No apologies from Lieberman

Lieberman's spokesman Dan Gerstein, on his campaign being busted for lying about their website crash in the 2006 primary:

A spokesman for Mr. Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, said in a statement that the campaign had acted on the assessment of its Web site administrator, who believed the site had been attacked. And while he accepted the F.B.I.’s findings, he did not offer any regrets.

"We consider the matter closed," Mr. Gerstein said.

Legally, the matter was closed BEFORE the 2006 general election, in October of that year, and they didn't see fit to admit to the public that they had smeared the Ned Lamont campaign and bloggers like us. That would require integrity the likes not seen around Joe Lieberman since ... well, perhaps ever.

This wasn't rocket science. The Lieberman campaign was incompetent in its web dealings, as was painfully obvious the very day his site went down. Yet that didn't stop Gerstein and Lieberman from blaming their incompetence on others:

Visitors who tried to access Lieberman's site at the time received a message calling on Lamont to "make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately."

And it didn't stop the traditional media from trumpeting those lies and smears, none of which bothered to ask their tech teams (or outside tech sources) to take a look and see if the Lieberman charges held any water.

It also didn't stop Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and US Attorney Kevin O'Connor from refusing to release details of Lieberman's bogus charges and his campaign's rank incompetence a week before the election, lest it hurt their friend's re-election chances. I'm sure Karl Rove and Monica Goodling were mighty pleased with O'Connor's work.

In short, a U.S. Senator demanded public funds be spent investigating a patently bogus and politically motivated charge, yet the public was refused access to the results of that investigation until well past the time where the voters could've properly assessed the situation in that election.

No one said Bush's and Rove's politicization of the Justice Department didn't pay dividends.

But still, Gerstein thinks "the matter is closed".

Legally, it is, but politically, it's not. It's just one more data point for a state that is increasingly disenchanted with Lieberman and suffering from buyer's remorse.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/31-4/2. Regular voters. MoE 4% (9/10-12/2007 results)

If you could vote again for U.S. Senate, would you vote for Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

All

Lamont (D)      51 (48)  
Lieberman (I)   37 (40)
Schlesinger (R)  7  (9)

Democrats

Lamont (D)      74 (72)  
Lieberman (I)   19 (25)
Schlesinger (R)  2  (3)

Republicans

Lamont (D)       4  (7)  
Lieberman (I)   74 (69)
Schlesinger (R) 19 (24)

Independents

Lamont (D)      53 (49)  
Lieberman (I)   36 (38)
Schlesinger (R)  6  (9)

For someone who pretends to be so pious, Lieberman and his lackeys exhibit a shocking lack of integrity. Sure, Connecticut Republicans love it since they are allergic to good government, but he's unsurprisingly lost his state's Democrats and independents.

It's just a matter of waiting out the clock until 2012.