Slimy Joe frolicking in swill

I wrote how Joe Lieberman returned Obama's kindness with a gutter level passive-agressive attack. Lieberman is steadily moving to secure his place in the gutter politics hall of fame. This time Joe chimed in on McCain's Obama-Hamas attack. So much for "dignified" politics.

Last night Jonathan Alter had an interesting perspective on Lieberman's politics. Quote:

But you got to realize, Joe Lieberman has been a hatchet man going back to when he was first elected to the Senate. He charged Lowell Weicker in 1988 by saying, he was, you know, too close to Fidel Castro which was kind of preposterous at the time. So, what he does is sort of under these almost clerical clothing, he will pull up a knife and stick it in and use his piety and his reputation for morale rectitude as a cover for some very negative politics.

Sums it quite well. A while back Michael Kinsley wrote a very smart article on this pair. It'll serve everyone well to re-read it here. In my opinion, Kinsley seems too generous to both. But that's because only recently have we started to discover the true extent of their sleaziness.
Key Paragraph:
Lieberman is literally pious—a devout Orthodox Jew—and that is admirable, especially in a politician with the highest ambitions. But he also has the hectoring, bromidic high-rhetorical style reminiscent of an especially pompous clergyman. ("These are not ordinary times for our country. Therefore those of us who seek our highest office or hold it cannot practice ordinary politics." When exactly were these ordinary times when ordinary politics, whatever that means, would have been OK by Joe Lieberman?) His jokes are labored and dutiful. All this melds unattractively with the hair-trigger indignation of a more recent but increasingly familiar social type: the ambulance-chasing state attorney general, always scanning the horizon in search of a reason for a press conference. Greenhouse gases today, violent video games tomorrow, some other alliterative outrage the next.