Triumph of the Turncoat Houdini

Today's escape from losing his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee caps Joe Lieberman's career of having it both ways in two decades of sanctimonious posturing and backroom politicking.

With a novelist's eye for the absurd, Joan Didion nailed him in her reporting of the 2000 election campaign:

"Senator Lieberman, who had come to the nation's attention as the hedge player who had previously seized center stage by managing both to denounce the president [Bill Clinton] for "disgraceful" and "immoral" behavior and to vote against his conviction (similarly, he had in 1991 both voiced support for and voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas) was not, except to the press, an immediately engaging personality...

"His speech patterns, grounded in the burdens he bore for the rest of us and the personal rewards he had received from God for bearing it, tended to self-congratulation."

Lieberman called today's verdict “fair and forward-looking” and one of “reconciliation and not retribution,” but others, like this constituent, will see it as another slithering out of responsibility for his actions by the weasel who was voted out by his party in the 2006 primaries but kept his seat when Republicans named a non-entity to throw the three-way race his way.

The President-Elect and Senate Democrats may congratulate themselves on today's act of anonymous generosity, but Connecticut residents who are enraged by and stuck with Lieberman's smug, self-righteous, self-serving wrong-headedness won't join in the celebration.

Lieberman Limbo Dance

In his two-step with the former Democrat turned Independent (by his own party's outraged voters) and, most recently, inseparable McCain sidekick and Obama basher, Harry Reid is showing all the resolution and skill that have marked his tenure as Senate Majority Leader.

"Joe Lieberman is not some right-wing nutcase," Reid said today. "Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."

He is also playing Reid like a cheap violin in the moves over stripping him of chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, as Democrats in and out of the Senate have been calling for the Majority Leader to do.

Apparently Lieberman is refusing to accept a less critical assignment and making eyes at Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a threat to switch allegiances once again.

Reid, who used to be a boxer, seems unable to recognize a feint when he sees one and call the bluff. Back here in Connecticut, voters have revised an old folk saying, "When you have Joe Lieberman for a friend, you don't need an enemy."

Christmas in July for Lieberman Loathers

"Liberal groups," The Hill reports, "plan to deliver a petition to Capitol Hill next week calling on Democrats to oust Sen. Joe Lieberman from his committee chairmanship in the 111th Congress."

Voters don't have to wait until November to strike a blow for Homeland Security by signing online to start "Joementum" for the housecleaning work a Senate with a substantial Democratic majority will be doing next January.

It's past time for the party to declare its independence from the president of the John McCain and George W. Bush fan clubs.