Goodbye Joe, Hello Rick

Faux Democrat Joseph Lieberman, the senior senator from the state of Connecticut, has announced that he will not seek a fifth term. The "Independent Democrat," as he is registered in the Senate, cited his inability to fit comfortably with either party because of his unorthodox political views.

More likely, it's because he's afraid of losing. The Democrats don't want him, the Republicans don't trust him, and his credibility disappeared with his 2004 presidential run. More recently, Lieberman has continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was working on a program of "weapons of mass destruction" when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, even though George Walker Bush has long since admitted that no such program existed. It's also to Lieberman we owe the credit for killing a public medical insurance option and even the idea of a Medicare buy-in for people 55 to 65, preserving the right of private health insurers (many of whom are in Connecticut) to avoid competition designed to bring down costs.

Lieberman is already irrelevant, having ceded his moral authority over these issues and having campaigned for John McCain in 2008 after having been Albert Gore's vice presidential running mate eight years earlier. All eyes are now focused on the new U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Having survived a tough campaign, we now wait to see how Senator Blumenthal will parlay his experience in taking on corporate interests as his state's attorney general for twenty years into helping and serving the people who sent him to Washington. As for Lieberman's seat, the horrible Linda McMahon is already rumored to be ready to run for it. But I doubt there's enough WWE-bred savvy to fix the result on this contest.

Linda McMahon is not the only contemptible Republican vying for a comeback. The spectacularly insufferable Rick Santorum, a former two-term senator from Pennsylvania, is either mulling over a run for his old Senate seat (he was voted out of office in 2006 in favor of Democrat Robert Casey, Jr.) or for, God forbid, the Presidency. The staunchly anti-abortion Santorum - who values the right to life so much that he and his wife brought their prematurely born son home after he had died for two hours and slept with the remains for a night - accused President Obama of being a discredit to his race for supporting abortion rights. Santorum said Obama, who as a black man and as a constitutional professor knows that black slaves were considered three-fifths of a person when the Constitution was written, has no right to deny the right of the unborn to be considered a person.

Santorum, an Italian-American, is a discredit to his own people. Since Italian-Americans have always been put down in politics, television and Woody Allen movies as being undereducated goombahs, I would argue that Santorum doesn't have the right to be stupid.

Oh yeah, I didn't want to bring it up, but Santorum opposes abortions even in cases of endangerment to the life of the mother and he opposes single-payer health care, suggesting that any baby girl with the right to life has little right to anything else once she grows up.