Bill O'Reilly Tom Coburn: What Coburn Conveniently Forgot

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) was on O'Reilly tonight to explain why he took a couple of shots at FOX News recently. The background to the story is an Oklahoma woman in a Townhall setting in Coburn's district asked the Senator about a penalty in the health care law that could result in a jail sentence for failure to buy health care and/or failure to pay a penalty. Coburn told her there was no intention to put anyone in jail. Then he unleashed on her. He accused her of watching FOX News. See new video below.

So tonight on O'Reilly Coburn tries to tell Bill that his constituents watch FOX, and if she thought there was a jail penalty, it had to come from FOX. He actually said: "she didn't make that up."

O'Reilly opined that his staff had done their homework and no one on FOX ever said there were jail penalties in the health care law. Coburn didn't know what to say to that.

But here's the real story: In the House bill there was a jail penalty! The Senate took the language out. The woman should have been praised for knowing her stuff. Afterall, how could any of us keep up with the thousands of pages in the House bill, in the Senate bill, and in the House reconciliation bill? It was very difficult to know what actually passed - as Pelosi warned us by saying, "we need to pass health care so you will know what's in it."

Either Coburn is ill informed or disingenuous. He is my Senator. Most of the time I am very proud to have him represent me, but his attitude was unfortunate. He owes an apology to the woman and to all Conservative Oklahomans, whom he seems to think knows nothing unless we get it from FOX News.

Bill O'Reilly and Tom Coburn - What Coburn Forgot (video)