Keith Olbermann didn't parse any words during his Worst Persons segment on Countdown this Thursday and went after Sen. Tom Coburn for his eliminationist rhetoric where he said that “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor." And then as John already noted, proceeded to attack President Obama as an affirmative action recipient and claimed the country was better off before we had Medicare in place.
Keith called for Coburn to resign and I agree with him. Not that he's going to care what anyone thinks since he's not running for reelection anyway.
OLBERMANN: But when he moved from health care and casual racism to the debt ceiling deal, Sen. Coburn took a step down from the simply mean spirited, out of touch, whiny elitism which has marked his political career and moved towards ineligibility for the office which he holds.
He called his colleagues “cowards” and then added “It's just a good thing I can't pack a gun on the Senate floor.”
Yes it is, but apparently that's insufficient protection for the rest of us. For a sitting U.S. Senator to say in public that he even daydreams or jokes about the prospect of shooting other Senators is not just to ignore the supposed lessons of the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the other victims of Tuscon. It is not just to ignore the years before the Civil War when Congressman Preston Brooks of Georgia went up to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber and beat him into unconsciousness with a cane and kept him out of office for a year.
It is to pull at the threads of non-violent Democracy. It is unacceptable. It implies that other members of the U.S. Senate merit being shot, because they disagree with Sen. Coburn. And if that is indeed how he thinks, and he's not disavowed, nor apologized for, nor even addressed this remark, he is not just a personal danger to his colleagues, but more realistically he is the kind of dangerous inspiration to those of his supporters or constituents, or just anybody who hears his comments, who might be unstable enough to act on them.
As Sen. Coburn admits, it just a good thing he can't pack a gun on the Senate floor. But it would be a better thing still if he were not on the Senate floor.
If that's who you are Senator... resign.
