For nearly two decades, the United States Senate has worked under rules that restrict members from holding professional jobs during their Congressional tenure. The rules were enacted to reduce any conflicts of interests between a Senator’s legislative and business priorities, though they have the added benefit of keeping the Senators focused on the job they were elected for. Considering that taxpayers pay each Senator over $154,000 a year (plus too many fringe benefits to mention), his or her full concentration should be expected. It’s common sense.

Freshman Oaklahoma Senator Tom Coburn disagrees. Coburn — who you might remember from his obsession with teenage lesbianism in high school bathrooms, his statements advocating the death penalty for abortion providers, or his alleged sterilization of a 20-year-old woman without her consent — also happens to be a practicing family physician. Notice the use of present tense, since Coburn never closed his medical office and is vowing to fight the Senate ethics commission rules. Because, you know, his situation demands an exception that no one else gets. He’s just that important.

After the election, the ethics committee told Coburn to close his practice by the time he was sworn in as a member of the Senate. But instead of complying with this order, he simply stopped seeing new patients and claimed that he was obeying the “spirit” of the rules. Nice try, Tom. He has been lobbying ever since for special treatment, claiming that he is needed by his patients:

“I am currently caring for many high-risk patients including some who have multiple sclerosis and other debilitating conditions,” Coburn wrote the committee. “I simply cannot abandon those patients. I trust that the committee can imagine how abruptly terminating my practice would violate my medical ethics.”

While this concern is touching and understandable, the Senate rules did not just appear out of thin air. If Coburn’s patients and practice are so important to him, then he never should have campaigned for the empty Senate seat in the first place. But he ran anyway, and instead of owning up to his responsibilities he would rather complain about the rules he has to work under. While I feel sorry for his patients having to endure the transition between medical providers, there is one simple fact here: Oklahoma has hundreds (if not thousands) of family doctors. It only has two Senators.

Tom Coburn needs to decide which side he’s on.