In the first place, it seems as if Lieberman’s first priority is Israel and not the USA, and in this service he has become, ironically enough, a good friend of that bigot John Hagee (who surely believes that when the “End of Days” comes that all Jews unwilling to convert will be murdered), secondly, as noted up thread, when CT Democrats chose Ned Lamont instead of him, the rat ran and got the support of Republicans in the State. That he rebuked the man who supported his bid for the nomination, Barack Obama, is no surprize to those of us who have watched his smarmy, pandering performance during the Bush years. I understand why the Democrats want to hold onto the weasel strategically, but my idealist self rebels. I suppose a bombardment of Harry Reid’s office protesting keeping Lieberman at Homeland Security would do no good, so my battle cry is that, when LIEberman is up for re-election, that the netroots put their full support in unseating him. By god, if I have to move to CT temporarily to work against this Benedict Arnold, I’ll do it!

What’s interesting to me is that what was sufficiently egregious to prompt such indelicate language is a Senator who is ostensibly one of our own. All the horrendous outrages of the Bush administration elicited plenty of salty language (my personal favorite is tas’ “fucktard”), but the utter exasperation and angry sense of futility was reserved for none other than Joe Lieberman.

I guess that says it all, doesn’t it?

Joe Lieberman is just such a symbol of what is wrong with the Democratic Party: we take the “big tent” and expand it to a point where it is absolutely meaningless, undercutting our principles along the way to a point where they’re irrelevant as well. If we can’t maintain discipline on such a clear-cut (and isolated) point, then there’s little hope of us ever taking a strong stand on anything. No wonder we’re portrayed as weaklings.

This might be a good time to actually look to the GOP as a role model for how to handle such a betrayal. It’s no surprise that every sitting Republican who expressed support for Obama had already preemptively announced his/her retirement from office.

I personally belong to the camp that insists Joe should be removed from his committee chairmanship, only partly because (as Steve Benen ominously predicts) the very oversight Joe didn’t carry out on the Bush Administration might be pursued zealously against the Obama Administration. Behavior has consequences, or at least it should.