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A senior U.S. senator on Sunday said the shootings at Fort Hood could have been a terrorist attack, and that he would launch a congressional investigation into whether the U.S. military could have prevented it.Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who heads the Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said initial evidence suggested that the alleged shooter, Army Major Nidal Hasan, was a "self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist" who had turned to Islamic extremism while under personal stress. Mr. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, had opened fire Thursday at a soldier processing center at Fort Hood, Tex., killing 13 and wounding...

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - A key U.S. senator called Sunday for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs that the man accused of opening fire at Fort Hood had embraced an increasingly extremist view of Islamic ideology. Sen. Joe Lieberman's call came as word surfaced that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there. Whether Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, associated with the hijackers is something the FBI will probably look into, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on...

WASHINGTON — The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate. Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and "take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people." The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security committee, Joe Lieberman, on Sunday said that the deadly shooting at Texas' Fort Hood military base was an act of "Islamist extremism." Lieberman, a former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, said it was too early to definitively state the motives of Nidal Hasan, who is alleged to have killed 13 and injured 30 on a murderous rampage last week, but said clues pointed to terrorism. "There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act," he told Fox...

Sen. Joe Lieberman called the Fort Hood massacre an act of "Islamist extremism" - even as top Army brass warned Sunday against guessing at a motive, fearing backlash against Muslim soldiers. "There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act," Lieberman (I-Conn) told Fox News on Sunday. "If the reports that we're receiving of various statements he made, acts he took are valid, he had turned to Islamist extremism." Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, chairs the Senate Homeland Security committee. Nidal Malik Hasan,...

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will seek to move forward on an investigation surrounding the mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee's chairman, said today. The chairman said the scope of the probe would address the motives of the alleged shooter Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan and whether signs of "Islamic extremism" were apparent, but missed or ignored. "It's premature to reach conclusions about what motivated Hasan," Lieberman said on "Fox News Sunday" this morning. "But it's clear that he was, one, under personal stress and,...

It is protest day, for the Left and the Right, on Capitol Hill. First out of the gate - 9 Protesters backing a universal health care system briefly occupied Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning. Protesters were arrested, one by one, and dragged out of his office amid chants of "Everyone in and noone out, universal healthcare now!" and "Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!"

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., flanked by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., left, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009, to discuss climate change legislation

Even as a Senate global-warming bill remained in limbo with Democrats refusing to delay a committee vote until an economic analysis was completed, hopes rose for a potential bipartisan compromise. The Senate, meanwhile, appears to be moving away from the bill, authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., which would require a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and would have the government sell the right to emit carbon dioxide. Even as Boxer conducted an unusual one-sided hearing on her bill in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Kerry, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and...

WASHINGTON – A trio of senators with differing political views is working behind-the-scenes to rescue troubled climate legislation. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., together with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Wednesday they would work in conjunction with the White House to patch together a bill that could pass the U.S. Senate. The three senators met individually with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Carol Browner, the president's assistant for energy and climate change. "Our effort is to try to reach out to broaden the base of support ... ," Kerry said at an...

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports: Has Joe Lieberman been bluffing?  An article in this morning's The Hill newspaper says Lieberman has "reached a private understanding" with Harry Reid that he won't block a final vote on a health care bill.  If true, that would contradict Lieberman's public statements last week, including his interview with ABC News  "Subway Series" where he said he would join a Republican filibuster to kill the bill if it included a public option.  Lieberman's office, however, says the Hill story is bunk, or, in spokesman Marshall Wittman's words "absolutely not true."  Lieberman, Wittman says, will vote...

Last week in a dramatic announcement, Senator Joe Lieberman announced that he will vote along with the Republican Party to filibuster the Obamacare bill in the senate. It was a big blow to the Democratic efforts to take over our healthcare, so big that Senator Tom Harken threatened to throw Lieberman out of the Democratic Caucus. Yesterday Senator Reid's office reported that the Majority Leader and the Connecticut Senator reached a secret deal where the Senator will not vote for a filibuster but will continue to vote against the bill in the final roll call: But sources said Reid’s staff...

Senator Lieberman’s threat to filibuster the health-care bill isn’t a betrayal of the Democratic Party, says Meghan McCain—it’s a sign of courage. And we need more of it. BY MEGHAN MCCAIN A few weeks ago, I gave a speech at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the questions I was asked was: Aside from your father, who are your favorite senators and politicians? Without hesitation, I said that I admire South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman. Now before my fellow Republicans start panicking at my fondness for two independent, moderate, and dare I say maverick...

As you may have heard, erstwhile Democrat Joe Lieberman has vowed to support a Republican filibuster of any health care bill containing the dreaded "public option." Politicians and those who write about them spent the week scratching their heads, struggling to divine his motives. Perhaps I can help. First, toss out any theory connecting Lieberman's action to concern for health care policy. We infer this not only from the breathtaking opportunism of his late career but from the stunning ignorance on display in his remarks on the filibuster. Surely, a man operating on principle would suffer to learn the facts....

Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday it's worth defeating a healthcare overhaul in order to prevent the creation of a government-run health insurance program. Interviewed on CBS's "Face the Nation," the independent member of the Democratic Caucus said doing "nothing" is better than a so-called public option. "'Nothing' is better than getting that," Lieberman said. "We ought to follow the doctors' oath and say, 'First, let's do no harm.'" The Connecticut lawmaker said fixing the economy and creating jobs is a higher priority than healthcare, and a government-run insurance plan would damage the economy by hiking premiums, raising taxes or increasing...

Yet another example of the folly of assigning liberals to guard duty. Joining Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Thursday to vent about that pesky wabbit Joe Lieberman was Fire Dog Lake blogger Jane Hamsher. Democrats wield considerable leverage over Lieberman, Hamsher opined, to keep him from joining a GOP filibuster of ObamaCare or punish him if he does -- MADDOW: ... I think you’re right to point out that other senators sort of gently expressing their disapproval of his proverbial toplessness at this point is a bigger deal than it would be in the real world, that their words...

Is there a more hypocritical figure in American politics than Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator declared Tuesday that he would support a filibuster of any health care reform bill that has a public option - even the version with the "trigger" compromise accepted by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe - because it might cost money. "I think that a lot of people may think that the public option is free," said Lieberman, one of the Senate's big spenders, in a suddenly frugal mood. "It's not. It's going to cost the taxpayers and people that have health insurance now, and if it...

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012. "I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I'm going to call them as I see them," Lieberman said in an ABC News "Subway Series" interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System. Lieberman infuriated fellow Democrats in 2008 by supporting Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as congressional candidates...

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012. ABC News' Jonathan Karl chats with Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Capitol Hill subway"I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I'm going to call them as I see them," Lieberman said in an ABC News "Subway Series" interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), already under fire from the Democratic party’s base for vocally opposing the public option in health care legislation, now tells ABC News that he plans to support Republican congressional candidates next year: "I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I'm going to call them as I see them," Lieberman said in an ABC News "Subway Series" interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System. "There's a hard core of partisan, passionate, hardcore Republicans," Lieberman said. "There's a hard core of partisan Democrats on the other side. And in...

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012. "I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I'm going to call them as I see them," Lieberman said in an ABC News "Subway Series" interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System

Senator Tom Harkin did everything but place a horse's head in Joe Lieberman's bed as he discussed the Connecticut Senator's Decision to join a filibuster of any Obamacare bill which contains the public option. He implied that if Lieberman , and independent, voted for the filibuster he would lose his committee chairmanship and would no longer be allowed to caucus with the Democratic Party: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, told reporters that Lieberman (I-Conn.) ought to consider the benefits of his membership in the Democratic caucus before he decides how to vote on healthcare reform....

Here is video of a Morning Joe Panel today discussing Sen. Joe Lieberman's statement that he will not support a Health Care Bill with a "Public Option." They said Lieberman has signaled he will simply not support what the Democrats are trying to do, and they tried to say it is because he is too closely tied to the Insurance Industry. The whole panel was made of liberals - Mika Brzeznski, Mike Barnacle, and Lawrence O'Donnell - and you can tell they are really put out with Lieberman! . . . (VIDEO)

Man, the lefties must really be hating Liebeman nowadays: “We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”… Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first… “I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill...

According to CBS and other media reports, “Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) said Tuesday that he would support a Republican filibuster of a health care bill that includes a public option.� This is a serious blow to the passage of any Obamacare bill including a public option, yet the blow may not be fatal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday announced a deal and it is notable that he was not accompanied by any member of the secret team negotiating a deal on Obamacare including Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Director...

The health-care debate isn't over, notwithstanding the White House-Nancy Pelosi attempt to make it seem inevitable. Majority Leader Harry Reid had barely announced his plan to include a public insurance option when Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman declared yesterday that he'd join a filibuster against such a Senate bill. "We're trying to do too much at once," Mr. Lieberman said. "To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don't think we need it now."

I've been thinking for a couple weeks that Joe Lieberman is the Democrats' biggest potential problem. The rest of the party has a strong incentive to pass health care reform and avoid a 2010 catastrophe. But Lieberman? He's not a Democrat and won't be running on the Democratic ticket in 2012. Moreover, my read on him is that he's furious with the party, resentful of President Obama (who beat his friend in 2008) and would relish a Democratic catastrophe. Of course, I can't prove this. But look at Lieberman's reason for why he now says he'll vote to sustain a...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid addressed a development, first reported by TPMDC, that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will filibuster a health care bill if it includes a public option. "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid's problems," Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference. During a Q&A session with reporters, Reid offered a fairly spirited defense of Lieberman, signaling perhaps that he doesn't believe Lieberman will ultimately be an obstacle--or at least that he doesn't want to tip his hat: "I don't have anyone that I've worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe...

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill. Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid’s has said the Senate bill will. "We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble...

Breaking News: Senator Joe Lieberman has announced that he will join the GOP in filibustering the Reid-pushed Health Care Bill.

Is H1N1 Vaccine Being Distributed According To How You Voted? It seems incredibly ironic that simultaneously the U.S. Senate is attempting to pass Government run health care and investigating the ways in which the U.S. Government has completely botched its oversight of the H1N1 Vaccine? There are extreme shortages of the H1N1 vaccine all over the U.S. As a result, people are getting sick and they are dying. This pandemic is raging, and spreading like wildfire, and for the first time ever the private sector has been removed from the process of distributing the vaccine.

Let's conduct a little experiment. We all heard today, in breathless email alerts from CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) went all mavericky and bravely bucked her party to vote with the Democrats on the Finance Committee in support of the Baucus health care bill. Of course, mathematically speaking, this is a non-issue. The Democrats outnumber the Republicans on the Committee by 13-10. They didn't need her and there was no danger that the bill would not pass.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday he will not support the healthcare bill set for a vote today in the Senate Finance Committee. Though Lieberman is not a member of the 23-member committee that is set to approve the preliminary legislation crafted by Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Connecticut independent is one of a handful of key Senate centrists who are shaping the fate of health reform this year. "No, not the way it is now," Lieberman said during an appearance on "Imus in the Morning" on the Fox Business Network this morning when asked if he could support the...

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) is ready to re-start a debate over domestic benefits to gay federal employees and their spouses. Lieberman told The Hill he hopes to push a bill onto the Senate floor by the end of the year that would grant the same benefits to gay federal employees and their spouses as given any married federal employee and their spouse. Benefits include federal health insurance, enhanced dental and vision care, retirement and disability provisions and life insurance and benefits in cases of death or disability. Members of the military would be excluded. Lieberman said he expects to hold...

(snip) "Every idea is on the table," said Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead sponsor of Senate climate legislation. "We're going to work in a bona fide way with everybody to see how to bridge a gap here. We've got to get a 60-vote margin. That means you've got to legislate, which means you have to compromise." Several moderate Senate Republicans, including John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said they are in talks with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the nuclear language, as well as other key issues."A guy like Senator Kerry...

Joe Lieberman v. Licoln Chafee

Connecticut's junior senator, Joe Lieberman, is gearing up for the 2012 reelection campaign but how the now-independent runs is anyone's guess. The senator told Politico that he might run as a Democrat, or an independent, then again --“Or a Republican,” Lieberman added, jokingly. “I have all sorts of options.” Lieberman's been left, right and center. When he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988, he was a Democrat and ascended to the party's number two slot as a vice presidential candidate in 2000. But then, that party train derailed when Ned Lamont beat Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic primary....

A middle path of muddling through is the real recipe for quagmire and loss of public support. BY LINDSEY GRAHAM, JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, & JOHN MCCAIN Growing numbers of Americans are starting to doubt whether we should have troops in Afghanistan and whether the war there is even winnable. We are confident that not only is it winnable, but that we have no choice. We must prevail in Afghanistan. We went to war there because the 9/11 attacks were a direct consequence of the safe haven given to al Qaeda in that country under the Taliban. We remain at war...

Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s criticism of the Obama health-care initiative may prove to be a pivotal turning point. Others have focused exclusively on the Obama plan’s impact on health care. The elderly worry about bearing the brunt of the inevitable rationing; others look with alarm at the de facto socialization of one-sixth of our economy.

SEN. Joseph Lieberman's criticism of the Obama health-care initiative may prove to be a pivotal turning point. Others have focused exclusively on the Obama plan's impact on health care. The elderly worry about bearing the brunt of the inevitable rationing; others look with alarm at the de facto socialization of one-sixth of our economy. But Lieberman's critique doesn't center on the program's health-care aspects or even on its ultimate desirability. Rather, he questions the wisdom of attempting so radical a transformation and so extensive -- and expensive -- an extention of government's role in our economy during a major recession...

This story received some coverage but not enough to put into perspective just how important it is. One of the Senate's most powerful Democrats said Sunday that President Obama should take an "incremental" approach to fixing health care and argued that the country should postpone adding nearly 50 million new patients to the government system until after the recession is over. "We morally, every one of us, would like to cover every American with health insurance," Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, told CNN's John King on the "State of the Union" program.

Hartford, Conn. (AP) -- A spokesman for Alec Baldwin says the actor has no plans to challenge Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in the 2012 election. Matthew Hiltzik said Monday that Baldwin does not plan to move to Connecticut or to run. He says the "30 Rock" star wants Lieberman to stay in office because there are so few moderate Republicans in the Senate. Lieberman was re-elected in 2006 as an independent after he lost the Democratic primary.

HARTFORD, Conn. – Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman has a message for actor Alec Baldwin, who is reportedly considering a move to Connecticut to challenge Lieberman in 2012: "Make my day."

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut on Sunday urged the Obama administration to consider postponing overhauling the health care system and instead work on smaller chunks of the issue until the economy improves. “I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession,” Mr. Lieberman said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There’s no reason we have to do it all now, but we do have to get started. And I think the place to start is cost health delivery reform and insurance market reforms.”

KABUL (AP) — Sen. John McCain called Tuesday for more American troops in Afghanistan, saying that doubling the number of Marines in one southern region could lead to "significantly more success." The former Republican presidential candidate, along with other members of a visiting congressional delegation, also said that Afghanistan's elections this week were a milestone event, but that the U.S. was not backing one candidate over another. The group's two-day visit included meeting with Marines in southern Helmand province, where U.S. and Afghan forces are staging a major offensive aimed at clearing out Taliban militants ahead of Thursday's vote.

SAN'A, Yemen — A delegation of U.S. senators led by John McCain and the president of Yemen discussed on Monday ways to help the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country battle the threat from al-Qaida. The state SABA news agency said the American team and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh focused on "bilateral issues and fields of joint cooperation." No details immediately emerged from the meeting, but McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan confirmed earlier that the talks would include counterterrorism cooperation and Guantanamo detainees.

TRIPOLI, Aug 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator John McCain praised Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi for his peacemaking role in Africa and said Congress would support expanding ties, Libyan state news agency Jana said on Friday. U.S.-Libyan relations have dramatically improved since Tripoli's decision in December 2003 to give up its weapons of mass destruction programmes, with diplomatic ties resuming in June 2004 after a break of more than two decades. "McCain and the delegation accompanying him confirmed the importance of expanding further the relations between Libya and the United States. The Congress would back the measures to be taken...

Launching a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities will be the "only one choice" left for the United States if new economic sanctions fail to convince Tehran to halt its bomb-making program, according to Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Only through "crippling sanctions do we have a chance to convince the Iranians to stop this nuclear weapons program," Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Stiffer sanctions are necessary in order to "save ourselves" from having to make the most difficult choice, which he said was "doing nothing in regard to a nuclear Iran,...

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Israeli Police's National Fraud Unit recommended that the state prosecutor indict Avigdor Lieberman in a money-laundering scheme. In a brief turned over Sunday to the Attorney General's office, the police recommended that the foreign minister be indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering, witness harassment and obstruction of justice, Ha'aretz reported. The investigation has been ongoing for several years, but picked up steam after Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu became the third largest political party in the country in last February's elections. Lieberman petitioned the Supreme Court to speed up the investigation after he became foreign minister.

J.E. Dyer makes an excellent point about Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s very real efforts to develop ties with countries outside the immediate American sphere. It should be pointed out that Israel enjoys deep and extensive relations with governments around the globe — from Latin America to Africa to southern Asia — mostly but not exclusively of a military nature. According to recent reports, Israel surpasses the U.K. as the fourth-largest military exporter in the world (after the U.S., Russia, and France).