Thomas Allen Coburn (March 14, 1948 – March 28, 2020) was an American politician and physician who served as a United States senator from Oklahoma from 2005 to 2015. A Republican, Coburn previously served as a United States representative from 1995 to 2001.

Coburn was an obstetrician who operated a private medical practice in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1994 as part of the Republican Revolution. After being re-elected twice, Coburn upheld his campaign pledge to serve no more than three consecutive terms and did not seek re-election in 2000. In 2004, he returned to political life with a successful run for the United States Senate. Coburn was re-elected to a second Senate term in 2010 and kept his pledge not to seek a third term in 2016. In January 2014, Coburn announced that he would resign before the expiration of his final term due to a recurrence of prostate cancer. He submitted a letter of resignation to Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, effective at the end of the 113th Congress.

Coburn was a fiscal and social conservative known for his opposition to deficit spending, pork barrel projects, and abortion. Described as "the godfather of the modern conservative austerity movement", he supported term limits, gun rights and the death penalty, and opposed same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research. Many Democrats referred to him as "Dr. No" due to his frequent use of technicalities to block federal spending bills.

After leaving Congress, Coburn worked with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research on its efforts to reform the Food and Drug Administration, becoming a senior fellow of the institute in December 2016. Coburn also served as a senior advisor to Citizens for Self-Governance, where he was active in calling for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution.

Early life, education, and medical career
Coburn was born in Casper, Wyoming, the son of Anita Joy (née Allen) and Orin Wesley Coburn. Coburn's father was an optician and founder of Coburn Optical Industries, and a named donor to O. W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University.

Coburn graduated with a B.S. in accounting from Oklahoma State University, where he was also a member of Sigma Nu fraternity. In 1968, he married Carolyn Denton, the 1967 Miss Oklahoma; their three daughters are Callie, Katie and Sarah, a leading operatic soprano. One of the top ten seniors in the School of Business, Coburn served as president of the College of Business Student Council.

From 1970 to 1978, Coburn served as a manufacturing manager at the Ophthalmic Division of Coburn Optical Industries in Colonial Heights, Virginia. While Coburn was manager, the Virginia division of Coburn Optical grew from 13 employees to over 350 and captured 35 percent of the U.S. market.

After recovering from an occurrence of malignant melanoma, Coburn pursued a medical degree and graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School with honors in 1983. He then opened Maternal & Family Practice in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and served as a deacon in a Southern Baptist Church. During his career in obstetrics, he treated over 15,000 patients, delivered 4,000 babies and was subject to one malpractice lawsuit, which was dismissed without finding Coburn at fault. Together Coburn and his wife were members of First Baptist Church of Muskogee.

Sterilization controversy
A sterilization Coburn performed on a 20-year-old woman, Angela Plummer, in 1990, became what was called "the most incendiary issue" of his Senate campaign. Coburn performed the sterilization on the woman during an emergency surgery to treat a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, removing her healthy intact fallopian tube as well as the one damaged by the surgery. The woman sued Coburn, alleging that he did not have consent to sterilize her, while Coburn claimed he had her oral consent. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed with no finding of liability on Coburn's part.

The state attorney general claimed that Coburn committed Medicaid fraud by not reporting the sterilization when he filed a claim for the emergency surgery. Medicaid did not reimburse doctors for sterilization procedures for patients under 21 and according to the attorney general, Coburn would not have been reimbursed at all had he disclosed this information. Coburn says since he did not file a claim for the sterilization, no fraud was committed. No charges were filed against Coburn for this claim.

Political career

House career
In 1994, Coburn ran for the House of Representatives in Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district, which was based in Muskogee and included 22 counties in northeastern Oklahoma. Coburn initially expected to face eight-term incumbent Mike Synar. However, Synar was defeated in a runoff for the Democratic nomination by a 71-year-old retired principal, Virgil Cooper. According to Coburn's 2003 book, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders, Coburn and Cooper got along well, since both were opposed to the more liberal Synar. The general election was cordial since both men knew that Synar would not return to Washington regardless of the outcome. Coburn won by a 52%–48% margin, becoming the first Republican to represent the district since 1921.

Coburn was one of the most conservative members of the House. He supported "reducing the size of the federal budget," wanted to make abortion illegal and supported the proposed television V-chip legislation.

Despite representing a heavily Democratic district and President Bill Clinton's electoral dominance therein, Coburn was reelected in 1996 and 1998.

In the House, Coburn earned a reputation as a political maverick due to his frequent battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Most of these stand-offs stemmed from his belief that the Republican caucus was moving toward the political center and away from the more conservative Contract With America policy proposals that had brought the Republicans into power in Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.

Coburn endorsed conservative activist and former diplomat Alan Keyes in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries. Coburn retired from Congress in 2001, fulfilling his pledge to serve no more than three terms in the House. His congressional district returned to the Democratic fold, as attorney Brad Carson defeated Andy Ewing, a Republican endorsed by Coburn. After leaving the House and returning to private medical practice, Coburn wrote Breach of Trust, with ghostwriter John Hart, about his experiences in Congress. The book detailed Coburn's perspective on the internal Republican Party debates over the Contract With America and displayed his disdain for career politicians. Some of the figures he criticized (such as Gingrich) were already out of office at the time of the book's publishing, but others (such as former House Speaker Dennis Hastert) remained influential in Congress, which resulted in speculation that some congressional Republicans wanted no part of Coburn's return to politics.

During his tenure in the House, Coburn wrote and passed far-reaching pieces of legislation. These include laws to expand seniors' health care options, to protect access to home health care in rural areas and to allow Americans to access cheaper medications from Canada and other nations. Coburn also wrote a law intended to prevent the spread of AIDS to infants. The Wall Street Journal said about the law, "In 10 long years of AIDS politics and funding, this is actually the first legislation to pass in this country that will rescue babies." He also wrote a law to renew and reform federal AIDS care programs. In 2002, President George W. Bush chose Coburn to serve as co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

During his three terms in the House, Coburn also played an influential role in reforming welfare and other federal entitlement programs.

Schindler's List TV broadcast
As a congressman in 1997, Coburn protested NBC's plan to air the R-rated Academy Award-winning Holocaust drama Schindler's List during prime time. Coburn stated that, in airing the movie without editing it for television, TV had been taken "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity." He also said the TV broadcast should outrage parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere. Coburn described the airing of Schindler's List on television as "irresponsible sexual behavior. I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program."

This statement met with strong criticism, as the film deals mainly with the Holocaust. After heavy criticism, Coburn apologized "to all those I have offended" and clarified that he agreed with the movie being aired on television, but stated that it should have been on later in the evening. In apologizing, Coburn said that at that time of the evening there are still large numbers of children watching without parental supervision and stated that he stood by his message of protecting children from violence, but had expressed it poorly. He also said, "My intentions were good, but I've obviously made an error in judgment in how I've gone about saying what I wanted to say."

He later wrote in Breach of Trust that he considered this one of the biggest mistakes in his life and that, while he still felt the material was unsuitable for a 7 p.m. television broadcast, he handled the situation poorly.

Senate career
After three years out of politics, Coburn announced his candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by four-term incumbent Republican Don Nickles. Former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys (the favorite of the state and national Republican establishment) and Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony joined the field before Coburn. However, Coburn won the primary by an unexpectedly large margin, taking 61% of the vote to Humphreys's 25%. In the general election, he faced Brad Carson, the Democrat who had succeeded him in the 2nd District and was giving up his seat after only two terms.

In the election, Coburn won by a margin of 53% to Carson's 42%. While Carson routed Coburn in the generally heavily Democratic 2nd District, Coburn swamped Carson in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and the closer-in Tulsa suburbs. Coburn won the state's two largest counties, Tulsa and Oklahoma, by a combined 86,000 votes, more than half of his overall margin of 166,000 votes cast.

Coburn's Senate voting record was as conservative as his House record.

Coburn was re-elected in 2010. He received 90% of the vote in the Republican primary and 70% in the general election. While he already planned on not seeking a third term in the Senate due to his self-imposed two-term term limit, on January 16, 2014, Coburn announced he would resign his office before his term ended at the end of the year due to his declining health.

On April 29, 2014, Coburn introduced the Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act of 2014 (S. 2270; 113th Congress) into the Senate and it passed on June 3, 2014.

Use of Senate hold
Coburn used the Senate hold privilege to prevent several bills from coming to the Senate floor. Coburn earned a reputation for his use of this procedural mechanism. In November 2009 Coburn drew attention for placing a hold on a veterans benefits bill known as the Veterans' Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act. Coburn also placed a hold on a bill intended to help end hostilities in Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army.

On May 23, 2007, Coburn blocked two bills honoring the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson. Coburn called Carson's scientific work "junk science," proclaiming that Carson's landmark book Silent Spring was "the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT." Democratic Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility," but Coburn blocked it, saying that "the junk science and stigma surrounding DDT—the cheapest and most effective insecticide on the planet—have finally been jettisoned."

In response to Coburn's holds, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced the Advancing America's Priorities Act, , in July 2008. S. 3297 combined thirty-five bills which Coburn had blocked into what Democrats called the "Tomnibus" bill. The bill included health care provisions, new penalties for child pornography, and several natural resources bills. The bill failed a cloture vote.

Coburn opposed parts of the legislation creating the Lewis and Clark Mount Hood Wilderness Area, which would add protections to wildlands in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Coburn exercised a hold on the legislation in both March and November 2008, and decried the required $10 million for surveying and mapping as wasteful. The Mount Hood bill would have been the largest amount of land added to federal protection since 1984.

In March 2009, those wilderness areas became protected under the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which passed the Senate 73–21.

According to the Boston Globe, Coburn initially blocked passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), objecting to provisions in the bill that allow discrimination based on genetic information from embryos and fetuses. After the embryo loophole was closed, Coburn lifted his hold on the bill.

Coburn had initially blocked passage of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which would help to disarm the Lord's Resistance Army, a political group accused of human rights abuses. On March 9, 2010, Coburn lifted his hold on the LRA bill freeing it to move to the Senate floor after reaching a compromise regarding the funding of the bill, and an eleven-day protest outside of his office.

John Ensign scandal
Coburn was affiliated with a religious organization called The Family. Coburn previously lived in one of the Family's Washington, D.C. dormitories with then-Senator John Ensign, another Family member and longtime resident of the C Street Center who admitted he had an extramarital affair with a staffer in 2009. The announcement by Ensign of his infidelity brought public scrutiny of the Family and its connection to other high-ranking politicians, including Coburn.

Coburn, together with senior members of the Family, attempted to intervene to end Ensign's affair in February 2008, before the affair became public, including by meeting with the husband of Ensign's mistress and encouraging Ensign to write a letter to his mistress breaking off the affair. Ensign was driven to a branch of Federal Express from the C Street Center to post the letter, shortly after which Ensign called to tell his mistress to ignore it.

Coburn refused to speak about his involvement in Ensign's affair or his knowledge of the affair well before it became public, asserting legal privilege due to his separate statuses as a licensed physician in the State of Oklahoma and a deacon.

In October 2009, Coburn did make a statement to The New York Times about Ensign's affair and cover-up: "John got trapped doing something really stupid and then made a lot of other mistakes afterward. Judgment gets impaired by arrogance and that's what's going on here."

In May 2011, the Senate Ethics Committee identified Coburn in their report on the ethics violations of Senator John Ensign. The report stated that Coburn knew about Ensign's extramarital affair and was involved in trying to negotiate a financial settlement to cover it up.

Whistleblower rights
Coburn was involved in the Bush Administration's struggle with Congress over whistleblower rights. In the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government employees who testify against their employers did not have protection from retaliation by their employers under the First Amendment of the Constitution. The free speech protections of the First Amendment have long been used to shield whistleblowers from retaliation.

In response to the Supreme Court decision, the House passed H.R. 985, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2007. Bush, citing national security concerns, promised to veto the bill should it be enacted into law by Congress. The Senate's version of the Whistleblower Protection Act (S. 274) was approved by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on June 13, 2007. However, that version failed to reach a vote by the Senate, as Coburn placed a hold on the bill; effectively preventing the passage of the bill, which had bipartisan support in the Senate.

Coburn's website features a news item about United Nations whistleblower Mathieu Credo Koumoin, a former employee for the U.N. Development Program in West Africa, who has asked U.N. ethics chief Robert Benson for protection under the U.N.'s new whistleblower protection rules. The site has a link to the "United Nations Watch" of the Republican Office of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, of which he was the ranking minority member. Coburn's website also features a tip line for potential whistleblowers on government waste and fraud.

Council on American–Islamic Relations
Coburn joined Congressmen Sue Myrick (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Paul Broun (R-GA) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) in a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman on November 16, 2009, asking that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) be investigated for excessive lobbying and failing to register as a lobbying organization. The request came in the wake of the publication of a book, Muslim Mafia, the foreword of which had been penned by Myrick, that portrayed CAIR as a subversive organization allied with international terrorists.

Criticism of the National Science Foundation
On May 26, 2011 Coburn released his 73-page report, "National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope", receiving immediate attention from such media outlets as The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

STOCK Act
Coburn was one of three senators who voted against the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act). On February 3, 2012, Coburn released the following statement regarding the Act:

Committee assignments
Coburn was a member of the following committees:
 Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Ranking Member)
 Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
 Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight
 Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce
 Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Affairs, and the District of Columbia
 Select Committee on Intelligence
 Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
 Subcommittee on Economic Policy
 Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment
 Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development

Political positions

Abortion
Coburn opposed abortion, with the exception of abortions necessary to save the life of the mother. In 2000, he sponsored a bill to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from developing, testing, or approving the abortifacient RU-486. On July 13, the bill failed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 182 to 187. On the issue, Coburn sparked controversy with his remark, "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life." He noted that his great-grandmother was raped by a sheriff.

Coburn was one of the original authors of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart. The act relied on an expansive view of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, as it applies to "any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion." The Act's reliance on such a broad reading of the Commerce Clause was criticized by Independence Institute scholar David Kopel and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who noted that "[u]nless a physician is operating a mobile abortion clinic on the Metroliner, it is not really possible to perform an abortion 'in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.'" When Coburn later called Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan "ignorant" due to her "very expansive view" of the Commerce Clause, his support for the Act was used by Kagan supporters who charged him with hypocrisy on the issue.

On September 14, 2005, during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Coburn began his opening statement with a critique of Beltway partisan politics while, according to news reports, "choking back a sob." Coburn had earlier been completing a crossword puzzle during the hearings, and this fact was highlighted by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to ridicule Coburn's pathos. Coburn then began his questioning by discussing the various legal terms mentioned during the previous day's hearings. Proceeding to questions regarding both abortion and end-of-life issues, Coburn, who noted that during his tenure as an obstetrician he had delivered some 4,000 babies, asked Roberts whether the judge agreed with the proposition that "the opposite of being dead is being alive."

Fiscal conservatism

The best-known of Coburn's amendments was an amendment to the fiscal 2006 appropriations bill that funds transportation projects. Coburn's amendment would have transferred funding from the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to rebuild Louisiana's "Twin Spans" bridge, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The amendment was defeated in the Senate, 82–14, after Ted Stevens, the senior senator from Alaska, threatened to resign his office if the amendment were passed. Coburn's actions did result in getting the funds made into a more politically feasible block grant to the State of Alaska, which could use the funds for the bridge or other projects. The renovations for the Elizabethtown Amtrak Station were cited by Coburn as an example of pork barrel spending in the stimulus bill.

Coburn was also a member of the Fiscal Watch Team, a group of seven senators led by John McCain, whose stated goal was to combat "wasteful government spending."

On April 6, 2006, Coburn and Senators Barack Obama, Thomas Carper and John McCain introduced the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. The bill requires the full disclosure of all entities and organizations receiving federal funds beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007 on a website maintained by the Office of Management and Budget. The bill was signed into law on September 26, 2006.

Coburn and McCain noted that the practice of members of Congress adding earmarks had risen dramatically over the years, from 121 earmarks in 1987 to 15,268 earmarks in 2005, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In July 2007, Coburn criticized pork-barrel spending that Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson had inserted into the 2007 defense spending bill. Coburn said that the earmarks would benefit Nelson's son Patrick's employer with millions in federal dollars and that the situation violated terms of the Transparency Act, which was passed by the Senate but had not yet been voted on in the House. Nelson's spokesperson said the Senator did nothing wrong. At that time, newspapers in Nebraska and Oklahoma noted that Coburn failed to criticize very similar earmarks that had benefited Oklahoma.

In 1997, Coburn introduced a bill called the HIV Prevention Act of 1997, which would have amended the Social Security Act. The bill would have required confidential notification of HIV exposure to the sexual partners of those diagnosed with HIV, along with counseling and testing.

In 2010, Coburn called for a freeze on defense spending. The following year, along with Democratic Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, he introduced a bill to "get rid of the most venerable big ethanol subsidy: the blenders tax credit." Coburn served on the Simpson-Bowles debt reduction commission in 2010 and was one of the only Republicans in Congress open to tax increases as a means of balancing the budget.

In 2011 Coburn broke with Americans for Tax Reform with an ethanol amendment that gathered 70 votes in the Senate. He said that anti-tax activist Grover Norquist's influence was overstated, and that revenue increases were needed in order to "fix the country."

In 2012, Coburn identified less than $7 billion a year in possible defense savings and over half of these savings were to be through the elimination of military personnel involved in supply, transportation, and communications services.

In May 2013, after tornadoes ripped through his state, Coburn said that any new funding allocated for disaster relief needed to be offset by cuts to other federal spending.

Coburn was a fierce critic of the plan to attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act by shutting down the federal government, saying that the strategy was "doomed to fail" and that Ted Cruz and others who supported the plan had a "short-term goal with lousy tactics".

Gun rights
In regards to the Second Amendment, Coburn believed that it "recognizes the right of individual, law-abiding citizens to own and use firearms," and he opposed "any and all efforts to mandate gun control on law-abiding citizens." On the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which aimed "to establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open-end consumer credit plan and for other purposes," Coburn sponsored an amendment that would allow concealed carry of firearms in national parks. The Senate passed the amendment 67–29.

Coburn placed a hold on final Senate consideration of a measure passed by the House in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings to improve state performance in checking the federal watch list of gun buyers. However, after the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012, Coburn (who had already announced he would not run for re-election) reversed himself and came out in support of universal background checks. Coburn partnered with Democratic members of the Senate such as Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin (to whose re-election campaign Coburn donated money) to determine what a universal background check measure should look like. However, these talks ultimately broke down, and in April 2013, Coburn was one of 46 senators to vote against the amendment in its final form, defeating its passage.

Health care reform

Coburn voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

Coburn co-authored the Patients Choice Act of 2009 (S. 1099), a Republican plan for health care reform in the United States, which in part 1) Requires the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to convene an interagency coordinating committee to develop a national strategic plan for prevention. The act provided for health promotion and disease prevention activities consistent with such a plan. Secondly it set forth provisions governing the establishment and operation of state-based health care exchanges to facilitate the individual purchase of private health insurance and the creation of a market where private health plans compete for enrollees based on price and quality. Thirdly it intended to amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow a refundable tax credit for qualified health care insurance coverage. Fourth it sets forth programs to prevent Medicare fraud and abuse, including ending the use of social security numbers to identify Medicare beneficiaries. Fifth it sought to terminate the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Presidential nominations to the Judicial and Executive branches of government
During the administration of President George W. Bush, Coburn spoke out against the threat by some Democrats to filibuster nominations to judicial and Executive Branch positions. He took the position that no presidential nomination should ever be filibustered, in light of the wording of the U.S. Constitution. Coburn said, "There is a defined charge to the president and the Senate on advice and consent."

In May 2009, Coburn was the only Senator to vote against the confirmation of Gil Kerlikowske as the Director of the National Drug Control Policy.

Same-sex marriage
Coburn opposed same-sex marriage. In 2006, he voted in support of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it.

War in Iraq
On May 24, 2007, the U.S. Senate voted 80–14 to fund the war in Iraq, which included U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007. Coburn voted nay. On October 1, 2007, the Senate voted 92–3 to fund the war in Iraq. Coburn voted nay. In February 2008, Coburn said, "I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq."

On December 15, 2014, Coburn stalled the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act aimed at stemming veteran suicides. The bill would require a report on successful veteran suicide prevention programs and allow the United States Veterans Administration to pay incentives to hire psychiatrists. Paul Rieckhoff, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that despite his reputation as a budget hawk, Coburn should have recognized that the $22 million cost of the bill is worth the lives it would have saved. "It's a shame that after two decades of service in Washington, Sen. Coburn will always be remembered for this final, misguided attack on veterans nationwide," he said. "If it takes 90 days for the new Congress to re-pass this bill, the statistics tell us another 1,980 vets will have died by suicide. That should be a heavy burden on the conscience of Sen. Coburn and this Congress." Speaking out against the legislation, Coburn said "I object, not because I don't want to save suicides, but because I don't think this bill will do the first thing to change what's happening," arguing that the bill" "throws money and doesn't solve the real problem"

Post-Senate career
After resigning from the U.S. Senate, Coburn joined Citizens for Self-Governance as a senior advisor to the group's Convention of States project, which seeks to convene a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution. In 2017, he authored a book on the subject titled Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop Runaway Government.

Coburn was affiliated with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, consulting on the institute's Project FDA, an effort to promote faster drug approval processes. He also sat on the board of the Benjamin Rush Institute, a conservative association of medical students across 20 medical schools. In 2016, he became a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.

Awards
In 2013, Coburn received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards.

Personal life
Despite their stark ideological differences, Coburn was a close friend of President Barack Obama. Their friendship began in 2005 when they both arrived in the Senate at the same time. They worked together on political ethics reform legislation, to set up an online federal spending database and to crack down on no-bid contracting at the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In April 2011, Coburn spoke to Bloomberg TV about Obama, saying, "I love the man. I think he's a neat man. I don't want him to be president, but I still love him. He is our President. He's my President. And I disagree with him adamantly on 95% of the issues, but that doesn't mean I can't have a great relationship. And that's a model people ought to follow."

Before the 2009 BCS game between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Florida Gators, Coburn made a bet over the outcome of the game with Florida Senator Bill Nelson—the loser had to serenade the winner with a song. The Gators defeated the Sooners and Coburn sang Elton John's "Rocket Man" to Nelson, who had once flown into space.

Illness and death
In November 2013, Coburn made public that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. In 2011, he had prostate cancer surgery while also surviving colon cancer and melanoma. The results caused Coburn to resign from the senate in 2015.

Coburn died at his home in Tulsa on March 28, 2020, two weeks after his 72nd birthday. A memorial service to honor his life was held a year later on May 1, 2021, at South Tulsa Baptist Church.

Electoral history

Books

  (with John Hart)
  (with John Hart)

See also
 Physicians in the United States Congress

References

External links

 Voices of Oklahoma interview. First person interview conducted on May 4, 2016, with Tom Coburn.

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1948 births
2020 deaths
21st-century American politicians
American obstetricians
Baptists from Oklahoma
Deaths from cancer in Oklahoma
Deaths from prostate cancer
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Oklahoma State University alumni
Physicians from Oklahoma
Politicians from Casper, Wyoming
Politicians from Muskogee, Oklahoma
Republican Party United States senators from Oklahoma
Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Oklahoma
Southern Baptists
University of Oklahoma alumni

Tom Coburn


Volodymyr Dudka (, , born , Sumy, Ukraine) is a political prisoner of the Kremlin. One of the accused in the case of the so-called 'Crimean terrorists' (group of 'Sevastopol saboteurs'). Detained by the FSB on November 9, 2016. Sentenced to 14 years in prison. Reserve captain 2nd rank of the Ukrainian Navy, former Commander of the Simferopol control ship (1997—2001). Served at the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Crimea before the arrest.

Career
Born September 30, 1964, in Sumy. He studied at Sumy school No. 8 (now it is Alexander High School). Graduated in 1982. After school he worked at Frunze Sumy Research and Manufacturing Association.
Since 1982 he served in the Soviet Armed Forces. After graduation from the 41st Naval School (Mykolaiv), conscript service passed in communication units of the Baltic Fleet. In 1983 he enrolled, and in 1988 graduated from the Faculty of Signals intelligence of the Kaliningrad Higher Naval School. After Officer Candidates School he served in the 112th Brigade of reconnaissance ships of the Black Sea Fleet (the village of Mirniy on Donuzlav Bay in Crimea) at the Odograph and Ocean Vishnya-class intelligence ships. He has repeatedly participated in the intelligence services of reconnaissance ships in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Since 1996, served in the Ukrainian Navy. From 1997 to 2001, served as Commander of the Simferopol control ship of the Ukrainian Navy. Participated in the Sea Breeze-96, Sea Breeze-97 exercises. Received the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma on the board of the ship. After 2001 he served in posts of the operational shift of the Command post of the Naval Headquarters of Ukraine.
After retiring in 2009, until 2011, he worked at the Sevastopol City State Administration, then as a security engineer in a mobile detachment of the Ministry of Emergencies, which carried out demining of the Inkerman Storms and battle sites of World War II in the Mekenzie Mountains. After occupation Crimea by Russia, remained in Sevastopol, worked in a civilian position in the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation.

Prosecution, evidences of innocence

Detained by the Federal Security Service of Russia on November 9, 2016, in Sevastopol, on his way to the hospital, where he went with the exacerbation of gastric ulcer. For several days, Volodymyr Dudka's whereabouts were unknown. On November 10, the FSB stated that he was allegedly a member of the "sabotage-terrorist group of the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine". He was charged with planning sabotage actions at military infrastructure and support facilities in Sevastopol. The independent lawyer was only able to reach Dudka on November 14, 2016. Volodymyr managed to inform him that he was innocent of anything, and his testimony was received from him under pressure and threats against his relatives. Later, during the trial, Dudka and Oleksiy Bessarabov, who is another participant of the 'saboteurs case', repeatedly stated that in the first days after their detention, they were tortured, including electric shock. However, the Investigative Committee of Russia denied the initiation of the torture proceedings against prisoners.

The trial of Dudka and Bessarabov, who refused to plead guilty, lasted more than 2.5 years. After completion of the first trial, the occupying Sevastopol city court was unable to reach a verdict and on April 6, 2018, returned to the prosecutor's office a 'sabotage case' to remedy the shortcomings. On August 2, 2018, a reconsideration trial of the merits of the case began in the Sevastopol City Court. On April 4, 2019, the Sevastopol City Court sentenced Volodymyr Dudka under the articles of Part 1 of Art. 30, item A of Part 2 of Art. 281 ("Preparation for diversion as part of an organized group") Part 3, Article 222.1 (Illegal acquisition, storage of explosives or devices by an organized group) of the Criminal Code of Russia to 14 years of imprisonment with serving in a penal colony and a fine of 350 000 rubles. The defendants' appeals against fraud and gross misconduct were dismissed by the Supreme Court of Russia.

In June 2018 the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it demands Russian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release illegally detained Ukrainian citizens including Volodymyr Dudka.

See also
 Roman Sushchenko

References

Ukrainian military officers
Ukrainian Navy officers
Ukrainian people imprisoned abroad
Prisoners and detainees of Russia
Ukrainian victims of human rights abuses
People convicted of spying
1964 births
Living people
People from Sumy
Ukrainian people taken hostage
Political prisoners according to Memorial

Volodymyr Dudka


Caspar Barlaeus (February 12, 1584 – January 14, 1648) was a Dutch polymath and Renaissance humanist, a theologian, poet, and historian.

Life
Born Caspar (Kaspar) van Baerle in Antwerp, Barlaeus' parents fled the city when it was occupied by Spanish troops shortly after his birth. They settled in Zaltbommel, where his father eventually would become head of the Latin school. Caspar studied theology and philosophy at the University of Leiden. After his study, he preached for 1.5 years in the village of Nieuwe-Tonge, before returning to Leiden in 1612 as an under-regent of a college. From 1617 he also was professor in philosophy at the university. Because of his remonstrant sympathies, he was forced out of this job in 1619. He then studied and graduated in medicines (in Caen), but never practiced professionally.

From 1631, he was professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the Amsterdam Athenaeum, Athenaeum Illustre), which is commonly regarded as the predecessor of the University of Amsterdam; the Athenaeum had its seat in the fourteenth-century Agnietenkapel. In January 1632, Barlaeus, along with Gerard Vossius, held his inaugural speech at the Amsterdam Atheneum. Barlaeus later encouraged Martinus Hortensius to lecture –and give an inaugural speech- at the same Institution. One of his huge patrons was Amsterdam burgomaster Andries de Graeff.

Barlaeus suffered from mental illness including the delusion that he was made of glass (the Glass delusion) though Gill Speak refers to his glass delusion as 'unsubstantiated'.

Writings
Barlaeus published many volumes of poetry, particularly Latin poetry. He also wrote the eulogy that accompanies the 1622 portrait of cartographer Willem Blaeu.

Barlaeus was involved in various aspects of cartography and history. He translated Antonio de Herrera's Description of the West Indies in 1622. In 1627, Barlaeus provided the text for the atlas of Italy created by Jodocus Hondius. In 1647, he wrote an account of the Dutch colonial empire in Brazil, inspired by the leadership of John Maurice of Nassau (Johan Maurits) at Recife. The Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum sub praefectura, as it is called, contains numerous maps and plates of the region. The engravings of Brazilian northeastern locales, fleets, battles, and maps were for 160 years the main references to Brazilian landscapes available in Europe, and are well known by Brazilians today as the most important examples of pre-national art. Franciscus Plante wrote a similar work in the same year called Mauritias, and included the maps already published in Barlaeus' work. These were maps of Ceará, Pernambuco, Paraíba, and Pernambuco Borealá. Plante also incorporated a portrait of John Maurice that had already been included in Barlaeus' work.

In 1638, Barlaeus wrote Medicea Hospes, sive descriptio publicae gratulationis, qua ... Mariam de Medicis, excepit senatus populusque Amstelodamensis. Published by Willem Blaeu, it includes two large folding engraved views of the ceremonies on the occasion of the French queen mother Marie de Medici's triumphal entry into Amsterdam in 1638. Considered an important moment in Dutch history, Marie's visit lent de facto international recognition of the newly formed Dutch Republic. Marie de Medici actually traveled to the Netherlands as exile, but spectacular displays and water pageants took place in the city's harbor in celebration of her visit. There was a procession led by two mounted trumpeters; a large temporary structure erected on an artificial island in the Amstel River was built especially for the festival. This building was designed to display a series of dramatic tableaux in tribute to her once she set foot on the floating island and entered its pavilion.

Death and legacy
Barlaeus died at Amsterdam. Franciscus Plante wrote Barlaeus' obituary and epitaph in 1648.
Barlaeus Gymnasium, in Amsterdam, is named after him. There is a  in both Amsterdam and .

Works
 Manes Auriaci (1625)
 Hymnus ad Christum (1628)
 Poemata (1628)
 Medicea hospes (1638)
 Faces augustae (1643)
 Rerum in Brasilia et alibi gestarum (1647)
 Verscheyde Nederduytsche gedichten (1651)
 Mercator sapiens, sive Oratio de coniungendis mercaturae et philosophiae studiis

References

Sources
  Barron Maps, barron.co.uk
  Barlaeus: Bibliographia (full bibliography), let.leidenuniv.nl
  Biography and Works: Caspar Barlaeus, dbnl.org
  Barlaeus Poemata (full index and texts of Barlaeus' poetry), let.leidenuniv.nl
  Plante's obituary and epitaph, let.leidenuniv.nl
  Festival Books, libraries.rutgers.edu
  Historia naturalis Brasiliae, pernambuco.com

External links
 The Correspondence of Caspar van Baarle in EMLO

1584 births
1648 deaths
17th-century Dutch poets
17th-century writers in Latin
Colonial Brazil
17th-century Dutch historians
17th-century Dutch physicians
Dutch male poets
17th-century Dutch Calvinist and Reformed ministers
Dutch Renaissance humanists
Leiden University alumni
Academic staff of Leiden University
Muiderkring
Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam
Dutch Golden Age writers
People from Zaltbommel
Arminian theologians
Arminian writers
Remonstrants

Caspar Barlaeus


The Budj Bim National Park, formerly known as Mount Eccles National Park, is a national park located in the Western District of Victoria, Australia. The  national park is situated approximately  west of Melbourne and approximately  southwest of Macarthur. It derives its name from Budj Bim, formerly Mount Eccles, which is situated in the north-east of the park.

The park now forms part of the larger Budj Bim heritage areas of both national and world significance, due to the extensive systems of aquaculture created by Aboriginal Australians thousands of years ago and the significance of the area to the Gunditjmara people.

Features

Located within the national park is Budj Bim, formerly named Mount Eccles by the European people who settled in the area, is the site of one of the most recent active volcanos in Australia. The first activity was about 40,000 years ago when Budj Bim was formed by lava pouring out the Earth's crust. The most recent eruption was approximately 8,000 years ago. Budj Bim is a fairly small hill surrounded by lush vegetation with a small, hidden, deep volcanic crater lake named Lake Surprise. It is famous for an adjacent lava tube and there are numerous lava tubes in the surrounding farm land.

Heritage areas

The park was added to the Australian National Heritage List in 2004 as part of the Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape for its importance in Indigenous history and its geology.

As one of three components of the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on 6 July 2019.

Management
 Budj Bim National Park, as part of the Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape, is jointly managed by Parks Victoria, the (Gunditjmara) Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (GMTOAC) and Winda-Mara TOAC (a south-west Victorian organisation representing Indigenous Australians in the area). The Council  forms part of the 2007 Native Title Settlement Agreement between the Gunditjmara and the Victorian Government, under which both parties manage the park landscape.

2020 bushfires
During the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season, fires broke out within the Budj Bim Cultural Heritage Landscape. The stone fish traps and the stone house site were unaffected by fire, and fortunately the fires were quickly contained, partly due to mild weather conditions and partly by the efforts of firefighters. Lake Condah and Condah Mission were not directly affected by the fires. In the National Park, the campground and picnic area reopened from 29 February 2020, but the Lake Surprise walking track and access to Tunnel Cave were closed due to the impact of the fires. , the Crater Rim Walk and Lava Canal Walk are open, but re-routed near Tunnel Cave.

See also
 Protected areas of Victoria (Australia)

References

External links

 - Budj Bim National Park Visitor Guide PDF available on this page

Parks of Barwon South West (region)
National parks of Victoria (state)
Protected areas established in 1960
1960 establishments in Australia
Australian National Heritage List

Budj Bim National Park


The Lamport timestamp algorithm is a simple logical clock algorithm used to determine the order of events in a distributed computer system. As different nodes or processes will typically not be perfectly synchronized, this algorithm is used to provide a partial ordering of events with minimal overhead, and conceptually provide a starting point for the more advanced vector clock method. The algorithm is named after its creator, Leslie Lamport.

Distributed algorithms such as resource synchronization often depend on some method of ordering events to function. For example, consider a system with two processes and a disk. The processes send messages to each other, and also send messages to the disk requesting access. The disk grants access in the order the messages were received. For example process  sends a message to the disk requesting write access, and then sends a read instruction message to process . Process  receives the message, and as a result sends its own read request message to the disk. If there is a timing delay causing the disk to receive both messages at the same time, it can determine which message happened-before the other:  happens-before  if one can get from  to  by a sequence of moves of two types: moving forward while remaining in the same process, and following a message from its sending to its reception. A logical clock algorithm provides a mechanism to determine facts about the order of such events. Note that if two events happen in different processes that do not exchange messages directly or indirectly via third-party processes, then we say that the two processes are concurrent, that is, nothing can be said about the ordering of the two events.

Lamport invented a simple mechanism by which the happened-before ordering can be captured numerically. A Lamport logical clock is a numerical software counter value maintained in each process.

Conceptually, this logical clock can be thought of as a clock that only has meaning in relation to messages moving between processes. When a process receives a message, it re-synchronizes its logical clock with that sender. The above-mentioned vector clock is a generalization of the idea into the context of an arbitrary number of parallel, independent processes.

Algorithm

The algorithm follows some simple rules:

 A process increments its counter before each local event (e.g., message sending event);
 When a process sends a message, it includes its counter value with the message after executing step 1;
 On receiving a message, the counter of the recipient is updated, if necessary, to the greater of its current counter and the timestamp in the received message. The counter is then incremented by 1 before the message is considered received.

In pseudocode, the algorithm for sending is:

 # event is known
 time = time + 1;
 # event happens
 send(message, time);

The algorithm for receiving a message is:

 (message, time_stamp) = receive();
 time = max(time_stamp, time) + 1;

Considerations
For every two different events  and  occurring in the same process, and  being the timestamp for a certain event , it is necessary that  never equals .

Therefore it is necessary that:

 The logical clock be set so that there is a minimum of one clock "tick" (increment of the counter) between events  and ;
 In a multi-process or multi-threaded environment, it might be necessary to attach the process ID (PID) or any other unique ID to the timestamp so that it is possible to differentiate between events  and  which may occur simultaneously in different processes.

Causal ordering
For any two events,  and , if there's any way that  could have influenced , then the Lamport timestamp of  will be less than the Lamport timestamp of . It's also possible to have two events where we can't say which came first; when that happens, it means that they couldn't have affected each other. If  and  can't have any effect on each other, then it doesn't matter which one came first.

Implications
A Lamport clock may be used to create a partial ordering of events between processes. Given a logical clock following these rules, the following relation is true: if  then , where  means happened-before.

This relation only goes one way, and is called the clock consistency condition: if one event comes before another, then that event's logical clock comes before the other's. The strong clock consistency condition, which is two way (if  then ), can be obtained by other techniques such as vector clocks. Using only a simple Lamport clock, only a partial causal ordering can be inferred from the clock.

However, via the contrapositive, it's true that  implies . So, for example, if  then  cannot have happened-before .

Another way of putting this is that  means that  may have happened-before , or be incomparable with  in the happened-before ordering, but  did not happen after .

Nevertheless, Lamport timestamps can be used to create a total ordering of events in a distributed system by using some arbitrary mechanism to break ties (e.g., the ID of the process). The caveat is that this ordering is artifactual and cannot be depended on to imply a causal relationship.

Lamport's logical clock in distributed systems
In a distributed system, it is not possible in practice to synchronize time across entities (typically thought of as processes) within the system; hence, the entities can use the concept of a logical clock based on the events through which they communicate.

If two entities do not exchange any messages, then they probably do not need to share a common clock; events occurring on those entities are termed as concurrent events.

Among the processes on the same local machine we can order the events based on the local clock of the system.

When two entities communicate by message passing, then the send event is said to happen-before the receive event, and the logical order can be established among the events.

A distributed system is said to have partial order if we can have a partial order relationship among the events in the system. If 'totality', i.e., causal relationship among all events in the system, can be established, then the system is said to have total order.

A single entity cannot have two events occur simultaneously. If the system has total order we can determine the order among all events in the system. If the system has partial order between processes, which is the type of order Lamport's logical clock provides, then we can only tell the ordering between entities that interact. Lamport addressed ordering two events with the same timestamp (or counter): "To break ties, we use any arbitrary total ordering  of the processes." Thus two timestamps or counters may be the same within a distributed system, but in applying the logical clocks algorithm events that occur will always maintain at least a strict partial ordering.

Lamport clocks lead to a situation where all events in a distributed system are totally ordered. That is, if , then we can say  actually happened before .

Note that with Lamport's clocks, nothing can be said about the actual time of  and . If the logical clock says , that does not mean in reality that  actually happened before  in terms of real time.

Lamport clocks show non-causality, but do not capture all causality. Knowing  and  shows  did not cause  or  but we cannot say which initiated .

This kind of information can be important when trying to replay events in a distributed system (such as when trying to recover after a crash). If one node goes down, and we know the causal relationships between messages, then we can replay those messages and respect the causal relationship to get that node back up to the state it needs to be in.

Alternatives to Potential Causality
The happened-before relation captures potential causality, not true causality.  In 2011-12, Munindar Singh proposed a declarative, multiagent approach based on true causality called information protocols.  An information protocol specifies the constraints on communications between the agents that constitute a distributed system. However, instead of specifying message ordering (e.g., via a state machine, a common way of representing protocols in computing), an information protocol specifies the information dependencies between the communications that agents (the protocol's endpoints) may send.  An agent may send a communication in a local state (its communication history) only if the communication and the state together satisfy the relevant information dependencies. For example, an information protocol for an e-commerce application may specify that to send a Quote with parameters ID (a uniquifier), item, and price, Seller must already know the ID and item from its state but can generate whatever price it wants. A remarkable thing about information protocols is that although emissions are constrained, receptions are not. Specifically, agents may receive communications in any order whatsoever -- receptions simply bring information and there is no point delaying them. This means that information protocols can be enacted over unordered communication services such as User Datagram Protocol.

The bigger idea is that of application semantics, the idea of designing distributed systems based on the content of the messages, an idea implicated in the end-to-end principle. Current approaches largely ignore semantics and focus on providing application-agnostic ("syntactic") message delivery and ordering guarantees in communication services, which is where ideas like potential causality help.  But if we had a suitable way of doing application semantics, then we wouldn't need such communication services. An unordered, unreliable communication service would suffice. The real value of information protocols approach is that it provides the foundations for an application semantics approach.

See also
Matrix clock
Vector clock
Version vector

References

Logical clock algorithms

Lamport timestamp


Elaine Costanzo Duke (born June 26, 1958) is an American civil servant and former United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, serving from April 10, 2017 until April 15, 2018. She became acting Secretary of Homeland Security on July 31, 2017, when John F. Kelly assumed the office of White House Chief of Staff. She left the acting position on December 6, 2017, upon the confirmation of Kirstjen Nielsen.

Early life and education
The daughter of Francesco (Frank) Costanzo and Concetta Scherma, Duke is a native of Ohio. Her maternal grandparents emigrated from Aidone, Sicily and her paternal family roots can be traced to Coreno Ausonio in the Lazio region of Italy. She graduated with a B.S. in business management from New Hampshire College (now Southern New Hampshire University) and an M.B.A. from Chaminade University of Honolulu.

Career
Duke held a consulting practice at Elaine Duke & Associates, LLC in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Duke served as Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management at the department under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from July 2008 to April 2010. She has more than 28 years of experience with the federal government. In 2018, Duke was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security
On January 30, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Duke as United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Duke's nomination received a hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on March 8, 2017. On March 15, 2017, her nomination was reported to the United States Senate. On April 4, 2017, she was confirmed by a vote of 85–14.

On February 23, 2018, she announced plans to retire from her position as Deputy Secretary in April of the same year, after serving in the federal government of the U.S. for over thirty years.

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security
After John F. Kelly was named White House Chief of Staff on July 28, 2017, Duke was named Acting Secretary of Homeland Security.

In September 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Maria, Duke made the decision to waive the Jones Act for ten days, which requires goods shipped between points in the U.S. to be carried by vessels built, owned, and operated by Americans. The waiving of the act allows foreign nations to bring aid to Puerto Rico.

During a White House news conference regarding Hurricane Maria, Duke said the government response to Hurricane Maria was "a good news story." San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz responded, "This is not a good news story. This is a 'people are dying' story." Duke then traveled to Puerto Rico, met with officials at the San Juan International Airport (sic, Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport) and clarified her earlier remark by stating, "there's much more work to do, and we will never be satisfied." In 2020, Duke told in interviews that Trump briefly considered divesting from or selling Puerto Rico as the disaster hit the island.

In a July 2020 interview with The New York Times, after her tenure had ended, Duke criticized Trump's and his administration's approach and rhetoric on immigration-related issues.

Personal life
In 2006, Duke married Harold Vincent Hanson, a Navy retiree. She has two sons from a previous marriage. Duke identifies as a Republican.

References

External links

 Deputy Secretary profile

|-

1958 births
American people of Italian descent
Chaminade University of Honolulu alumni
George W. Bush administration personnel
Living people
Obama administration personnel
Ohio Republicans
Southern New Hampshire University alumni
Trump administration cabinet members
United States Department of Homeland Security officials
United States Deputy Secretaries of Homeland Security
United States Secretaries of Homeland Security

Elaine Duke


An open class of words is a part of speech that can easily add new words. A closed class of words, on the other hand, cannot add new words easily. For example, since pronouns are a closed class, there are fairly few pronouns: I, me, my, mine, myself, you, you, your, yours, yourself, he, him, his, his, himself, she, her, her, hers, herself, it, it, its, its, itself, we, us, our, ours, ourselves, they, them, their, theirs, themselves. Since pronouns are used to replace whole noun phrases, there is no need to have many kinds of pronouns. Instead of saying "The Earl of Sandwich introduced the Earl of Sandwich's favorite food, the sandwich", one uses the pronoun "his" to replace "the Earl of Sandwich's" to make the sentence not repeat itself when it doesn't have to, thus the sentence becomes "The Earl of Sandwich introduced his favorite food, the sandwich". New nouns, on the other hand, can easily be made, and are constantly being added into the English language.

Linguistics

Open class


Insular dwarfism, a form of phyletic dwarfism, is the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands. This natural process is distinct from the intentional creation of dwarf breeds, called dwarfing. This process has occurred many times throughout evolutionary history, with examples including dinosaurs, like Europasaurus and Magyarosaurus dacus, and modern animals such as elephants and their relatives. This process, and other "island genetics" artifacts, can occur not only on islands, but also in other situations where an ecosystem is isolated from external resources and breeding. This can include caves, desert oases, isolated valleys and isolated mountains ("sky islands"). Insular dwarfism is one aspect of the more general "island effect" or "Foster's rule", which posits that when mainland animals colonize islands, small species tend to evolve larger bodies (island gigantism), and large species tend to evolve smaller bodies. This is itself one aspect of island syndrome, which describes the differences in morphology, ecology, physiology and behaviour of insular species compared to their continental counterparts.

Possible causes
There are several proposed explanations for the mechanism which produces such dwarfism.

One is a selective process where only smaller animals trapped on the island survive, as food periodically declines to a borderline level. The smaller animals need fewer resources and smaller territories, and so are more likely to get past the break-point where population decline allows food sources to replenish enough for the survivors to flourish.  Smaller size is also advantageous from a reproductive standpoint, as it entails shorter gestation periods and generation times.

In the tropics, small size should make thermoregulation easier.

Among herbivores, large size confers advantages in coping with both competitors and predators, so a reduction or absence of either would facilitate dwarfing; competition appears to be the more important factor.

Among carnivores, the main factor is thought to be the size and availability of prey resources, and competition is believed to be less important. In tiger snakes, insular dwarfism occurs on islands where available prey is restricted to smaller sizes than are normally taken by mainland snakes. Since prey size preference in snakes is generally proportional to body size, small snakes may be better adapted to take small prey.

Dwarfism vs. gigantism
The inverse process, wherein small animals breeding on isolated islands lacking the predators of large land masses may become much larger than normal, is called island gigantism. An excellent example is the dodo, the ancestors of which were normal-sized pigeons.  There are also several species of giant rats, one still extant, that coexisted with both Homo floresiensis and the dwarf stegodonts on Flores.

The process of insular dwarfing can occur relatively rapidly by evolutionary standards. This is in contrast to increases in maximum body size, which are much more gradual. When normalized to generation length, the maximum rate of body mass decrease during insular dwarfing was found to be over 30 times greater than the maximum rate of body mass increase for a ten-fold change in mammals. The disparity is thought to reflect the fact that pedomorphism offers a relatively easy route to evolve smaller adult body size; on the other hand, the evolution of larger maximum body size is likely to be interrupted by the emergence of a series of constraints that must be overcome by evolutionary innovations before the process can continue.

Factors influencing the extent of dwarfing
For both herbivores and carnivores, island size, the degree of island isolation and the size of the ancestral continental species appear not to be of major direct importance to the degree of dwarfing. However, when considering only the body masses of recent top herbivores and carnivores, and including data from both continental and island land masses, the body masses of the largest species in a land mass were found to scale to the size of the land mass, with slopes of about 0.5 log(body mass/kg) per log(land area/km2). There were separate regression lines for endothermic top predators, ectothermic top predators, endothermic top herbivores and (on the basis of limited data) ectothermic top herbivores, such that food intake was 7 to 24-fold higher for top herbivores than for top predators, and about the same for endotherms and ectotherms of the same trophic level (this leads to ectotherms being 5 to 16 times heavier than corresponding endotherms).

Examples

Non-avian dinosaurs
Recognition that insular dwarfism could apply to dinosaurs arose through the work of Ferenc Nopcsa, a Hungarian-born aristocrat, adventurer, scholar, and paleontologist. Nopcsa studied Transylvanian dinosaurs intensively, noticing that they were smaller than their cousins elsewhere in the world. For example, he unearthed six-meter-long sauropods, a group of dinosaurs which elsewhere commonly grew to 30 meters or more. Nopcsa deduced that the area where the remains were found was an island, Hațeg Island (now the Haţeg or Hatzeg basin in Romania) during the Mesozoic era. Nopcsa's proposal of dinosaur dwarfism on Hațeg Island is today widely accepted after further research confirmed that the remains found are not from juveniles.

Sauropods

Other

In addition, the genus Balaur was initially described as a Velociraptor-sized dromaeosaurid (and in consequence a dubious example of insular dwarfism), but has been since reclassified as a secondarily flightless stem bird, closer to modern birds than Jeholornis (thus actually an example of insular gigantism).

Birds

Squamates

Mammals

Pilosans

Proboscideans

Primates

Carnivorans

Non-ruminant ungulates

Bovids

Cervids and relatives

Plants

See also

 Island gigantism
 Island syndrome
 Island tameness
 Pleistocene extinctions

Notes

References

External links
Strange world of island species October 31, 2004 The Observer

Animal size
Evolutionary biology
Dwarfism

Insular dwarfism


Paul K. Tanaka (born 1959) is an American former politician and a former law-enforcement officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He was convicted April 4, 2016, in Federal Court of conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice. Tanaka served as Undersheriff of Los Angeles County from 2011 to 2013. He was also mayor of the City of Gardena, California. His tenure has provoked controversy due to allegations of violence, corruption, and alleged membership in the Lynwood Vikings, a secret police organization, which was described as a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang" by a federal judge.

Personal life
Tanaka was born at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. At the age of 7, he and his family moved to Gardena, where he lived for 47 years.

Tanaka received an accounting degree from Loyola Marymount University and was also a Certified Public Accountant. He served as Chief Financial Officer for the Go For Broke Foundation and the East West Players, and served on the board of the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law.

Tanaka was married to Valerie Tanaka, with whom he has 2 children.

Elected official
Tanaka was active in local government since his election to the Gardena city council in March 1999. In March 2005, he was elected mayor with 62% of the vote. He was re-elected to a second term in 2009.

Law enforcement
A career law enforcement officer, Tanaka initially joined the El Segundo police department in 1980. Transferring to the LA County Sheriff's Department (LASD) two years later, he rose through the ranks, earning his stripes in 1987, and making Lieutenant in 1991. Tanaka then rose from Lieutenant to Captain in 1999, Commander in 2001 and Chief in 2002. From January 7, 2005, to June 2011, he was an Assistant Sheriff. He is the first Japanese American in the position.

He has been criticized for his affiliation with the Lynwood Vikings, a secret police organization, brought to light amidst police misconduct litigation in 1990, which a federal judge described as a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang." Tanaka is of Japanese descent. Sheriff Lee Baca acknowledged Tanaka still has a tattoo related to the group. Tanaka was tattooed as a member of the Vikings deputy gang in 1987, while serving as a Sergeant at the Lynwood station.

On March 7, 1988, Tanaka was involved in a controversial killing of a Korean American in Long Beach, sparking outrage among Korean American community leaders. Hong Pyo Lee was shot and killed by Tanaka and four other deputies following a car chase. The deputies said Lee tried to run them over. The deputies were later found to have been justified in shooting by the district attorney's office.

Los Angeles County Undersheriff (2011-2013)
Tanaka was appointed Undersheriff, the second-in-command at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in June 2011 by Sheriff Lee Baca. During his 2-year term as Undersheriff, the Department was dogged with several controversies. He announced his resignation on March 6, 2013.

Controversies
On October 18, 2011, at a Board meeting, Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas held a motion to create a Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence with the mandate of reviewing the nature, depth and cause of Sheriff's deputies' inappropriate use of excessive force in County jails and to recommend corrective actions. In early 2011, the FBI launched an undercover probe at the Men's Central Jail, to investigate allegations of corruption and abuse. The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division also launched a wide-scale pattern and practice investigation into allegations that Antelope Valley deputies discriminated against minority residents who receive government housing assistance.

During Tanaka's tenure as Undersheriff, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Sheriff Lee Baca and top commanders, including Tanaka, for perpetuating a long-standing, widespread pattern of violence by deputies against inmates in the county jails.

In September 2012, the Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence issued a final report that is very critical of the Sheriff Department's management, including Baca, Tanaka and other executive-level staff, accusing them of fostering a culture in which deputies beat and humiliated inmates, covered up misconduct and formed aggressive deputy cliques in the county jails. Tanaka was in charge of the Department's Patrol Division and its budget. The report also called for the removal of Tanaka from the chain of command supervising the jail system, for statements that Tanaka had delivered, indicating that deputies could use excessive force against prisoners and that aggressive behavior would not result in discipline. The report also noted that Tanaka had accepted campaign contributions from many department employees, furthering perceptions of patronage and favoritism in promotion and assignment decisions.

On March 6, 2013, Tanaka announced that he would retire as the Undersheriff, effective August 1, 2013, during an ongoing federal probe conducted by the FBI into widespread allegations of abuse, misconduct and mismanagement in County jails.
Although his decision to resign was portrayed as being under his volition, Baca told Tanaka to step down because Tanaka had become a political liability.

Plot to hide informant
The plot to derail the federal investigation of the LASD supposedly began in August 2011, when Sheriff deputies retrieved a mobile phone from an inmate at Men's Central Jail and were able to connect the phone to the FBI. Discovering that the inmate-turned-FBI informant was Anthony Brown, deputies had purposely hidden Brown from his FBI handlers, by moving him around different jails and changing Brown's name.

Criminal charges
On May 13, 2015, Tanaka was indicted on federal conspiracy and obstruction charges in the ongoing Los Angeles County Men's Jail corruptions investigation. Tanaka was the eighth LASD official to be criminally charged based on actions taken in the summer of 2011.

Conviction
On April 6, 2016, Tanaka was convicted on conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges by a federal jury in a case presided over by U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson. "The criminal charges centered on allegations that in 2011 Tanaka orchestrated a scheme to derail the FBI's jail investigation by intimidating the lead agent in the case, pressuring deputies not to cooperate and concealing the whereabouts of an inmate who was working as a federal informant."  As a result, Councilman Mark E. Henderson was appointed Mayor Pro Tem and served as acting Mayor of Gardena until the March 2017 election.

Sentencing
On June 27, 2016, Tanaka was sentenced to five years in prison, for civil rights abuses inside the nation's largest urban jail system. He was also sentenced to serve two years of supervised release after he is discharged from prison and pay a $7,500 fine. He faced a maximum of 15 years in federal prison. Tanaka planned to file a motion to sidestep his August 1 jail surrender deadline, and remain out on bail while he appealed his conviction. He surrendered Monday, January 16, 2017, to federal authorities in Colorado, to begin serving the prison sentence at a minimum-security camp in Englewood, Colorado.  He was released on April 19, 2021.

2014 Sheriff's campaign
On August 15, 2013, Tanaka announced his candidacy to unseat his former boss, Lee Baca, as the Sheriff in the 2014 election. Tanaka lost the election to Jim McDonnell, McDonnell received 49.4 percent of the vote and Tanaka received 15.1 percent to come in second.

See also
Lee Baca, Sheriff over Tanaka, also convicted in relation to abuses in the jail system.

References

American mayors of Japanese descent
American deputy sheriffs
American police officers convicted of crimes
California politicians of Japanese descent
California Republicans
Criminals from California
Criminals from Los Angeles
Crimes in Los Angeles
Living people
Loyola Marymount University alumni
Mayors of places in California
People from Gardena, California
People convicted of obstruction of justice
Police misconduct in the United States
1959 births
21st-century American criminals
Date of birth missing (living people)
 California politicians convicted of crimes
California city council members
Asian-American city council members
Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government

Paul Tanaka


The British Rail Class 103 diesel multiple units were built by Park Royal Vehicles with diesel engines by British United Traction (BUT).  Ordered in the first half of 1955, 20 of these sets were built by Park Royal at the Crossley Motors works in Stockport of the ACV Group. They consisted of a power car and a driving trailer. Standard BUT equipment was fitted, with 'A' type engines.

A two-car set with 16 first class and 100 second class seats weighed just under 60 long tons, representing 1,150 lb (520 kg) a seat and had 5 hp per ton of empty weight or 4.35 hp per ton when full.

103

British Rail Class 103


Radio Rentals was founded in 1930 by Percy Perring-Thoms in Brighton, Sussex, UK, to rent out radio sets, with a turnover in the first year of £780 (). It later offered televisions and videorecorders for rent.

In 1964 it merged with RentaSet, Joseph Robinson's similarly formed company. Then, in 1968, it was acquired by Thorn Electrical Industries and joined with Thorn's DER chain (founded 1938) as part of Thorn Television Rentals (TTR), though the two companies were run completely separately, with different staff and vehicles.

In 1980 TTR and thus Radio Rentals became part of the merged Thorn EMI, and in 2000 it merged with Granada Limited to form Boxclever. The company still trades as Radio Rentals in Australia.

United Kingdom
Radio Rentals operated mainly in the UK, having started life in Boyces Street, Brighton, Sussex, England. The growth of BBC Television and then ITV after the Second World War encouraged more people to want TV sets, but they were expensive, creating an opportunity for Radio Rentals and its competitors to offer them at a monthly rental price which was much more affordable.

With the coming of colour services, initially only on BBC2, a further opportunity for renting was created. On 15 November 1969 colour broadcasts on both BBC channels and the ITV network became available from the main transmitter sites around the UK.  This led to a boom in rentals of TV sets.

By the late 1970s videorecorders had appeared on the market, but at first they were expensive. Only 5% of UK households had videorecorders in 1980. Radio Rentals elected to offer Baird branded JVC VHS machines from 1977 onwards.

With the advent of satellite broadcasting in the 1980s Radio Rentals offered a range of equipment for rent, enabling more viewers to watch both Sky Television services and British Satellite Broadcasting services (these broadcasters later merged to form British Sky Broadcasting).

Radio Rentals also offered a small range of white goods, mainly from Philips/Whirlpool.

Radio Rentals claimed that at its peak it had more than two million customers, more than 500 shops, 3,600 technicians, 2,700 skilled installers and a large ancillary staff. It had sales and service locations across the UK, the Radio Rentals logo being a common sight on many High Streets.

The urge to rent instead of buy reduced as domestic electronics became cheaper and more reliable, with greater use of integrated circuits and improved design. The company went through many restructurings, shedding staff and rebranding itself. In common with other rental brands, it could not sustain a viable business model and ceased to trade, merging with Granada Limited's rental arm in 2000 to form Boxclever.

Oceania

Thorn operated over 90 Radio Rentals stores within Australia, and 28 stores in New Zealand under the name DTR. Radio Rentals stores in South Australia trade under the name RR Rentlo Reinvented due to an independent business trading as Radio Rentals. An independently owned chain operated 19 stores within South Australia; however is not in any way related to Radio Rentals owned by Thorn Australia Pty Ltd, and was placed into administration in 2019 and closed its stores including areas like Queensland. Radio Rentals also closed all its stores in 2020 but continues to trade.

The Australian branch of Radio Rentals began in 1937 with the opening of a single store on Market Street, Sydney. Since this date, Radio Rentals continued to expand and open stores across Australia, including the launch of 'Rentlo' in South Australia. In April 2015 Rentlo was rebranded to RR Rentlo Reinvented. Radio Rentals is a household appliance, technology and furniture rental service. Today, Radio Rentals and RR Rentlo Reinvented have more than 90 stores Australia wide and more than 500 employees. The Australian stores continued to trade under the Thorn Group, with James Marshall as the current CEO and managing director, appointed in 2014. On 23 April 2020, due to the COVID-19 induced retail downturn, Radio Rentals announced the permanent closure of its 62 bricks-and-mortar stores and selected warehouses, continuing as a purely online business.

In 2008, the Thorn Group, who operates Radio Rentals, launched Big Brown Box; an online retailer of brown goods and consumer technology gadgets. The site later expanded to include computers and whitegoods. Thorn Group decided to offload the business in November 2010, with the CEO, John Hughes, saying that while Thorn Group "still believes strategically in online and the potential of BigBrownBox.com.au" the company had to take a pragmatic view on the business given the group's limited resources. Big Brown Box was later purchased and relaunched by Appliances Online.

Centrepay controversy
In 2015, a report by Credit Suisse found that for the financial year 2014/15, A$90 million of Radio Rentals and RR Rentlo Reinvented Australia's total revenue of A$197 million came from payments made by government benefit recipients using the Commonwealth Department of Human Services direct debit Centrepay system. The report also stated that around half of this amount, approximately A$45 million, related to the purchase of entertainment items such as smart phones and televisions.

See also
BrightHouse (retailer)

References

External links
 Radio Rentals Australia

Defunct technology companies of the United Kingdom
Electronics companies of Australia
Electronics companies established in 1930
1930 establishments in England
1980 disestablishments in England
Defunct companies of England
Electronics companies established in 1937
Australian companies established in 1937
Privately held companies of Australia
British companies established in 1930

Radio Rentals