...or is Joe Lieberman getting a raw deal.

Like most of America, I must confess to a scant knowledge of Connecticut politics. It is a blue state and one of the few that is almost all blue. (One county in the West went for Bush and then only slightly.) They have a Republican Governor and two powerful and, until recently, popular Democratic senators.

Enter 9/11

The congress, not wishing to appear weak on terrorism, is railroaded into approving a war powers act that allows the President to attack pretty much anyone he damn well pleases. (Don't you wish that, in a time of national emergency, congress would take the time to read legislation before they voted for it.) By 2004 a fair number of senators and reps (including John Kerry) were pedaling as fast as they could away from that vote. Kerry tripped all over himself backing away and in doing so gave Karl (Rasputin) Rove plenty of ammo to paint Kerry as a waffler.

One senator who has not backed away from his vote for the war powers act was Joe Lieberman.
Not only has the senator not pleaded memory loss on that bit of legislation; he has continued to support the president's efforts to bring stability to the Middle East.

As you may have gathered from previous postings I am opposed to the whole Iraq adventure. So, it appears, are most Americans, and, so are a vast majority of Connecticut's citizens. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that Joe Lieberman will be defeated in his re-election bid for possessing the one trait that all Democrats are desperate to project...integrity.

Joe Lieberman is a popular man in Connecticut. During this campaign he could easily have tap-danced around this inconvenience bit of legislation. "I was sick that day" "The dog ate my copy of the bill" I thought that we were voting for the law powers act". "...anyway it doesn't matter because I'm opposed to this wasteful war now."

But Joe Lieberman has integrity. He voted for the bill because he believed it to be the right thing to do. He still believes it and he feels that to retreat from that position merely to secure his party's nomination for forth term in the Senate would betray his conscience. (Who knew that anyone in government had one?) I don't know what Old Joe is drinking but I would love to serve it at the next DNC.

This will be a contest with no winners. If Ned Lamont wins the nomination and the election Connecticut will have lost a great champion and the senate will have lost one of the true bipartisan leaders still in office. Should Lieberman prevail (and that appears doubtful) he will be under considerable pressure to change his stance on the war.

This stinks. We Dems wail and moan that the unenlightened masses in Kansas and Nebraska vote for inane issues like same-sex marriage and look away from the body bags washing up on our shores. Now that at least one politician is about to pay for the misguided policies of George & Co and the first casualty is a genuinely good guy. Why aren't we dumping Mark Sanford of S. Carolina or Inhofe in Oklahoma.

It seems to me that a elected official should listen to the constituents that put him/her in office but not bend to every change in wind direction. I always thought that, if you trusted the person you elected, than you trusted them to use their hearts and minds to make decisions then judged them on all those decisions. Joe Lieberman has been right a lot more than he's been wrong and he deserves better than to be bested by a one-note candidate from Greenwich.