Fightin' Joe fights himself

Way back in 2006 Ned Lamont successfully challenged incumbent Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for the Connecticut Senate seat. Lieberman went on to run in the general election as an independent and won the three-way race with 52% of the vote.

The day before the August primary, the Lieberman campaign's website crashed. They blamed the Lamont campaign and their supporters for a "hack attack" and asked for a criminal investigation. They got a bunch of media out of it.

Guess what? The Stamford Advocate has learned the real story. A criminal investigation did ensue and discovered quite quickly that the website crash was the result of a badly configured server designed only to handle 100 emails an hour. An FBI memo dated BEFORE the 2006 general election stated their findings quite clearly. And yet, a Lieberman representative was still pointing fingers at the Lamont people in December. (Lieberman ain't just a sore loser, he's a sore winner too!)

Why are we finding this out a year and a half later? It's because the government authorities finally responded to a Freedom of Information Request filed in late 2006. Clearly the Lieberman people would have been told this at the time the investigation was closed in October 2006, but Senator Virtue himself hasn't come clean about making this mistaken allegation at a key moment of the nasty campaign. I think it's safe to say that Lieberman values playing the victim more than he values honesty.

Politicians often invent straw man arguments. Joe Lieberman makes himself the victim to his aggressor self.

It's this kind of thing that makes me actually hope McCain would pick Lieberman as his running mate. He'd elicit many opportunities to take him down. Playing the victim in this way doesn't play well in the race for the White House.