Sen. Patrick Leahy said on VPR's Vermont Edition today that Sen. Joe Lieberman should not be rewarded with a major chairmanship in the next Senate.
The former Democrat-turned-independent is chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He backed Republican John McCain for president, but Leahy suggested he went farther in that support than he should have.
The blog
Daily Kos is all over Leahy's comments, which are:
"Every senator will have to vote the way he or she believes they should,"
Leahy said, in a reference to the upcoming vote on Lieberman's fate in the Dem
caucus next week. "I'm one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded
with a major chairmanship after doing what he did."
"I felt some of the attacks that he was involved in against Senator
Obama...went way beyond the pale," Leahy continued. I thought they were not
fair, I thought they were not legitimate, I thought they perpetuated some of
these horrible myths that were being run about Senator Obama."
"I would feel that had I done something similar," Leahy concluded,
"that I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next
Congress."
_ Terri Hallenbeck