Oh dear, Sen. Coburn...didn't anyone tell you that corruption is contagious?

The bipartisan Senate committee, investigating the sexual harassment/ extortion/ lobbying scandals that led Sen John Ensign (R-Nev.) to resign his seat issued its report this week. It found “substantial credible evidence that provides substantial cause to conclude that Senator Ensign violated Senate Rules and federal civil and criminal laws, and engaged in improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate, thus betraying the public trust and bringing discredit to the Senate.” The committee referred the matter to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

The report also found, however, that another Republican Senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was hip-deep in the  mess, serving as an intermediary between Ensign and his top aide, Doug Hampton, who was in the process of extorting  Ensign  for having an affair with Hampton’s wife. Sen. Coburn also played a central role in arranging for Ensign’s parents to cough up the hush money to satisfy Hampton’s demands.  Whether Coburn knew about the more serious offenses that Ensign seems to have committed, such as lying to investigators and using his influence to create business for Hampton’s lobbying firm as part of the pay-off for Ensign sleeping with Hampton’s wife, is unknown, but never mind: helping with the cover-up is bad enough.

I know that Coburn’s defenders will say that he was simply reaching out to help a troubled colleague in crisis, and certainly he was doing that. His first duty, however is not to fellow Senators, or colleagues, or friends, or the Republican Party, or to apply the Golden Rule, or to be compassionate because anyone can make a mistake, love makes the world go ’round, and as Woody says, “the heart wants what the heart wants.” No, Sen. Coburn’s duty was to the nation and the integrity of government, and he was ethically obligated, when learning of a fellow senator’s elaborate plans to keep a scandal reflecting on that senator’s  fitness to serve in the U.S. Senate from the public and the media, to report what he knew to the Senate leadership and the Ethics Committee.

Sen. Coburn didn’t do that. Instead, he demonstrated that his first loyalties are not to voters, citizens, and the United States of America, but to cronies, politics, and the Old Boy Network. He brokered a corrupt deal, to help allow a corrupt man to stay in the Senate.

If the report is accurate about Coburn’s involvement, it is enough to require him to join his pal Senator Ensign in retirement and shame.

You can, and should, read the ethics report on Ensign—and Coburn— here.