Coburn wins, Reid whines

Sen. Reid's "Coburn Omnibus" bill, designed to be rammed through the Senate with as little debate and amendment as possible, failed to get the 60 votes necessary to proceed.

The MSM is still portraying the 35 bills contained in the omnibus as "noncontroversial". If there weren't any controversy, they'd have already passed by unanimous acclaim. That's the whole point of the Senate: provide a check on the tyranny of the majority, which is especially important now that Congress has learned to trade favors with itself to protect incumbents.

Update: I should add, kudos to the MSM for even covering the so-called "Coburn Omnibus" vote. But why is their coverage (NYT, WaPo) so slanted against Coburn? Is it because he's a Republican? Or is he being covered by DC journalists who're miffed by his opposition to expanded DC Metro spending?

Reid vs. Coburn

John Fund posts at the WSJ:

Mr. Reid is telling reporters he will no longer tolerate the Oklahoma Republican blocking about 100 bills using the power Senate rules give individual member to stop legislation from coming to a floor vote.

This is incorrect. Sen. Coburn is not blocking any bill from coming to the floor. Rather he is blocking unanimous consent, because he wants those bills to come to the floor, where they can be debated and amended.

It's hard to tell where the error in the post comes from, whether it originated with Reid or was introduced by Fund. Either way, it doesn't help Coburn's cause.

Posting from the new 3G iPhone

So far I'm liking it well enough. As with all PDA's, the keyboard is not optimal for written composition, but I like it better than any other hand-held I've tried. I really like the iPhone version of Safari. It helps to have the larger screen, but what's really nice are the zoom and scroll functions. So far I've only found a few websites that don't work in the small browser.

The native mail app is okay, but I don't like it with gmail. It doesn't offer any way to archive conversations, and I don't see a way to search the archive. Which is fine, since gmail works great in Safari.

Things to try...
- Bluetooth headset
- Bluetooth sync (if that's possible?)
- Downloading/installing new apps

Coburn Omnibus

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is currently blocking 95 spending-related bills in the Senate. He won't release them until they've been debated and amended. This prevents them from being passed with unanimous consent, and requires an actual floor vote if not debate and/or amendment.

Senate Majority Leader Reid has now bundled many of those bills into what he calls the "Coburn Omnibus" bill, which he plans to ram through in late July. He believes the combination will enjoy broad support, and will therefore quickly pass with a veto-proof majority.

In other words, despite his anti-pork rhetoric, Reid is bound and determined to spend all the money he wants to spend. I wish I could find a list of the bills included, but apparently I'm not very good at searching thomas.gov.

Ryan Grim at Politico says "Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support." That's the point: Coburn believes government spending is a controversy, and is trying to raise awareness.

Question: Why isn't this getting any attention in the MSM?

(h/t Bob Novak via RCP)