Okay, let’s give Tom Coburn the benefit of every conceivable doubt. Is it possible to read this comment as anything but a wish prayer that catastrophe befall one of his colleagues, especially with the frail and ailing 92-year-old Robert C. Byrd requiring a wheelchair to make it to the Senate Chamber?:
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.”