News
Jonathan Nicholson
Quick: Name an Oklahoma politician who is pals with President Barack Obama, voted for the 2008 bank bailout, believes the military can be cut by 10 percent without harm and thinks increased taxes must be on the table for deficit reduction.

CFN
Gazette staff
Q: When is a car not a gun?
A: When it’s a car.

CFN
Gazette staff
U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, is to Capitol Hill charts what John Holmes was to porno movies: Both know how to make a big impression.

CFN
Gazette staff
Freshly appointed federal Judge Robert Bacharach has been receiving so much praise from lawmakers lately, it's enough to make you wonder why it took the Senate so darned long to confirm the Edmond resident to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

CFN
Gazette staff
The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger and Oscar Madison didn’t have anything on President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Muskogee. The Democratic commander-in-chief and the Republican lawmaker have nearly nothing in common politically, but the two have been friends since they were freshmen senators in 2004.

News
Jerry Bohnen
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, doesn’t lack an opinion on most topics, but there are exceptions.

CFN
Gazette staff
Who knew weather had, as Stephen Colbert might say, a well-known political bias? That seemed to be the case last week as the tornado that leveled Moore also reignited a long-running debate in Washington, D.C., over federal spending for emergencies. Republicans say Democrats dress up emergency spending bills with unneeded extras, while Dems counter that Repubs don’t want to spend money for victims of natural disasters.

CFN
Gazette staff
We’ll say this for U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn: No amount of government spending is too modest for him to oppose. The Muskogee Republican recently has taken his crusade against federal largesse to his Coburn’s hostility for the colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Letters to the Editor
Barbara Johnson
Oklahoma by record is the “reddest” state in the Union. It is the only state in which every county voted Republican in the last two presidential elections. The Republicans have made it clear that they feel the government is an enemy — a “tyrannical” government that further compounds the right to bear arms as a necessity for protection against such government. It has been made clear that their feeling is that they do not need the government in their lives.