Worst American Birthdays, vol. III
By 
Holy Joe Lieberman turns 65 years old today.
Four years ago, I attended a wedding on the east coast where I happened to meet an old staffer of Lieberman’s who insisted — despite my vigorous and mostly unsober pronouncements to the contrary — that he was not a “corporate tool” or a “droning, moralizing sack of shit.” He was, she insisted with a sniff of derision, “his own man.”
Over the next four years, Joe Lieberman would prove to be “his own man” in the sense that Kato Kaelin was “his own man.” Sure, Lieberman has “opposed” the President on some issues — much as Kato Kaelin played a small role in Night Shadow or Tony Blair has pretended to be “Prime Minister” of England — but at every important moment, Lieberman has snapped his heels to attention and behaved as if George Bush’s ass smelled like Mountain Laurels, the state flower of Connecticut and by some accounts “the most beautiful of the native American shrubs.” Now, embittered by popular rejection of his toolery, Lieberman is reduced to making idiots happy by threatening a “centrist” and “principled” switch to the Republican party.
In recognition of this unfortunate day, I offer you a few great moments in Libermania:
Joe Lieberman on existential danger, August 2006:
“I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long Cold War,” Mr. Lieberman said.
“We cannot deceive ourselves that we live in safety today and the war is over, and it’s why we have to stay strong and vigilant,” he added.
Joe Lieberman on rape, emergency contraception, and Catholic dogma, March 2006:
In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital.
Joe Lieberman on just being a plain old tool, February 2006:
HANNITY: … by the way, I was mad at you at Alito, and one day I’m gonna pull you aside, and I believe in my heart, I really believe in my heart that if the president really needed your vote, you would have been there.
LIEBERMAN: (Sigh) Well, OK, you pull me aside and we’ll talk. (Laughter)
HANNITY: Alright, you don’t want to answer that publicly, do you?
LIEBERMAN: (Laughter) Cause I voted no.
HANNITY: I know you voted no but…
LIEBERMAN: But I did vote against the filibuster cause I thought that, you know, it was time to move on.
Scott Lemieux on Joe Lieberman, February 2005:
What makes Lieberman intolerable is that he undermines the Democrats every chance he gets, and he doesn’t come from a red state where we need to put up with that. The [Alberto] Gonzales vote is the biggest disgrace in a career filled with them. He must go. I don’t care if the candidate is Paul Newman or Wayne Knight. Get rid of him.