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Sen. Tom Coburn didn't go as far as his cohort, Sen. Lamar Alexander, who accused Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of acting just like Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal -- but he was still willing to accuse her of breaking the law by soliciting private donations to help implement the Affordable Care Act after Congress cut the purse strings.

Coburn appeared on this Monday's Your World With Neil Cavuto to discuss Republicans demands that there be an investigation into whether Sebelius violated any appropriations and ethics rules, and while he was more than willing to imply that the HHS secretary might have broken the law, he was careful to parse his words while doing so:

COBURN: I have no doubt in my mind they have broken US code by augmenting their appropriations. I've had several large insurance executives tell me that they were asked to contribute to this. So we're just beginning on this, but if it's not illegal, it should be and it's for sure unethical and it is definitely a conflict of interest to extort money from the very people that you regulate.

As Think Progress pointed out a few weeks ago, Republicans didn't mind it so much when they did the exact same thing during the last administration: Senator Who Criticized Sebelius For Soliciting Donations Asked For Private Funds While Serving In Bush Administration:

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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Sunday used the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had scrutinized tea party groups to slam the agency's connection to President Barack Obama's heath care reform law.

Host Chris Wallace pointed out to Ryan on Fox News Sunday that the Treasury inspector general had suggested that a recent IRS scandal had been a "bureaucratic snafu" because tea party groups only represented 96 of the 298 groups that received special scrutiny about their tax-exempt status.

Ryan, however, insisted that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their political beliefs and "to suggest that this is some bureaucratic snafu, that's already been disproven."

"The other point I'd say is that as bad as this is, the person in charge of this bureaucratic snafu is now been put in charge of implementing Obamacare," he continued. "I mean, the IRS is now going to be granted huge amounts of unprecedented power over our health care in the implementation of Obamacare."

"And so this is just rotten to the core. This is arrogance. This is big government cronyism. And this is not what hard-working taxpayers deserve."

CBS News observed last week that there was no evidence that Sarah Hall Ingram, who headed the IRS office overseeing tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012, "sanctioned or was even aware of the targeting practices."

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday declared that efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care reform law were "now revived" after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted that it had inappropriately targeted conservative groups to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

At a tea party rally in Washington D.C., the Minnesota Republican pointed to the scandal as evidence that the IRS should not be allowed to distribute subsidies for health care coverage through state exchanges and issue penalties for individuals who elect not get insurance.

"As someone who formerly worked for the IRS, I can tell you this is the largest ramp-up and expansion, both of employees but also on an area of jurisdiction on one of the largest new entitlement programs that the American people have seen in decades," she told the crowd. "That's why it's crucial that we ask these questions now, when our most personal, sensitive, intimate information -- our health care information -- will all be centralized in a national federal database."

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Retired professional boxer Mike Tyson on Monday briefly shocked Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade by saying that he was "looking forward" to paying taxes to the federal government, but hoped to save money with "Obamacare."

The former heavyweight champion told Kilmeade that he was hoping to pay off millions in back taxes with a one-man show about his life.

"I'm so proud to be in this," Tyson explained. "I look forward to paying off my taxes and paying off my country, because that's my duty. I know they say that's legal extortion, but listen, I'm living in this country and if I got to pay taxes, that's the money that I paid for my life on Earth."

As Tyson was speaking, Kilmeade appeared momentarily dumbstruck, eyes wide and mouth open.

"I've got the biggest liberal family in the world," Tyson continued. "But I had the more money when Bush and Reagan was president! Oh I shouldn't -- my wife's going to kill me for that."

"Bush and Reagan had this idea that you should keep your money," Kilmeade said.

"Yeah, I'd like that to work for me," Tyson replied. "I'm going to work on that one to with this Obama administration, see can this Obamacare help us keep some money."

(h/t: Twitter/@igorvolsky)

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Sunday clashed with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren after she asserted that President Barack Obama's administration was strangling small businesses with "laughable" regulations.

"No one's paying much attention to these small businesses," Van Susteren opined during an ABC panel discussion. "The regulations that are strangling them, some are laughable and silly, but they have profound impact on the job creators, those who are making jobs. They can't afford to hire people."

"There's been tons of work on this," Krugman pointed out. "And what's holding small business back is not regulation, it's the fact that they don't have sales. There's no correlation."

"Which parts of the economy do small businesses complain about regulation, which don't -- there's no correlation between that an actual job creation."

ABC host George Stephanopoulos suggested that the "one exception" could be Obama's health care reform law, which requires businesses with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance.

"Don't you see some firms cutting off at 49?" the ABC host wondered.

"There might be but you can't see that in the numbers," Krugman explained.

"Instead of looking at just numbers, why don't you sit down and talk to them?" Van Susteren interrupted. "And if you actually talk to these people, a lot of them are struggling with this. They don't understand a lot of the things that happen to them, they don't understand a lot of things that happen in Washington. They're very cautious because they see a dismal economy out there."

"I have talked to them, that's not what they're saying to me," Krugman shot back.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday insisted that it was her "duty as a believer in Christ" repeal President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law before "it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens."

In a speech on the House floor, the Minnesota Republican thanked Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) for continuing the fight to undo Obamacare.

"The American people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and get less," Bachmann opined. "That's why we're here because we're saying let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens!"

"Let's not do that!" she exclaimed. "Let's love people, let's care about people. Let's repeal it now while we can."

Bachmann explained that she was fighting Obamacare because she was a "born again believer in Jesus Christ."

"And I believe, as part of my duty as a believer in Christ and what he has done for me, that we should do for the least of those who are in our midst," she said. "That's my personal belief and my personal conviction. And that's why I want our government to create the space so that we can help people, because I'll guarantee you one thing, Mr. Speaker, this doesn't help people."

Burgess thanked the former Republican presidential candidate for her remarks, adding that she had "a way of stating these things that none of the rest of us are capable of."

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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Sunday admitted that the entire Republican budget was based on repealing Obamacare, President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Ryan how the Republican budget could cut $770 billion out of Medicare in the next 10 years without impacting benefits.

"These are increases that have not come yet," the Wisconsin congressman explained. "So by repealing Obamacare and the Medicaid expansions, which haven't occurred yet, we are basically preventing the explosion of a program that is already failing. So we're saying, don't grow this program through Obamacare because it doesn't work."

"Are you saying, as part of you budget, you would repeal -- you assume the repeal of Obamacare?" Wallace pressed.

"Yes," Ryan insisted.

"Well, that's not going to happen," Wallace pointed out.

"Well, we believe it should, that's the point," Ryan replied. "This is what budgeting is all about, Chris. It's about making tough choices to fix our country's problems. We believe that Obamacare is a program that will not work."

After Obama's re-election in November, House Speaker John Boehner suggested that Republicans were trying to pivot away from an obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act.

"I think the election changes that," Boehner told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "It's pretty clear that the president was re-elected, Obamacare is the law of the land."

But in January, Republicans voted for the 33rd time in 18 months to repeal the health care reform law.

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No matter how many times this "death panel" myth gets debunked, you can count on Fox to do their best to continue to resuscitate it, as Fox's Neil Cavuto and one of their team of crackpot doctors, Manny Alvarez did this Thursday afternoon.

Leave it to Fox to take what otherwise looks like a pretty benign study by the University of California, San Francisco and turn it on its head as the new "death panels" in "Obamacare." Alvarez wrote an op-ed for the Fox News web site which you can read here which I'm quite sure was the basis for his appearance here with Cavuto: Dr. Manny: I am completely against this new medical ‘death test’:

Let me be very clear: I did not go into medicine to decide who lives and who dies.

I went into health care because I wanted to heal, to comfort, to educate and to study the illnesses that afflict my patients. And I don’t need a crystal ball to know when a patient is extremely safe or when he or she is going to die.

So I am somewhat confused as to the purpose of this new ‘mortality index.’ A new study from the University of California, San Francisco with funding from the federal government revealed 12 specific items physicians can use to help them determine whether costly screenings or medical procedures are worth the risk for patients unlikely to live 10 years or more.

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Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol says that Latino voters decided to support President Barack Obama over former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 because they wanted government handouts like free health care "and thought Obamacare provided it."

During a panel discussion on Fox News Sunday, Kristol told host Chris Wallace that the Romney campaign believed that the candidate's so-called "self-deportation" policy -- which encouraged undocumented immigrants to deport themselves by making their lives in the U.S. more difficult -- had very little impact on the election.

Kristol explained: "This was the line that the campaign took and they claim their polls showed and focus groups showed that lower-income Hispanics were not put off by what Gov. Romney said during the primaries about self-deportation and his attacks on Gingrich and Perry for being more moderate on immigration, but that they like the promise of Obamacare and that even though the national polls showed that Obamacare was unpopular among a majority of the public that this helped him with lower-income voters and especially Hispanics."

"I personally think it's a bit of an excuse to explain away the damage he did to himself with what he said about immigration and in the fall," the conservative pundit admitted. "And also on Obamacare, maybe he did lose some votes on Obamacare for those that didn't have health insurance and thought Obamacare provided it."

"I think one can say that Gov. Romney didn't prosecute the case against Obamacare terribly aggressively, and to be fair to the governor, the Republican Party as a whole didn't prosecute an alternative proposal for health care to explain to the uninsured, how we're going to -- Republicans are going to take care of your problems more effectively than the Democrats."

In a conference call with donors after the election, Romney had insisted that Obama bribed Hispanics, African-Americans, women and youth voters with “gifts” like “free health care” and “amnesty for children of illegals.”

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama's health care programs for the middle class should be slashed to stop scheduled sequester cuts from "destroying the military."

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace point out that the White House has said that if the sequester cuts are not stopped then 70,000 children will lose Head Start, food inspections would be cut and $900 billion in small business loan guarantees would be lost.

"You know the president will say that your party is forcing this to protect tax cuts for the wealthy," Wallace told Graham.

"The commander-in-chief came up with the idea of sequestration -- destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk," Graham insisted. "Here's my idea, let's take Obamacare and put it on the table. You can make $86,000 in income and still get a subsidy under Obamacare. Obamacare is destroying health care in this country."

"If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let's look at Obamacare. Let's don't destroy the military and just cut blindly across board," he added. "The president promised it wouldn't happen, he's the commander-in-chief and on his watch, we're going to begin to unravel the finest military in the history of the world at a time we need it most."

"The Iranians are watching us, we're allowing people to be destroyed and slaughtered in Syria. So, I just really -- I'm very disappointed in our commander-in-chief."