Perversely partisan

In his own blog -- and Joe, a blog is really not intended as a vehicle to simply cut and paste your own damn press releases -- Lieberman's campaign claims that he was, tough, tough, on the Republicans over this "Foley business."

LIEBERMAN: . . .Because, you know, the fact that Congressman Shimkus, who's the chairman of the committee, Republican, first got these e-mails, which were not as bad as the ones that came out more recently. But they were very, very troublesome, that a congressman was having this kind of...

IMUS: Of course.

LIEBERMAN: Something was wrong there.

And then, so Shimkus does a pretty -- well, it looks like from the paper, but honestly, we don't know for sure, a pretty lame kind of conversation with Foley and doesn't tell the Democratic members of that committee.

Now, that's a sign of how just perversely divided on a partisan basis the House is. What happened was not political. It was immoral and it was an embarrassment for the institution. And they should have gone at it that way.

No, the Foley imbroglio -- and the Republican decision to sit on it for political reasons -- is not "a sign of how just perversely divided on a partisan basis the House is." It's a sign of how perverse House Republican leadership is.

Idiot.