Ooopsie.

Contributions from associates and friends of now-indicted garbage executive James Galante to the 2004 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman have sparked the interest of federal investigators.

Lieberman’s bid for the White House took in at least $14,000 from Galante, his associates and their relatives in the fall of 2003, according to a Courant review of campaign records.  Read more 

Via The Man in the Grey Turtleneck, Our Betters are having a little get-together:

Incivility in American Politics: Is the U.S. at Risk for Disaster in Political Discourse? Are Voters Fed Up?

April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON - Elected officials and university scholars will examine incivility in politics and the increasing polarization of policy debate at the Penn Conference on Civility and American Politics April 30 on Capitol Hill. Conference participants will discuss whether, in a time of increasingly rancorous political discourse, the United States is reaching a tipping point that makes incivility a bad political strategy and a worse governance strategy and whether this has implications for the 2008 presidential election.

The Penn Conference on Civility and American Politics will bring U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I-Likud], an Independent Democrat from Connecticut, and U.S. Rep. John [“Not pronounced ’Boner’”] Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, together with scholars [sic] from Penn, Brookings and AEI and with the editor/publisher of Governing Magazine to explore how incivility affects the political system and the ability to tackle the problems of 21st-century life in the U.S.

Quite the line-up, there, eh? It’s almost like no Democrat want to get in the same live-shot with Joe. I wonder why that would be?

Anyhow, for those of you with time on your hands, there will be a live feed:  Read more 

Who here is surprised? Not me.

When Senate leaders first announced their intention to revoke the 2002 Iraq war authorization, they said they planned to attach their legislation to a homeland security bill being debated this week. Thanks to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who is the chairman of the homeland security committee, that apparently won’t be happening. CongressDaily reports:

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Lieberman is making it clear he does not want Iraq-related amendments attached to a bill scheduled for floor action this week that would implement unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Democratic leaders seemed inclined today to hold off introducing Iraq-related amendments to the bill, possibly to avoid upsetting Lieberman and moving him closer to switching party affiliations, which would swing the Senate back to GOP control.  Read more 

When it’s good for Joe, of course. E&P:

“Independent” Sen. Joe Liebeman receives a mini-profile [in next week’s Time] titled “What Joe Wants,” a key question since he is “the Senate’s one-man tipping point.” Republicans, the magazine says, are “courting him” and Lieberman “has been indulging in some fairly immodest poltical footsie.”

Ewwwwww! [Let me pause a moment to get that picture out of my mind. There.]  Read more 

Chertoff better not eat in any black-owned restaurants in NOLA. Really, the arrogance of these people is stunning at times. It wouldn’t surprise me if some overworked, low-level FEMA employee just shot him, the next time he got out of a taxpayer funded hookermobile car.

And we’ve got to do a much better job, frankly, of how we manage the process of recovery. We still have tens of thousands of people who suffer the lingering effects of Katrina. And as the city of New Orleans and as the state of Mississippi and the state of Louisiana try to recover and rebuild in what is a mammoth task, we have to make sure that FEMA does not become so enmeshed in its own bureaucratic processes sometimes that they lose sight of the need to have simple common sense and humanity in dealing with the public. So we’re going to have to continue to crack down and make sure we get this job done.

As Scout points out:

Can someone please give Chertoff an organization chart for DHS so we can remind Michael that FEMA is that little box below YOU. Perhaps you should crack down on yourself Mr. Secretary.  Read more 

(Via the estimable Kossacks.)

That’s a lot of money to leave on a lot of dressers, wouldn’t you say?

Lieberman really is a Republican, isn’t he?  Read more 

Oh, joy. Look who’s in the news again:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the longtime Democratic senator from Connecticut running for re-election as an independent, says the party leadership has assured him he would keep his seniority if he returns to Congress.  Read more 

Turncoat: a person who changes to the opposite party or faction, reverses principles, etc.; renegade.

So Lieberman loses the Democratic primary, then forms his own party and runs against the Democractic winner.

I’d say Joe’s behavior is an exact match to the dictionary definition.  Read more 

Lame Defined.

A few days ago, our incumbent junior senator, Joe Lieberman, a former candidate for president and vice president of the United States, told reporters that he needed a few more days to formulate, and properly articulate, his position on the war in Iraq. He wouldn’t be talking about it with them until then.  Read more 

Joe! Get off the pity pot! It’s not attractive:

LIEBERMAN: “[Lamont] constantly criticizes, criticizes, criticizes. And he blames me for just about everything, maybe except the weather.”

It’s called a campaign, Joe. Got that?

And as far as the weather goes, Joe:  Read more 

Inspired by Atrios’s link to Matt’s analysis of Joe’s blogroll, I thought I’d check out Joe’s stance on Iraq, by going to his issues page (“http://www.joe2006.com/issues.asp”).

But all I got was this. This is a mistake, right?

 Read more 

I signed up for Ho Lieberman’s mailing list, and his crack Internet team took only three weeks to send me some spam. Here it is, in its entirety. (It includes his Labor Day itinerary, by the way).

My reading of it: Lieberman’s goal is to provoke the netroots into acting out, on camera. So, if you meet Joe on the road, BE POLITE when you call him on his bullshit. Create only photo-ops that win for us.  Read more 

When Joe returns to the Beltway, will he hang out with the Democrats? I think Emily Post would tell the Lieberman camp that there’s no way Joe can unshit the bed. But that won’t stop him from trying:

Concerns about the senator’s return were evident in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

“We should discuss his schedule when he’s in DC and whether it makes sense to go to Caucus events, etc. or not,” wrote a senior Lieberman aide to several other top staffers.

Why doesn’t Joe just caucus with the Republicans? He’s helping to elect them, after all.  Read more 

Just curious: where does the sun set in CT? Does Joe know? Did he use a condom? Did he consult with Bob Dole?  Read more 

The excellent Bob Geiger explains. Long story short: Reid can’t strip Whiney Joe of his committee assignmnets because that’s not how the Senate works.

While many of the calls for harsh action from Reid may be righteous, bloggers castigating him for not stripping Lieberman of his committee assignments — especially his standing as ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — and urging their readers to call Reid’s office to harangue him about this, are simply wrong and not reporting accurately on what is or is not within Reid’s authority.

Based on the way the Senate works procedurally, this is simply not something that Reid even has the authority to do.

Let me break down why that is.  Read more 

Joe then:

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.”

Joe now:  Read more 

Jesus, guys. Why don’t you just invite Cheney into the party? This is just pathetic:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Sen. Joe Lieberman won’t have to fight to stay in the Democratic Party, after all. The state’s Democratic registrar rejected a petition by peace activists to strike Lieberman from the party rolls on Thursday. State law allows for expulsion from the party if the member runs for office under another political banner.  Read more 

AP:

“[LAMONT] It was Senator Lieberman who said, ’Let’s put Michael Brown as No. 2 at FEMA.’”

Lamont is correct. Lieberman took all of 42 minutes to rubberstamp Brownie’s appointment.  Read more 

From comments at My Left Nutmeg:

So don’t start bashing good people like Sharon Ferrucci until she’s done something wrong. I mean honest to god, this is New Haven under John DeStefano. It’s not Waterbury.

I know my Registrar of Voters office to be highly professional. Period.

Yeah, Joe’s a professional too. Just a different kind of professional.

So, can we start bashing Sharon now? [link fixed]

The city won’t allow Sen. Joe Lieberman to be stripped of his Democratic party affiliation, announced Democratic Registrar of Voters Sharon Ferrucci Thursday.

Ferrucci shied away from using the authority given her by a little-known state law. “While Section 9-60 of the Connecticut General Statutes provides a process for excluding or expelling a voter’s name from the list of registered voters in the Democratic Party, such authority, in my opinion, should be rarely and cautiously exercised.

So, how “cautious” and “rare” does this procedure need to be? When does Ferrucci exercise her discretion? When we catch Lieberman in bed with a dead girl or a live boy? Because being in bed with Republicans—actually campaigning for Republicans, against Democrats—apparently isn’t enough!

And get a load of this horseshit, straight from the lips of Centrist Dan Gerstein:  Read more 

AP:

A group whose members describe themselves as peace activists asked Sharon Ferrucci, Democratic registrar of voters in New Haven, to remove Lieberman from the party, arguing that he cannot be a Democrat while running under another party’s banner.

Lieberman campaign manager Sherry Brown branded the effort “dirty political tricks at its worst.”

Wow, he said/she said “balanced journalism” at it’s finest. But we look in vain for what we, as citizens, would need to be truly informed—The law itself. Is it in the story? No. Did the editor add it? No. So, for real coverage, we need to go to the blogosphere. Here’s the statute. Check it out:  Read more 

Terror alerts, terror threats, terror among us, terror without us, terror around us, terror, terror, terror.

Headline from today’s Meet The Press: Terror is a word worn-out from over and inaccurate use; in a word, terror, and all the attached isms have become a bore.  Read more 

Going All the Way, or, Why Moderation is Killing America

A comment at this post got me thinking, as well as motivated to leave a reply there, about the discourse and drawbacks of “moderation.” If you’ve ever read any of my writing, you’ll now that the concept and I are not exactly bosom buddies, but I have respect for the various social and cultural ideologies that teach that it is a “good thing.” And yet- two bottles of wine a day, $200 a quarter to the Lieberman campaign, or two dozen widely read voices calling for the execution of half the populous for the “treason” of wanting and end to the war: none of these are “good things.”  Read more 

WaPo:

Lieberman conceded the primary but, undaunted, said he would file papers Wednesday morning to run as spoiler candidate an independent.

“For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand,” Lieberman said.

“This will not stand”… Hmm… Where have I heard that before?  Read more 

Being an early morning person, I missed a lot of the crowing coming from the rabid late night victory lambs. But as I review various sites that were amazingly active last night (and everyone should think about upgrading to the 25$ server now, we’re only going to get bigger in the blogosphere as a result of all this), I’m thinking on a couple of lessons we can take away from our Glorious Victory. Let’s review.

1. Trust your feelings, Luke.  Read more