With his recent election to the United States Senate, you would think that former Saturday Night Live stalwart Al Franken is a shoe-in for "Funniest Member of Congress." Before he can claim victory, he will first have to fight Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn for the distinction; the main difference between the two legislators being that Franken tried to get laughs for most of his career while Coburn has spent his redefining the Unintentional Comedy Scale. A recent announcement by Coburn has done little to change this.

Coburn, who enjoys spending his time railing against pork barrel spending and hating that "Silent Spring" lady you remember from 11th grade Biology, recently introduced an amendment creating a new federal "Office of Unborn Children's Health." Coburn, who has made it something of a personal crusade to attack his colleagues for what he deems to be unnecessary pet projects, believes that federal tax dollars should go towards the establishment of an office that among other things will publish a brochure reminding pregnant women that "there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain."

It should be noted that Coburn is in fact a licensed obstetrician in the state of Oklahoma. He is an obstetrician that was once accused of performing a non-consensual sterilization on a female patient and was subsequently investigated for Medicaid fraud, but an obstetrician nonetheless.

Just to be clear, Senator Coburn is vehemently against spending tax dollars on government health coverage for uninsured Americans but is fine with spending those same dollars on an office focused around the health issues of Americans who have not been (and may never be) born. Well at least he's consistent.

All of this would be somewhat shocking if not for the fact that it is coming from Tom Coburn, one of Washington's most controversial and divisive lawmakers. Coburn after all is the same person who claimed NBC's decision to broadcast an unedited version of the Holocaust epic "Schindler's List" exhibited "irresponsible sexual behavior" on the part of the network and brought television to an "all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence, and profanity." One might say that subtlety and reason might not exactly be the good doctor's strong suit.

Coburn's efforts to establish this new office have been met with widespread condemnation in the pro-choice community. Molly Jackson of NARAL Pro-Choice America claimed in a blog post that the amendment "goes from unreasonable to absurd in under 20 seconds." She went on to add that "it is unconscionable that Sen. Coburn continues to use legislation on this important issue as a means to continue his ideological attacks."

Writing for the Huffington Post, Planned Parenthood of America President Cecile Richards said of Coburn's proposed office "No one's totally sure who would staff it or exactly what they would be doing -- but suffice it to say the perennial assault on women's health care is upon us full force."

It is not Senator Coburn's pro-life stance that is necessarily troubling; there certainly are countless diverse and valid opinions when it comes to the abortion debate. Rather it is the Senator's willingness to call out any colleague who dare want to spend federal money on anything for being addicted to pork, while he is clamoring for the establishment of a federal office that serves no real practical purpose other than the bolstering of his own ideology.

Regardless of what you think about his views there is something admirable about Coburn's consistency when it comes to the abortion issue, he believes what he believes and he believes it passionately. When it comes to government spending however, Coburn's other favorite straw man issue, his inconsistency reeks of the worst kind of hypocrisy. Well it doesn't reek as much as this, but it's pretty close.

Also Interesting:

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[+] What’s in the stimulus bill for the environment?

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[+] Ariz. stimulus money to pay for removal of metric road signs