I’ll bet that some Senators wish they’d been a little more reasonable about Senator Coburn’s medical practice. It was surely just one more reason to be unwilling to play ball (though I suspect that in fact it probably wouldn’t matter).

When Coburn disparaged an earmark for Seattle — $500,000 for a sculpture garden — Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was scandalized: “We are not going to watch the senator pick out one project and make it into a whipping boy.” She invoked the code of comity: “I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home state senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us.” And she warned of Armageddon: “I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next.” But Coburn, who does not do earmarks, thinks Armageddon sounds like fun.

I hope he has lots of fun.