Editorials

Oklahoma must be out of road projects.

That's what springs to mind when watching Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., defend keeping his thumb on scores of important and mostly uncontroversial bills.

The Oklahoma senator is using the rules of the Senate to keep the bills bottled up. Did we mention they were uncontroversial? One lends a hand to combat Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Another examines unsolved Civil Rights-era crimes. A third helps homeless kids get back on their feet. Those and many more aren't going anywhere until Coburn is happy.

This week, Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, tried and failed to overcome Coburn's objections.

The Senate's rules are like those of a gentleman's club, bending to the other fellow on this or that measure. But the rules' authors surely never had a zealot like Tom Coburn in mind.

The rules put compromise at a premium. No matter the difference represented in the Senate, men and women must work together to solve the nation's woes. To do otherwise is to do little except watch Americans suffer, which is the effect of Coburn's bill-blocking.

Oklahoma must be so proud.

Speaking Monday from the Senate, Coburn was unsmiling and somber as he tut-tutted about his use of senatorial privilege. Coburn is a true believer, a zealot on the order of former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose brand of rigid idealism got him booted from office.

The difference is, Coburn's not going anywhere, at least until his term ends in 2010.

At about the same time Monday, the public was learning details about a highly partisan woman who worked at the Justice Department until 2007. While in her early 30s, Monica Goodling sat in the third-highest post at the Justice Department.

According to a recent Justice Department report, she made it her job to weed out job candidates not fully loyal to President Bush or who otherwise did not live up to the Republican Party's version of a model American.

In one case, untrue rumors of lesbianism doomed a job candidate. In another, a highly qualified anti-terrorism lawyer didn't make the grade because his spouse was active in Democratic Party politics.

The cases of Coburn and Goodling have little in common, except to offer a lesson. An unbending, closed mind can do more harm than good. For example, when government tries to help the sick or hire the most qualified to fight terrorists.

At that point, we need someone to save us from the zealots.