Lieberman keeps chair.

As predicted:

Senator Harry Reid just spoke to reporters after the private caucus meeting with Dems over Joe Lieberman's fate, and he confirmed it: Lieberman will not be stripped of his Homeland Security chairmanship, because the "vast majority" of the Democratic caucus wants him to stay.

"This was not a time for retribution," Reid said, adding that "we're moving forward."

Lieberman was removed from the Environment and Public Works Committee, a largely meaningless punishment since it's a topic (unlike Homeland Security) on which he has no differences with Dems.

Asked about liberal "anger" towards Lieberman, Reid said: "I pretty well understand anger. I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was."

But he added: "If you will look at the problems that we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying boy did we get even?"

"I feel good about what we did today," Reid said. "We're moving forward."

In what was described as "an emotional meeting" the snake was allowed to keep his chair.

Mr. Lieberman, who only eight years ago was the party’s nominee for vice president, said he could have made some statements “more clearly.” He added: “And there are some that I made that I wish I had not made at all. And obviously in the heat of campaigns, that happens to all of us. But I regret that. And now it’s time to move on.”

The weasel now claims that he didn't make some of his statements clear enough, as if we all perhaps misunderstood him when he stood on a Republican platform and asked people to vote for the other side.

I'm with Bernie Sanders who said that allowing Lieberman to keep the chair was a “slap in the face” to Americans who “worked day and night to get Barack Obama elected and to move our country in a very new direction.”

I know people could argue that Obama ran promising a new bipartisan approach to politics, and no doubt many will cite that as the reason that Lieberman was allowed to stay, but treachery and bipartisanship are very different things and what angers me is that Lieberman indulged in the former.

For that, he should have been punished. And that should have meant him, not only losing his chair, but being kicked out of the caucus as well. They should have let him join the Republicans and see how he fares at the next election.

Tags: Lieberman, Homeland Security chairmanship, Democrats