've stumped me" when asked whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV, John McCain once again finds himself in the AIDS spotlight.  On Wednesday, Americans learned that arch-conservative Tom Coburn (R-OK) is blocking Senate action on a proposed tripling of President Bush's global AIDS program.  That would be the same Tom Coburn John McCain extolled in March 2007 as "the guy I really respect" when it comes to policy for AIDS and contraceptives.

This diary post is my analysis of the hypocracy of calling abortion murder, but never jailing women for it.

Amanda Marcotte, of RH Reality Check and Pandagon, might be the one who first got the idea into my head about this hypocracy.

I'm sure she didn't discover the idea, but as far I can remember, she's the first place I have heard it, and heard it articulated very very well.

Thank you, Amanda. I recommend your writings, and book, to all.

My screen name on RH Reality is Harry834. Also find me at:

Superheroes, Liberal Politics, Sexual Freedom, and Endless Thought

In the face of falling fortunes in electoral politics, Senate Republicans have undertaken a campaign of scorched-earth obstruction that threatens to undermine a century of American moral leadership.  Like little children who will take their ball home if they don't get their way, these ridiculous cowards have amassed historic record of obstruction.  Last week it became a parody of itself when they attacked mothers, yes literally attacked mothers, by quashing a resolution in favor of Mother's Day.  

Now, Seven Senators have put a "hold" on re-authorization of the single most life-saving aid package operating in American foreign policy today, and may doom literally millions of Africans to almost certain death.  

Why aren't the Obama people doing this? Last Sunday on ABC we had to sit through and listen to McCain's emetic accolades i.e. "Senator Coburn is a life lover who bring babies to the world...". Of course Stephanopoulos didn't even BOTHER to bring up Coburn's well documented history of bigoted statements, but... why aren't the Obama people all over this??

As noted by DemFromCT on the front page, John McCain has once again revealed his profound ignorance of basic issues when questioned about HIV prevention and condoms.

Per the New York Times:

What followed was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain’s aides, standing off to the back, urgently motioning his press secretary to come to Mr. McCain’s side.

The upshot was that Mr. McCain said he did not know this subject well, did not know his position on it, and relied on the advice of Senator Tom Coburn, a physician and Republican from Oklahoma.

McCain revealed his masterful grasp of the facts:

“The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn... I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out... I have to find out what my position was... Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

So who exactly is this Dr. Coburn?

The short answer is: It's Harry Reid's fault. But let me back up a bit.

The New York Times published an important article February 24 on the fears that many Americans have about seeking out genetic testing for disease. A positive test for a pre-disposition to a genetically-based disease could lead to higher health insurance premiums, a loss of coverage altogether, or even the loss of a job.

It's a scary situation for anyone, especially for those who have family histories of such illnesses. Do you get tested and put your healthcare and job at risk? Or avoid testing - and, of course, put your very health at risk?

Fortunately, Rep. Louise Slaughter has a solution (at least until we have universal healthcare). After twelve years of being rebuffed by recidivist Republicans, Rep. Slaughter was finally able to pass the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (aka GINA) after Democrats re-took the House last year. As she explained at the time:

GINA will prevent the improper use of genetic information when workforce and insurance decisions are made. To put it another way, employers and insurance companies will be prohibited from using genetic information as a factor in determining hiring, firing, promotion, or medical coverage decisions. It will allow people to take and participate in genetic tests that could save their lives and the lives of others, without fear of their test results being used against them.

The bill passed overwhelmingly, 420-3. Everyone assumed that passage in the Senate would be a cakewalk - a similar bill had been approved in that body twice before, and even President Bush said he would sign it. But that was until Sen. Tom Coburn's ugly mug showed up on the scene.

Coburn actually voted for GINA in 2005, yet now he's placed a "hold" on the bill. Rep. Slaughter says that Coburn's excuses for his hold "don't make sense," but what makes even less sense is Harry Reid's respect for that hold.

A hold, as we well know, simply means that the senator placing it intends to (or at least claims he or she will) filibuster the bill if it's brought to the floor. The surest way to test the sincerity of such a claim is for the Majority Leader - in this case, Reid - to actually go ahead and force a vote on the bill. Seeing as the 2005 version of GINA passed by 98-0, there's no way Coburn could muster 39 other Republicans to sustain his filibuster.

So why the hell is Harry Reid honoring this sure-to-fail hold?

There is no reason that I can discern. We can't even pretend that Reid is doing this out of a too-great fealty to Senate tradition - we are all too familiar, by now, with his ugly history of ignoring holds placed by fellow Democrats, such as those placed by Ron Wyden and Chris Dodd. If Reid has no problems running roughshod over the perogatives of members of his own caucus, then surely he can disregard Coburn's abusive and senseless hold as well.

I'm not a reflexive Reid basher, but there is no justification for this. I expect the Tom Coburns of the world to be irredeemable jerks. And I expect our party's Senate Majority Leader to recognize that and govern accordingly. Reid needs to steamroll Coburn's hold immediately. Countless Americans, who wrongly are forced to live in fear of the consequences of genetic testing, deserve no less.

We can expect more of this from Republican politicians who are trying to remove the Iraq albatross as we approach November but, per recent abysmal polls, Americans are in no mood for caveats and excuses from squirmy Republicans.  So Republicans appear to be testing out the "coming clean" strategy as a political tactic to address their extreme unpopularity.  After all, Bush and Cheney are irrelevant at this point particularly to Republican politicians trying to hold onto their jobs this election or, as in Coburn's case, the 2010 election.

Coburn declines to elaborate on Iraq War statement

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn's comment that going to war in Iraq was "probably a mistake" represents a significant departure from where the Oklahoma Republican started out on the 5-year-old conflict.

Coburn's comment came at the beginning of remarks at a weekend town hall meeting in Muskogee.

"I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq," said the freshman senator, who made it clear he did not believe the U.S. could withdraw but had to stay.

In the past couple of months, as a side effect of Harry Reid's contemptuous dismissal of Chris Dodd's attempted hold on the AT&T Out Of Jail Free bill, we've all learned that the king of holds is one Tom Coburn (Reactionary - OK). This week, the premier British science journal Nature dresses him down as a "rogue Senator" for one of the more pernicious of those holds.

Last April, the House passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. It sets criminal penalties for any insurer or employer who discriminates against an individual based on her or his DNA sequences. As Nature points out, the number of genes which have been identified as correlates of susceptibility to various disorders keeps growing by leaps and bounds, up by more than 8% in the last half a year, to some 1,286.

That's a heck of a lot of "pre-existing conditions".