Note to dense mainstream media:

I am constantly amazed by how uninformed people are when their job is to inform others. Every press article or editorial I've seen on the Lieberman issue completely misses the point. We are not against Joe Lieberman because we are leftists who require ideological purity. We are against him because he aids and abets an out of control Republican Party.

I have been a centrist all my life and I was a Republican until five years ago...Lieberman doesn't offend my non-existent leftist ideology. So why would a centrist be so angry with a senator who claims to be a centrist and tries to find common ground between the two parties? Because the Republicans today are so far to the right that going over to their side is abandoning centrists in favor of siding with right wing zealots.

He knows. Lieberman knows that these are the same guys who have been unabashedly using 9/11 as a political tool. He knows these are the same guys who linked Iraq and 9/11 when there was absolutely no connection. He knows they campaign against gays, immigrants and anyone else they can focus people's hatred on. He knows they have devolved into a party of misinformation, propaganda, ill-conceived wars and religious zealotry -- and he still loves them.

He doesn't just vote with Republicans, he relishes it. He talks like them, he walks like them, he is them. It's not the Iraq War vote people care about nearly as much as when he said, "It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

That's going out of your way to support not just their ideology and their war, but to support their demagoguery. It's ugly and it reeks. We get plenty enough of that from Republicans, we don't need any of that from so-called Democrats.

That above quote is symbolic of Joe's whole state of mind. He'll go to any length to support this war and this administration. He didn't get roped in, he wasn't tricked, he was a willing participant.

It's very frustrating to see some Democratic politicians buy into Republican framing of the issues. But Lieberman is different. He isn't just buying Republican talking points, he's selling them.

He shares an ideology, a mind-set and a worldview that sets him apart from the rest of us, the reality-based community. He isn't coerced or intimated by the Republicans like some of the other Democrats. He is part of the apparatus of coercion and intimidation.

He hasn't accidentally scored a goal on his own team -- he meant to. And that is a world of difference.

Then we get to Alito. Here's a man who is going to allow the president to have any executive power he damn well pleases. A man who doesn't believe in our democratic form of government. The public might not know or understand what unitary executive theory is, but Joe does. He knows it means giving the president a blank check to rewrite the laws and to ignore Congress. But Joe blocked the filibuster of Sam Alito anyway.

He gave away the right to filibuster while pretending to save it. If they didn't filibuster Sam Alito, they'll never, ever filibuster anybody. You know it, I know it, there's absolutely no arguing with it. They're not going to appoint Saddam to the Supreme Court. Alito was as radical as it gets in the United States, and Senator Lieberman made damn sure he got through.

Again, I am not even liberal. I agree with nearly all of Alito's conservative rulings from the bench so far. I'm with him on state authority on the death penalty, I'm with him on wider latitude for police searches, I'm with him when he rules against the exclusionary rule. But you cannot have a man who, in the Hamdan case, agreed that the president does not have to consult with Congress when he makes up non-existent laws about tribunals. Or that the president does not have to abide by treaties we have signed that are supposed be the supreme law of the land. These ideas do not abide by American principles. They are grants of dictatorial power.