Could we get a little oversight here Lieberman? Collins?

Just a little oversight for a change? Instead of your typical hyper-partisan republicanista propaganda against the interests of Americans:

The Department of Homeland Security “has given up on one of its broadest anti-terrorism data-mining tools after investigators found it was tested with information about real people without the required privacy safeguards.”

We know Joe neocon Lieberman has completely ignored his responsibility to provide real oversight following the failures of Katrina, either because he is bigoted towards black people OR poor people OR because he is just a Republican bitch, though it could be some combination of all three?

It’s worth noting, however, that Joe Lieberman, as head of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, promised to investigate the government’s response to Hurricaine Katrina. From January of 2006, when Joe was running for office:

The White House is dodging questions about Hurricane Katrina response and has instructed other agencies to join it in fending off investigators, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said on Tuesday. The White House denies the allegations.

Lieberman went so far as to suggest that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to kill the investigation.

“My staff believes that DHS has engaged in a conscious strategy of slow-walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation’s natural progression to where it leads,” Lieberman said. “At this point, I cannot disagree.”

The Connecticut senator, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, further said no real reason is being given for the administration’s reticence.

“There’s been no assertion of executive privilege, just a refusal to answer,” Lieberman said. “I have been told by my staff that almost every question our staff has asked federal agency witnesses regarding conversations with or involvement of the White House has been met with a response that they could not answer on direction of the White House.”

And once Lieberman was re-elected with no small amount of help from the GOP?

Bush’s Best Democratic Buddy Joe Lieberman gives the president a pass on Katrina.

Jan. 11, 2007 - Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Lieberman’s reversal underscores the new role that he is seeking to play in the Senate as the leading apostle of bipartisanship, especially on national-security issues. On Wednesday night, Bush conspicuously cited Lieberman’s advice as being the inspiration for creating a new “bipartisan working group” on Capitol Hill that he said will “help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.”

(As a side note, I think the above paragraph is a pretty clear demonstration of the fact that when Joe says “bipartisan” what he really means is “Karl Rove’s bitch.” Because nobody wants to bring the troops home more than Joe, you know.)

But since so many of our Democratic 08 candidates are current or former members of the Senate, maybe they would like to prod their colleague Joe about his promise to give residents of New Orleans an explanation for the government’s mishandling of the disaster and what happened to their lives?

But how does Lieberman feel about patriotic Americans that want to see him uphold his oath to protect the Constitution? We have a right to privacy and the department Lieberman heads, the Department of Homeland Security, flushed it down the toilet along with the Constitution.

Why should we have to rely on the GAO to keep Lieberman's department in line?

A report by Congress' Government Accountability Office cautioned last March that the program should complete privacy analyses and notify the public of how individuals' data would be verified, used and protected before ADVISE was implemented. "Like other data-mining applications, the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism," the GAO warned.

Then in separate reports released without fanfare in July and August, the department's inspector general and its privacy office concluded that between 2004 and 2007, three pilot tests of ADVISE used personally identifiable information without first completing required privacy impact analyses. The DHS privacy office concluded the tests "created unnecessary privacy risks."

This is the second such error at DHS. The Secure Flight program to screen domestic air travelers was barred from implementation by Congress after it was learned that it acquired live data for testing rather than using made-up data. That program, however, is going into testing this fall having issued the required privacy impact assessment and dropping the use of commercial data, such as people's credit card histories.

Are you so fuckin' incompetent and so hyper-partisan against our freedoms that you are incapable of running the DHS in an ethical manner? Are you so anti-American that you can't protect citizens from the abuses of illegal data mining operations by your own department?

These questions can and should be asked of Susan Collins, the other incompetent republican Senator tasked with running the DHS, as well. Lieberman and Collins, both of them bush hacks, embrace the ideals of repeated failure, incompetence, and criminal negligence with no accountability.

From an MLN diary posted in July:

From today's Washington Post:

FEMA Knew Of Toxic Gas In Trailers
Hurricane Victims Reported Illnesses
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 20, 2007; Page A01

The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday.
[...]
As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.

What is Congress's role in a situation like this? To investigate. You might expect that Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, who chair the Senate Committee on Homeland Security—the committee that oversees FEMA—to lead an investigation. But you’d be wrong. Just as they failed to look into the incompetence that led to the Katrina disaster, Joe and Suzy have been AWOL on this scandal too.

To these two republicans (face the facts, Lieberman is a republican now) that are supposed to provide oversight of the DHS and FEMA, what are a few more dead black and poor people? Who gives a shit if the bulk of the displaced survivors are still displaced, and still in mortal danger because of something these two refused to do anything about? And who cares about Americans' fucking rights to privacy? Those are just quaint ideals to these two, these two bush ass-kissers that have embraced the neoconservative goals of an all surveillance all the time fascist society, regardless of rights entrenched in the Constitution they took an oath to uphold.

These two republicans, Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, want nothing to do with providing real oversight of their departments repeated failures, want nothing to do with helping the poor and minorities, want nothing to do with protecting our freedoms, want nothing to do with an open democracy.

And they have both come to embody all things wrong and republican during the bush years.

Buzz It! if you want to...

Think Joe, Sue and the DHS are keeping YOU safe?

Think again...

They can't even secure their own department, never mind you and I.

The Homeland Security Department, the lead U.S. agency for fighting cyber threats, suffered more than 800 hacker break-ins, virus outbreaks and other computer security problems over two years, senior officials acknowledged to Congress.

In one instance, hacker tools for stealing passwords and other files were found on two internal Homeland Security computer systems. The agency's headquarters sought forensic help from the department's own Security Operations Center and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team it operates with Carnegie Mellon University.

In other cases, computer workstations in the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration were infected with malicious software detected trying to communicate with outsiders; laptops were discovered missing; and agency Web sites suffered break-ins.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said such problems undermine the government's efforts to encourage companies and private organizations to improve cyber security.

Given their track record of exceptional oversight of homeland security, where real oversight is the exception, we are sure Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins will start to investigate what is going on. It is their job, ya know?

But the decision by Lieberman, the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to back away from the committee's Katrina probe is already dismaying public-interest groups and others who hoped the Democratic victory in November would lead to more aggressive investigations of one of the White House’s most spectacular foul-ups.

Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

Asserting that there were “too many important questions that cannot be answered,” Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel “did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House.”

And Joe supports more of this turning a blind eye to failure when he shows his support for Susan Collins re-election.

Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman have been complete and total failures at providing government oversight. They were -- and are -- the ranking Republican and Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that has done NOTHING to hold the Bush administration accountable for Iraq or Katrina or any other issue really.

Lieberman and Collins had the opportunity to rein Bush in -- and they didn't. They won't. They support Bush. They support his war in Iraq. No wonder Joe Lieberman thinks Collins is a great Senator. She's just like him.

How did we end up with this untenable situation? ctblogger has been keeping tabs on who is to blame:

Hugh Bailey nails it.

Local Democrats must be so proud. James Amann, Bill Finch, Paul Ganim: their hard work is going toward bringing control of the U.S. Senate back to Republicans.

Surprising no one, Sen. Joe Lieberman has announced he will campaign and raise money for his good friend Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine. Collins is a Republican, and if she wins next year, it could go a long way toward putting her party back in control of the Senate.

Elections have consequences. Congress is this year finally holding hearings and trying to get answers from a White House that rules by executive fiat. President Bush will be gone after next year's election, but investigators will be sorting through the wreckage of his presidency for years. Restoring to power a party dedicated to looking the other way is bad for the country.

[...]

Lieberman can argue that he's only repaying Collins' favor to him last year. It's true, she came to Connecticut and did what she could to help her fellow ranking member on the Senate's committee on homeland security. But for Collins, there was no downside. Win or lose, Lieberman or Ned Lamont, the Connecticut senator was going to caucus with the Democrats. Collins' seat, though, is a toss-up, and should she win, it could deal a severe blow to Democrats' chances of holding onto the Senate.

[...]

We'll never know what kind of senator Ned Lamont would have made, but we can be sure he wouldn't have spent time and money campaigning for Republicans. Elections have consequences, and all local Democrats who stuck with Lieberman and turned against their own party should be reminded of what their support has brought them — no oversight, no meaningful investigations from his committee and active support for Republicans. Thanks again, guys.

Don't forget those who stuck with Joe...don't EVER forget.

Tip to T-Party for the heads-up.

Lots of people in the Blogosphere are watching this irrational behaviour, and we will never forget:

When Bill Clinton rushed to Connecticut to try to save Lieberman's doomed bid for renomination, and then followed that up after the reactionary senator was defeated in the Democratic party by going on air with Larry King and equating the Lieberman and Lamont-- "My view is Connecticut is an unmitigated blessing for the Democrats because Lieberman has said if he wins he's going to vote with us to organize the Senate"-- low information voters in Connecticut got the signal that the race was no big deal. Now treacherous Democrats who supported or tacitly supported Lieberman-- Schumer, Reid, Obama, Clinton, Landrieu, Pryor-- have to contend with that treachery themselves. Landrieu has already felt the sting when Lieberman, as head of the committee dealing with Katrina reconstruction sided with the Bush Regime and left her almost certain to be defeated next year.

But helping the GOP defeat Landrieu isn't the only payback Lieberman has for Rove, Bush and Cheney for coming to his rescue in the general election last year. Even beyond voting with Republicans in the Senate over and over, and declaring he would likely endorse a Republican for president-- McCain, as big a warmonger as himself, being his first choice-- he has now started endorsing vulnerable Republican senators for re-election. His only consideration seems to be that they support Bush's Iraq occupation.

And that is why there is absolutely nothing bipartisan about Joe NEOCON Lieberman... Joe has one agenda, and one agenda only. WARMONGERING:

Last year, in the heat of the senate primary, I was talking to an old friend in Iowa and hastily summarized my disgust with Lieberman in one word: warmonger. My friend thought that my choice of words was particularly strong, which gave me pause. Was I being unfair to Lieberman? As is evident in the video above, from this past Sunday, apparently not.

So I ask a question that has already been answered: Is Joe Lieberman really a warmonger? Sadly, yes:

war·mon·ger noun
: one who urges or attempts to stir up war

But the problem here is that in order for Joe to work his warmonger's agenda he has to support candidates, and their policies, that have exhibited the highest levels of incompetence in their judgement and, often, have purposely failed to do their jobs of providing real oversight. Bush and Collins are examples of that unending support that Joe stretches well past what would be considered typically partisan behaviour and well into the realms of gross negligence in regards to providing security to our nation's citizens.

Bombing Iran, Joe? FUCK YOU WARMONGER!

Kicking you and your bush supporters off of the Department of Homeland Security Committee would certainly do more to improve our nation's security than any agenda you offer.

Joe Neocon Lieberman Raising Money For Collins

It isn't enough to simply endorse all of the republican candidates, now he is raising money for these dirtbags:

Not only has Lieberman endorsed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) -- one of Democrats' biggest targets in the 2008 cycle -- but he's planning to co-host a fundraiser for her on June 21 in Washington, D.C.

The event, which will be held in a Capitol Hill location still to be determined, will feature Lieberman and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) -- a very rare bipartisan fundraiser. Attendees are being asked to raise $3,000; $2,000 would come in the form of a political action committee donation while the other $1,000 would be a personal contribution, according to an electronic invite for the fundraiser obtained today by The Fix.

Harry Reid needs to dump him and give someone like Chuck Hagel the job on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Dump Lieberman and give it to Hagel outright. No strings attached except the expectation for him to run it honorably and in a bipartisan manner.