"And that means running progressive challengers against them in primaries, or targeting them with critical ads, even if doing so, in isolated cases.."

I knew of a pro-life Democrat Assemblyman in NY State, who faced minimal opposition when it came to election time. Because of his pro-life views,Planned-Parenthood would toss up a candidate to oppose him. Noever worked in that district...
dpt | 07.31.08 - 11:33 am | #

The actual issue when you get through all the links is that professional work should not be done while in Congress. Under the current interpretation of the rules, a congressman who performed free abortions would be equally proscribed. Obviously we can't evaluate what changes to rules would be made or how the would actually be enforced, but an hypocrisy charge seems awfully premature. My opinion is that the practice of medicine would not have a tendency to cause conflicts of interest, and ethics rules should reflect that.
M.Z. Forrest | Homepage | 07.31.08 - 12:13 pm | #

Coburn found allies in Frist and former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who chaired the Rules Committee at the time. Changing the Senate’s rules to allow Coburn to continue his work would have required 67 votes, which Frist and Lott knew would be difficult to reach.

Instead, in September 2005 they decided to offer a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that essentially let the Ethics Committee know the Senate wouldn’t back up any finding it made that delivering babies while a sitting senator was illegal. That resolution only needed 60 votes to be approved.

It failed, however, garnering only 51 votes. Only four of the body’s then 44 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, and Boxer was not one of them.

Only 4 of 44 Democrats favored allowing babies to be delivered for free?
Bob LeBlanc | Homepage | 08.01.08 - 12:48 am | #

Those must've been the "Pro-Life Democrats" we keep hearing about...

My believe that many of the Pro-Life Democrats of the 1980's and 90's became members of the GOP....which is why the USA congress is in such a shambles today......when you make deals with the devil.......
Confederate Papist | 08.01.08 - 8:07 am | #

"The actual issue when you get through all the links is that professional work should not be done while in Congress."

Which, unless there is a genuine conflict of interest at stake, is completely ridiculous in and of itself and leads to our current plague of career politicians.
Mia Storm | 08.01.08 - 3:42 pm | #