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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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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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Someone must have gotten Sean Hannity's talking points cross wired this week, because for once he wasn't reading straight from the script the Republican leadership sends over to him every morning. He didn't seem to happy when Ann Coulter of all people challenged him after he complained about the Republicans unwillingness to shut down the government and instead pass another stopgap measure to keep the government funded.

Despite Hannity's apparent belief that the entire country hates President Obama as much as he does and that opposing everything he does is somehow a good governing philosophy, most of the country would not look kindly on Republicans for this sort of brinksmanship.

Coulter Clashes With Hannity Over The GOP: ‘Passion And Principle Is Great, But You Need To Win Elections’:

Sean Hannity tonight said Congress should not have passed a continuing resolution on the budget earlier today, arguing that the GOP needs to take a stand if it is going to successfully repeal Obamacare. Ann Coulter disagreed vehemently with Hannity, saying that the Republican party needs to prioritize winning elections over “passion and principle” until they have clear majorities in both the House and Senate. [...]

Coulter argued that the government shutdown under Bill Clinton actually hurt Republicans, but Hannity shot back by saying the GOP held onto the House after it. She rolled her eyes at the idea of shutting down the government just to spite the president, saying that the party runs the risk of looking “impotent.” Hannity said that once Obamacare is fully implemented, it will be even harder for the GOP to fight for repeal. Coulter agreed that the health care law is horrible, but said the GOP needs to win in 2014 and 2016 if it wants to be in a better position to deal with it.

Hannity argued that “the single best thing” the Republican party can do to energize the base is to “take a stand against Obama,” citing the public response to Rand Paul over his drone filibuster. Coulter said that was more a consequence of the media happening to be in agreement with a Republican on something, though she admitted she personally loves drones.

Yeah, that nonexistent liberal media that's always beating up on Republicans. The only "principle" that the Republicans actually care about is not raising taxes on rich people and they don't care about deficits until there's a Democrat in the White House. Partial transcript below the fold.

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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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As Samuel Knight at the Washington Monthly took note of this Sunday, it seems the White House may be getting the message that they're going to have a lot of trouble from their own party if they continue to remain open to chained CPI for Social Security as part of some deficit deal with the Republicans. I was happy to see new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough push back at David Gregory's assertion that it was necessary to raise the Medicare retirement age to address the problems with the program.

David Gregory did his best to repeat one Republican talking point after another while pressing McDonough on whether the administration is going to be willing to cross his base and go after our social safety nets to get some deal on deficit reduction and as McDonough correctly pointed out, raising that age for Medicare isn't going to do a thing to reduce costs, it just shifts them around:

While on on ABC’s “This Week,” he was questioned about John Boehner’s assertion that President Obama lacks “the guts…to take on the liberal side of his own party” in budget negotiations.

McDonough responded with talking points, stressing that the White House will strengthen the middle class and the economy while seeking to pay back debt “in a balanced way.”

White on NBC’s “Meet The Press” he issued similar responses to David Gregory’s questions on the same issue, saying that President Obama would not seek to reduce government investments and weaken programs that help middle class families at a time when the economy is improving but still fragile. He also indicated that President Obama would not isolate Congressional Democrats that want to raise taxes on the wealthy, reiterating the President’s insistence on doing debt reduction “in a balanced way.”

In terms of the social safety net, McDonough told Gregory that the President wouldn’t seek to raise the retirement age, calling it a “cost shifter.” He said that Affordable Care Act plans to rein in Medicare spending will lead to the sort of outlay reductions sought by Simpson-Bowles.

But more importantly than what he said is what he didn’t say: that the President, according to a Jay Carney press conference earlier this week, “remains open to the chained CPI” as part of social security reform.

That McDonough wasn’t instructed to discuss the chained CPI indicates that either the White House isn’t actually keen on it, or that it simply isn’t eager to brag about its openness to the idea.

Let's hope it's the former. Once again, David Gregory remained true to form, where he can't seem to manage to make it though an interview without asking how much pain can be inflicted on the working class.

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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."

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It was nice to see Chris Wallace get some push back on the assertion that we should be trying to balance our budget on the backs of our seniors or that it saves us a dime to be throwing more of them into the private insurance market by raising the age for Medicare eligibility.

Pelosi Stresses Need For Job Growth In New Budget:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Democrats' desire to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes, during an interview which aired on "Fox News Sunday."

Pelosi stressed the need for a budget which will create jobs and argued that the sequester would do too much harm to the economy. She also batted down the idea of saving money by raising the Medicare eligibility age.

"Don't you think you ought to see if raising the age really does save money?" Pelosi said. "Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the earth for two years. They're going to have medical needs and they're going to have to be attended to. And the earlier the intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life. I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. And I do think the challenge to Medicare is not Medicare, the challenge is rising health care costs in general."

Wallace was doing his usual bit where he was carping about how it wouldn't do any good to raise taxes on the rich, because that would not completely solve the deficit problem. He had no response to this and simply moved on to the next subject.

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As expected, as soon as the Obama administration released their list of executive orders to help curb gun violence, the right wing went into full blown hissy fit mode. It seems Michelle Malkin took a page straight out of Limbaugh and Drudge's book on Fox this Thursday afternoon during this interview with Megyn Kelly.

Drudge And Limbaugh Misrepresent What Obama And The Affordable Care Act Say About Doctors And Guns:

As soon as President Obama's new recommendations for gun violence prevention became public, right-wing media immediately claimed the president was issuing an executive action requiring doctors to ask patients about their guns. This is false. The president's released proposals only clarify that nothing in the Affordable Care Act changes longstanding law: doctors are still free (but not required) to discuss with their patients any health hazards, including a lack of gun safety at home or elsewhere.

Among the White House proposals for gun violence reduction, the president announced that the administration will "[c]larify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes." Nowhere in his proposal did he instead require doctors to ask about guns. The Drudge Report, however, immediately splashed across its website this graphic:

Rush Limbaugh picked up on this flatly inaccurate claim that the president required doctors to ask their patients about "gun ownership." Rather than explain the president's executive action only indicated future orders, regulations, or guidance will clarify that no law - including the ACA - prohibits them from discussing gun safety with their patients, Limbaugh reported it as a new directive that "deputizes gun-snitch doctors": [...]

Limbaugh concedes that the executive action doesn't literally say that doctors are required to ask about gun safety, but rather, in his interpretation, "the executive action today is almost essentially requiring it." The president's proposal was likely a direct response to these types of wildly erroneous interpretations of the health care reform law and executive orders that were already floating around the right-wing blogosphere, before Limbaugh added his analysis.

Go read the rest for more on how the right is lying about the language in the law. Malkin did the exact same thing during the interview above with Megyn Kelly and in a post at her blog the previous day. (Warning, link goes to Malkin's site.)

The anti-gun doctors’ lobby has a friend in Obama:

Anyone with kids knows that the invasive, anti-gun doctors’ lobby has been around a long time.

Flashback October 2007: Is your pediatrician using your kid to spy on you?

Flashback July 2008: More nosy doctors who don’t like guns

The liberal leadership of the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have long been filled with notorious gun-grabbers — and they’ve promoted years of junk science to pursue their Nanny State agenda.

Now comes President Obama, who has deputized doctors to “help” snoop on law-abiding, gun-owning patients even further. Moreover, the White House has now lent federal support to doctors’ groups trying to fight state efforts to protect gun owners’ privacy: [...]

Political malpractice plus medical malpractice in the name of saving the children is a recipe for authoritarianism. The Hippocratic Oath has been turned on its head.

Malkin seems to have a little trouble understanding the difference between "does not prohibit" and mandates. Who knew we had all of those evil liberal doctors out there who are more worried about taking away everyone's guns than doing their job and providing health care to their patients. Be afraid... be very afraid!