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Sanctimonious Joe in the Crossfire

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If I had my way, Harry Reid would bounce Sanctimonious Joe out of the Democratic Party unceremoniously (after all, in matters having to do with Joe Lieberman, one is usually well-advised to follow Jane’s lead). But I wanted to explore some of the other tensions spelling doom for Joementum.

Generally, the press claims that the Republicans would be happy to have him. After all, they’ve lost 5 seats (at least) in two elections in a row, so by taking Holy Joe, they can pad their numbers and retain a little more power. Yet almost all those claims rely on this quote from John Ensign:

Republicans over the past weeks have made it clear they’d welcome Lieberman if he chooses to defect. "Joe Lieberman is certainly going to be a wild card," Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, told MSNBC last week. "And it depends — you know, we welcome Joe. I think Joe’s a terrific guy with a lot of integrity and does what he believes."

Ensign, of course, was head of the NRSC this year–the guy tasked with ensuring electoral success for Republican Senate candidates. Things didn’t work out so well for Ensign in that role. So it is understandable that he’d want to downplay his own failure by adding Joe to the "R" column.

But hearing John Ensign say he’d welcome Joe with open arms is very different from hearing Mitch McConnell say the same thing. And for McConnell–who is now tasked with trying to prevent wholesale Democratic policy victories, having an occasionally liberal Senator from Connecticut on your team has some drawbacks. In recent years, Joementum has shown no taste for party discipline; he might be different under the Republicans, but if so, he will certainly lose re-election in 2012. McConnell is a damn good Minority Leader (unfortunately), but I suspect he is weighing seriously whether he wants to deal with the headache of Joe’s whining over the next several years. 

And then there’s the matter of what the Republicans could offer Joe. As it is, they’re either going to have to beg the Democrats to expand the committees, or they’re going to have to take committee assignments away from some senators (for example, Tom Coburn will lose his membership in SJC unless they expand that committee). So does McConnell really want to add another senator to the list of those who need committee assignments? Read more →

Senate Armed Services Torture Hearing

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Joby Warrick maps out what we can expect from today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, now showing on CSPAN3.

A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command, according to congressional sources briefed on the findings.

The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists.

The reported evidence — some of which is expected to be made public at a Senate hearing today — also shows that military lawyers raised strong concerns about the legality of the practices as early as November 2002, a month before Rumsfeld approved them. The findings contradict previous accounts by top Bush administration appointees, setting the stage for new clashes between the White House and Congress over the origins of interrogation methods that many lawmakers regard as torture and possibly illegal.

This is a well-constructed hearing–and I say that not just because my Senator, Carl Levin, put it together. It has three panels. The first features the people who turned SERE techniques into torture techniques:

Mr. Richard L. Shiffrin
Former Deputy General Counsel for Intelligence
Department of Defense

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel J. Baumgartner, Jr., USAF (Ret.)
Former Chief of Staff
Joint Personnel Recovery Agency

Dr. Jerald F. Ogrisseg
Former Chief, Psychology Services
336th Training Group
United States Air Force Survival School

The second panel will expose the debate among military lawyers about whether or not to use torture:

Mr. Alberto J. Mora
Former General Counsel
United States Navy

Rear Admiral Jane G. Dalton, USN (Ret.)
Former Legal Advisor to the Chairman
Joint Chiefs of Staff

Lieutenant Colonel Diane E. Beaver, USA (Ret.)
Former Staff Judge Advocate
Joint Task Force 170/JTF Guantanamo Bay

And the third features Jim "Chevron" Haynes, who is under some pressure for his changing testimony, potentially amounting to perjury:

Mr. William J. Haynes II
Former General Counsel
Department of Defense

Here are the documents that will be discussed during the hearing (courtesy of WO and Marty Lederman).

Read more →

Okay, Lamont Didn’t Crash the Servers. But What Did Lieberman Do with His $387,000 Slush Fund?

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In thoroughly unsurprising news today, the Ned Lamont campaign was cleared of any wrong-doing in the crash of Lieberman’s server leading up to primary day in 2006. The Stamford Advocate reports that the FBI determined–way back on October 25, 2006–that Lieberman’s campaign bears all responsibility for the server crash.

Case closed, right?

No. Not on the outstanding legal issues arising from the campaign, anyway.

As you might recall, the Lamont campaign filed an FEC complaint, coincidentally just two days before the whole server crash case was closed in October 2006, noting that Joe Lieberman had a campaign finance entry for "petty cash" expenditures that were way beyond the legal limits: $387,000 of "petty cash."

The Friends of Joe Lieberman committee, and Joseph I. Lieberman, individually have violated the clear and unambiguous terms of 11 C.F.R. §102.11 in at least the following three ways.

First, according to the FEC October Quarterly report filed on October 13, 2006, the Lieberman campaign has petty cash disbursements amounting to $387,561.00, which is roughly 8 percent of its total disbursements, or one out of every twelve dollars spent. On several occasions, petty cash disbursements greater than $100 were reported, as supposed payment for “volunteers.” As summary of these disbursements from the Friends of Joe Lieberman report are attached hereto. These disbursements reflect patent violations of 11 C.F.R. §102.11.

Second, the report does not include the name and address of every person to whom any disbursement is made, as well as the date, amount, and purpose of such disbursement. Again, Friends of Joe Lieberman stands in clear violation of 11 C.F.R. §102.11.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, the Associated Press reported earlier today that Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun claims the cash was supposedly used pay to field coordinators who then distributed money to workers who were canvassing (Andrew Miga, Lamont Questions Lieberman’s Spending, October 23, 2006). There is no evidence that the Lieberman committee kept and maintained a written journal of any kind regarding these disbursements as required by 11 C.F.R. §102.11. As I am sure you are aware, the rationale for this regulation is to, among other things, prevent the creation and utilization of slush funds for illicit purposes. The $387,561.00 involved here is a sum of supposed petty cash expenditures unprecedented in any race in our state’s history. Read more →

You Know It’s a Clusterfuck if emptywheel Agrees with PowerLine

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PowerLine is offended that John McCain allowed Joe Lieberman to make robocalls for him.

Mr. Knott reports the time of the message as 4:23 p.m. and quotes the message as follows (emphasis added):

Hi. This Senator Joe Lieberman. I’m calling for John McCain.

As you may remember I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. But this year I’m supporting Republican John McCain for President because he is the person best qualified to lead our country forward. He’s a straight talker who will always do what’s right for our country regardless of partisan politics and he’s the only candidate prepared to be commander-in-chief from day one.

There isn’t a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan this year and all registered voters are able to participate in a Republican primary. So I’m calling today to urge you to vote in the Republican primary on January 15 for Senator John McCain. He’ll break through the partisanship and make our government in Washington work for all the people again.

I have written the McCain campaign to inquire about the accuracy of this report. I cannot vouch for it as of yet. It is consistent with this CBS report of Senator Lieberman campaigning today for Senator McCain in Michigan:

[I]n Ypsilanti, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., joined McCain on the stump and urged independents to vote for his friend.

"This is a tough and close fight here in Michigan here today. But Republicans, and I want to say specifically independents and yes, Democrats……I urge them to come out today and stand for a man who is a great American patriot."

If Mr. Knott’s report is accurate, is there anyone in the Republican Party beside John McCain who thinks this is kosher?

UPDATE: Patrick Hynes responds on behalf of the McCain campaign:

Thanks for reaching out to me. Sen. Lieberman indeed recorded a GOTV phone call, but it mentioned nothing about Democrats voting in the Republican primary and the call was not targeted to Democrats. Sen. Lieberman’s message was of a series of calls from numerous McCain campaign surrogates, which also included Sen. Sam Brownback.

As regular readers no doubt know, I, too, am offended that Joe Lieberman spammed me with robocalls for McCain for the last 4 days. Read more →