It's a Carson campaign link, but it's to an AP story. The article is about Oklahoma's (Democratic) Attorney General, Drew Edmondson, who says that Coburn absolutely committed Medicaid fraud, and explained why. Coburn's spokesman, John Hart, responds with the typical GOP response of, paraphrased, "all criticism from Democrats is partisan and therefore invalid."

But later on, Hart gives away the store:

The spokesman also said the ad's claim that Coburn asked the woman not to talk about the sterilization was "a blatant lie."

Hart said Coburn asked her not to say anything because "he was trying to protect his patient so she wouldn't be stuck with medical bills."

If Coburn was trying to save his patient from medical bills, he must have known that Medicaid would not pay for the procedure if Medicaid knew about it. That means he knew the rules and violated them so that Medicaid would pay for a procedure that he knew was not covered.

That, dear friends, is Medicaid Fraud. Dr. Coburn is lucky the statute of limitations has run out.

This is already getting a lot of play, and for good reason: Bush is not only meeting with noted hate-monger Pat Robertson, he's telling him that the entire Iraq operation would not require any US casualties:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties.

Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He described Bush in the meeting as "the most self-assured man I've ever met in my life."

"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,' " Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now."

"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.""

So while that's getting all the attention, if you're thinking Robertson might be joining the reality-based community, think again:

Robertson, the televangelist who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said he wishes Bush would admit to mistakes made.

"I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy," Robertson said. "I warned him about casualties."

More than 1,100 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and another 8,000 troops have been wounded in the ongoing campaign, with the casualty toll significantly increasing in the last six months as the insurgency there has deepened.

Asked why Bush has refused to admit to mistakes on Iraq, Robertson said, "I don't know this politics game. You know, you can never say you were wrong because the opposition grabs onto it: 'See, he admitted he screwed up.' "

Even as Robertson criticized Bush for downplaying the potential dangers of the Iraq war, he heaped praise on Bush, saying he believes the president will win the election and that "the blessing of heaven is on Bush."

"Even if he stumbles and messes up -- and he's had his share of stumbles and gaffes -- I just think God's blessing is on him," Robertson said.

As for Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, Robertson said, "I don't think he's a leader. He's a ponderous debater, a good senator probably."

Before CNN gave "news" time to Pat Robertson's opinion of John Kerry, perhaps they should have considered that Robertson's CBN has been crusading against Kerry all year, including the now-standard smear of calling him French, telling viewers that God told Robertson that George W. Bush would win re-election "in a walk," and hiding his own cowardly military past, all while blasting Kerry for being less a son of privilege than either George W. Bush or himself.

It wouldn't surprise me if some of Kerry's Senate investigations took down some of Robertson's wealthiest friends and supporters, especially the BCCI investigation, but I have no resources to investigate this. Good thing we still have impartial journalism. Sigh.

It seems like every month, I see some opinion column or another call for an end to the "myth" of unbiased journalism. The papers in the UK are proudly slanted, the argument goes, and their nation seems to function just fine, so why not just "admit" that the New York Times is liberal and Fox News is conservative and be done with it?

Ron Suskind's profile of Bush in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine reported that Bush told GOP bigwigs and big donors in a recent private meeting:

"I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in," Bush said, "with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security." The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us "two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck."

In response, the Bush campaign took Suskind's photo and voter registration information and sent it in a mass E-mail to the national press corps, both to try to slime him as a partisan Democrat and to intimidate others who might report anything the White House doesn't happen to like.

Salon asked Suskind about press indimidation in today's interview.

Do you think the attack on the press is a way to eliminate a national point of reference on facts?

Absolutely! That's the whole idea, to somehow sweep away the community of honest brokers in America -- both Republicans and Democrats and members of the mainstream press -- sweep them away so we'll be left with a culture and public dialogue based on assertion rather than authenticity, on claim rather than fact. Because when you arrive at that place, then all you have to rely on is perception. And perception as the handmaiden of forceful executed power is the great combination that we're seeing now in the American polity.

So what are you left with? Perception and, increasingly, faith. Think about faith. Try to anchor that in the traditional public dialogue of informed consent in America, which has in large measure at least been based on discernible reality and on facts that can be proven -- not only facts coming out of the government but facts people feel in their own lives.

It is one devil of a challenge. One man's conversation with God guides the globe and human affairs. How exactly do you frame that inside the secular writ of informed consent based on facts? I think those who are forcefully running the White House electoral machine -- and the soul of this machine is an extraordinary operation -- understand this with great alacrity.

The ultra right-wing in this country wants nothing more than to declare an end to "impartial" journalism for exactly these reasons. Hate-mongers like Pat Robertson and James Dobson manage to appear to millions of people as men of God. If they manage to paint all reports as biased in one way or another, then they can dismiss all criticism of their appearance.

As long as Fox News says President Bush is "tough on terrorism," then the perception can stand. Anyone who notes how he has failed to secure ports, diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-terrorism protection funds away from big cities and to GOP strongholds like Alaska and Wyoming, and utterly failed to capture Osama bin Laden (and even lied about his disinterest in the subject) is just a "liberal" reporter.

If all news is admittedly biased, then not only does it excuse Fox News and the other biased media as "normal," it also discredits anyone who attacks a government or official who looks stalwart and good. Suskind's absolutely right: the push for admittedly-partial journalism is a push to keep you from being able to discern fantasy from reality. It's no wonder the modern conservative movement favors it so strongly.

(Is it too late to bring back Barry Goldwater? Or do we have him in John McCain and he's just that marginalized?)