A little more than a week ago, Tom Coburn did something fairly courageous by political standards. At a town hall meeting in Oklahoma, the conservative Republican senator referred to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “nice lady” and criticized Fox News. (He was briefly booed for the Pelosi comment.) After an audience member mentioned “the possibility of imprisonment” for those who don’t buy health insurance, Coburn told her, “The intention is not to put anybody in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX but that isn’t the intention.”

(This is true, the reform law expressly prohibits the government from jailing anyone who fails to either obtain health insurance or pay a tax penalty.)

Then, last night Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly raked Coburn over the coals for his comment about the network. O’Reilly said no one had ever appeared on Fox News and told viewers they would go to jail if they didn’t buy health insurance. “We researched on Fox News if anybody had ever said you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody’s ever said it.”

Like Coburn, I was pretty sure I’d heard exactly this assertion numerous times on Fox News, so I did a quick search of their transcripts. Here’s what I found (emphasis mine):