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September 20, 2007

The Shameless Hypocrisy of Joe Lieberman
Posted by Michael Cohen

This morning, I almost choked on my breakfast when I came across this quote from Joe Lieberman about the filibuster on Jim Webb's troop rotation amendment in the Senate yesterday.

"The fact that it didn’t get enough votes says that Congress doesn’t have the votes to stop this strategy of success from going forward.”

Let us take a second to parse the absurdity of this sentence. First of all, the amendment did get enough votes - 56 to be exact. But it didn't pass because Senate Republicans filibustered the bill. So in fact Democrats did have the votes to change course, if only Republicans would allow an up and down vote to occur.

Second, Lieberman actually has the audacity to claim that the surge represents a "strategy of success." What success? The continued sectarian violence? The lack of movement on political reconciliation? Honestly, I don't even think Petraeus or Crocker went that far in their testimony. You expect this sort of obfuscation from the Bush Administration, but Joe Lieberman should honestly know better. It makes you think that he might be more divorced from reality than the President. Unlike Harry Reid, clearly Joe is not reading Democracy Arsenal.

But that isn't even the best part. I went to Joe's website and there I found a press release bemoaning the Senate's failure to pass legislation giving DC residents a vote in Congress --and this stupefying and breathtaking quote:

I am deeply disappointed that, having come so close, we were not able to overcome a handful of opponents to move forward with this critically important civil rights bill . . . My colleagues, unfortunately, chose filibuster over fairness, refusing to even allow Senate consideration of the D.C. voting rights bill.

Those terrible Republicans, not even allowing consideration of the bill. I mean Joe Lieberman would never do that  . . . wait a minute, wait a minute HE VOTED TO FILIBUSTER THE WEBB AMENDMENT.

Hypocrite, thy name is Joe Lieberman.

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