Howie Kleins
post on huffington post today takes Lieberman to task for his history of supporting thinly veiled racist and homophobic policies.
I always new Lieberman was a Neo-Con war hawk. I never really knew just how radically theocratic Lieberman was until I read this article.
Here's some samples:
Let me start with why I expressed the opinion that George Bush's best friend in the Democratic Party, Joe Lieberman, is a homophobe. Back in 2000, Paul Bass of The New Haven Advocate pointed out that Lieberman "sided with Jesse Helms on removing federal money from public schools that counsel suicidal homosexual teens that it's OK (or 'an acceptable lifestyle,' in Lieberman's and Helms' disapproving parlance) to be gay."
This whole "disapproving" thing is what came through so loud and clear for me.
Lieberman may have even thought he was being liberal and groovy when he told The Advocate that some of his best friends are gay. But gay people have a keen sense of when they're being condescended to and if Joe Lieberman is one thing, it is a condescending scold (or is that two things?) As he was putting together his horrendous and ultimately vetoed (saved by a Bush!) Media Marketing Accountability Act he treated homosexuality like a condition that society had to be protected from.
Here's more
Let me go back to the very learned and distinguished Dr. Marable for a moment:
Lieberman has a long record of hostility toward affirmative action that even his liberal apologists in the Democratic Party cannot hide. Back in 1995, when Lieberman took over the DLC, he declared, 'You can't defend policies that are based on group preferences as opposed to individual opportunities, which is what America has always been about.' Lieberman embraced California's Proposition 209 in 1996, which outlawed affirmative action programs in that state. When President Clinton, after months of hesitation, finally put forward the formulation that affirmative action programs ought to be 'mended, not ended,' Lieberman led the opposition within the Democratic Party. The DLC's Progressive Policy Institute issued a report criticizing Clinton's position, and called for abolishing it for government hiring and contracting, and making it voluntary in private business.
On issues of higher education, Lieberman has again played a conservative role. He was the only Democrat to vote against liberal historian Sheldon Hackney, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, to become head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He claimed that Hackney was too liberal on campus issues of 'political correctness.' Lieberman then became co-founder of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a five-year-old group that reject ''racial preferences,' opposes 'political correctness,' and defends 'Western civilization.'
This should teach Lieberman to mess with Howie.
Yet another reason to support Ned Lamont.