The Senate's three most predictable and least credible warmongering "moderates" frequently join forces to publish joint Op-Eds or hold press conferences and the one thing they always, invariably want is for the United States to have just a little bit more war than it currently has, somewhere far away. Sure, we could draw down in Iraq ... or we could listen to McCain, Lieberman and Graham and draw back up. We could draw down in Afghanistan ... or we could stay the course and keep sending troops there until we win! Americans may be tired of endless war with no coherent goal, but on the other hand, "only decisive force can prevail in [whatever country John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are talking about now]."

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[caption id="attachment_12660441" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="Thank you, Joe!"][/caption]

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If only it were that simple.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a bill that prohibits legislators and federal officials from knowingly profiting off of nonpublic information related to impending legislation and regulatory decisions, looks certain to pass the Senate this week. On Monday, senators overwhelmingly approved a motion to cloture on S.2038 preventing the bill from being filibustered. But on Wednesday in the House of Representatives Reps. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.,  demanded a straight up or down vote on a different bill, HR 1148, also known as the STOCK Act. The House bill already has 271 sponsors.

And therein lies a tale of Washington. No one in Washington favors allowing Capitol Hill insiders using non-public information to reap profits -- at least not publicly. But privately, well, that's a different story.

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Here's the first sentence:

Rival Democratic and Republican jobs bills failed in the Senate on Thursday, the latest sign of the partisan gridlock gripping Washington as Americans look for relief from high unemployment and a sagging economy.

"Partisan gridlock" is to blame for the failure of "jobs bills" from each party.

Which partisans, exactly?

Senate Democrats on Thursday came up nine votes short of the 60 needed to advance their infrastructure bill past a key procedural hurdle. The vote was 51-49, with all Republicans and two members of the Democratic caucus — Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — voting no.

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Lieberman, the "model purple senator" and avowed champion of moderation, is surely praising centrist Republican Jon Huntsman and pragmatic former blue-state governor Mitt Romney, right? Nope. Lieberman instead has kind words for Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, the 2012 race's two most outspoken conservatives.

Why does Joe Lieberman, former Democratic candidate for vice president, like Bachmann and Perry so much? (I mean besides because those two are the ones who inspire the more liberal fear and loathing?) Because Bachmann and Perry share Joe Lieberman's love of constant sanctimonious religious moralizing, of course.

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John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham said they are heartened by the progress of Afghan security forces, but worry that Obama's withdrawal plan could deplete American military strength before dealing a decisive blow to the Taliban, especially in eastern Afghanistan. That part of the country is a haven for the Afghan and Pakistani wings of the Taliban, and al-Qaida affiliates.

"I believe that the planned drawdown is an unnecessary risk," McCain, a Republican from Arizona, who claimed that no military leader has spoken in favor of the timetable.

Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, a Marine general expected to carry out the president's drawdown order, has said the schedule is a bit more aggressive than the military had anticipated. Allen has cautioned that successfully winding down the war will require new progress on a wide front, including more help from allies and less Afghan corruption.

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Beck had Lieberman on his program last night to announce that Lieberman would be joining him at his upcoming political rally in Jerusalem. They are old friends, you know! Lieberman once wrote a recommendation to Yale Divinity School for Beck, back when Beck was a morning-zoo radio host in Connecticut. Here is the whole segment, which begins with Beck telling the story of how he noticed the Israel Day parade was going on while he was walking from church to his office. (How did he forget about Israel Day? Why goes Glenn Beck hate the Jews?)

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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Lieberman's actual political beliefs are best described as "incoherent" or "pure pettiness incarnate," but his foreign policy ideas are actually pretty easy to summarize: Constant war everywhere. This is how he describes that philosophy:

“There’s no question that, for me, it’s very reassuring to see people coming in who are in tune with the kind of foreign policy that’s based on human rights, democracy promotion, muscular foreign policy and being willing to use our military strength when we’ve had to protect our security and our freedom,” Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, told POLITICO.

Muscular! Strength! Security! Freedom! (And "human rights," unless you are a Guantanamo detainee.)

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"I'm very aware of my present political standing," he said in announcing his decision to retire. I was reminded of his unusually -- and refreshingly -- candid statement this morning, when Taegan Goddard flagged comments made by Joe Lieberman and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both of whom recently announced retirement plans of their own, on Sunday's "This Week":

"I believed I would have won re-election. Obviously, it would have been a tough campaign. But, you know, as I said, so what else is new?"

-- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), in an interview on This Week.

"I think that, if I had run, I would have won. It would have been a tough race, for sure, but I think I would have won."

-- Sen., Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), also speaking on This Week.

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The evidence of Lieberman's usefulness is that he voted for various things the Democrats wanted him to vote for, eventually. But politics -- especially in the Senate -- is about more than the final vote. It's about the process. And Lieberman acted as poisonously as he could during the process of passing legislation like the healthcare reform bill. He helped drag it out and he killed the Medicare buy-in for no reason other than spite. Brooks knows this full well, because in his penultimate paragraph, he writes:

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First of all, Davis calls Lieberman "the model purple senator," which is entirely accurate, if not quite in the sense Davis intends it to be. Joe Lieberman is so perfectly bipartisan that he appeals to no one on either side of the aisle besides unprincipled hacks like Lanny Davis. That's why he's quitting the Senate. A majority of Connecticut voters will roundly reject him if he runs again.

But the best thing about this tribute is its abbreviated history of the Lieberman Era. The story begins at Yale in the '60s, where Joe Lieberman was really awesome. It moves to 1970, where Lieberman helps circumcise Lanny Davis' son Seth. Then we basically skip to Joe Lieberman helping to end "don't ask, don't tell." Did other stuff happen in between? Probably nothing that important.

Yale, Seth Davis' bris, and "don't ask, don't tell": The Joe Lieberman story.

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Like any proud politician, he'll probably frame his departure as a voluntary act and insist that he could have won if he'd toughed it out. But make no mistake: When it came to his reelection prospects in 2012, Lieberman -- just like his longtime colleague Chris Dodd last year -- was simply out of options. He could run as a Democrat, he could run as Republican, he could run as an independent, but each path led to the same glum place. So he's hanging it up instead.

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If this is true, his work repealing "don't ask, don't tell" was less an attempt to appeal to Democratic primary voters than it was the potential start of a last-ditch effort to be remembered for something other than the term "Joementum." (To be fair, Lieberman has always supported the rights of gay people to serve openly in the armed forces -- though "always" having supported things has not stopped him from changing his mind on plenty of other policy issues.)

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He's been forced to ignore START -- a treaty that was negotiated like, eight months ago? -- because of this voting, this week, on other things: "And I’ve had some time to think about START but not a lot and it's really wearing on the body." Poor Lindsey Graham!

He was so tired that he could barely make it to a television studio the following Sunday to complain, some more, about how much voting he's had to do lately.

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But it's still totally OK to hate the guy.

Seriously.

Seven months ago the guy introduced a bill that would automatically strip Americans of their citizenship if they were charged with "a terrorist act." He named it "the TEA Act." Why did he do that? Because he's a political troll. Not in the "living under a bridge eating goats" sense, but in the old Usenet sense of someone who purposefully enrages and frustrates members of a community, while pretending to have no idea what he's doing.

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With this in mind, it's worth asking: Are his fierce efforts to win repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" designed to alter this bleak reality?

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As I explained last week, all signs point to Republicans successfully running out the clock on this legislative session without any action on anything besides tax cuts. Robert Gates must be a War Room reader, because he predicted doom for "don't ask, don't tell" repeal on an aircraft carrier, today.

“I’d have to say I’m not particularly optimistic that they’re going to get this done, I would hope that they would,” he said during a town hall style meeting with sailors in one of the ship’s massive hangars.

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Following up on my post from earlier today about Joe Lieberman's Chinese-replicating Internet censorship efforts (and please read that first for the context), I wanted this to be highlighted separately: The New York Times reports that another company has now capitulated to Lieberman's demands:  "a Seattle-based software company, Tableau, which provides a free Web platform for interactive graphics, removed charts uploaded by WikiLeaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman's public statement that companies should stop helping the whistle-blowers."  Tableau issued a statement, which reads in part:

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The comparison of these two passages is so telling in so many ways:

The Washington Post, today:

Revelations by the organization WikiLeaks have received blanket coverage this week on television, in newspapers and on Web sites around the globe. But in parts of the world where the leaks have some of the greatest potential to sow controversy, they have barely caused a ripple.

Authoritarian governments and tightly controlled media in China and across the Arab Middle East have suppressed virtually all mention of the documents, avoiding the public backlash that could result from such candid portrayals of their leaders' views.

In China, the WikiLeaks site has been blocked by the government's "Great Firewall," and access to other sources for the documents has been restricted.  Most Chinese are unable to read the contents of the diplomatic cables. . . .

The Guardian, yesterday:

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