Bipartisanship, vol 459

Rob Ney may be gone, but meet the gal he wants to "serve" in his stead.

"This year's most extraordinary example of slimeball politics involves the former hostage Terry Anderson, who is running for state senator in a district in southern Ohio. His opponent, Joy Padgett, a longtime Republican functionary, links him and Dan Rather as two liberal journalists who don't get their facts straight, going on to show a photo of Anderson shaking hands with a Middle Eastern–looking man and accusing him of being soft on terrorism.

Anderson, a former chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press, was taken hostage by Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1985 and held until 1991. Following his release, he returned to Lebanon with a CNN crew and searched out his former captors. A photo from that trip is the one now being used by Padgett. (...)

"The picture," [Anderson] continued, referring to the photo of himself shaking hands with the Hezbollah official, "is one of the guys who kidnapped me, who held me for seven years, who chained me and blindfolded me. I went back to Lebanon with a CNN news crew and looked him up and put him on camera and asked him, Why did you do this?

"She now says I am an apologist for terrorists.That's sheer nonsense. It's offensive. I've just about had enough."

This is why Lieberman is in trouble. These people will do anything, say anything to gain power and stay there. There are no standards of truth they will apply themselves to. There is no depth of character assassination below which they will not go. And don't tell me the Senate is different*; that the House is just the rabble. Lieberman has still not gotten this fact, and instead lashes out at fellow Democrats for not accepting his moral superiority.

Bemoaning the death of bipartisanship is like bemoaning the death of the typewriter; it was great and it was useful, but it's been gone a good long while.

* And Lieberman should be ashamed to claim that the "attacks" on him are equivalent to the attacks Cleland received from Saxby Chambliss.