Thursday, July 20, 2006
When Democrats Go To War -- With Each Other
Feel free to read the back and forth between the two. It looks like your basic to-and-fro between political pundits.
Well, it may be going to another level.
Earlier this week, Sirota sent the following (including the cool promo for his book included):
*************************************************************************************From: David Sirota
Date: Jul 17, 2006 11:54 PM
Subject: your blog post
To:
Robert:
I saw your blog post on Gerstein's accusation of mine. As an FYI - you should know we are in the process of finding the emails right now - the ones between he, I and the Lieberman staff in 2003 and 2004 where my account is fully documented. I am also exploring legal action against him for libel, on the grounds that his accusations go beyond just lies, they are malicious lies in that he knows they are lies and published them anyway. Stay tuned...
David
_________________________________ 
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Now, once again, I have no dog in the Lieberman-Lamont fight. I'm not even one of those conservatives decrying what the loss of Joe Lieberman in a Democratic Party primary might mean for the party. Hey, I'm a Republican: Why should I care? Gosh knows, our party has problems of its own.
As mentioned before, Dan Gerstein is a professional colleague -- we host a monthly dinner.
But, it seems to me that -- ideology and relationships aside -- considering legal action over a blog post seems somewhat, uh, extreme. I'm not a lawyer, but libel is a very difficult thing to prove -- knowledge that something is demonstrably false, malicious intent, etc.
And for what -- a debate over a frickin' Senate primary campaign? I thought people waited until the general campaign before the lawsuits got bandied about (ballot access issues aside). No wonder the Democratic Party is in such condition. To each his own.
Is this what happens when we over-emphasize the word "hostile"?
UPDATE: New Quinnipiac poll has Lamont edging ahead of Lieberman, but the senator winning a three-way race as an independent.
Anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont has surged to a razor-thin 51 - 47 percent lead over incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman among likely Democratic primary voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
This compares to a 55 - 40 percent lead for Sen. Lieberman among likely Democratic primary voters in a June 8 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.In possible general election matchups:
- Lieberman defeats Republican challenger Alan Schlesinger 68 - 15 percent;
- Lamont beats Schlesinger 45 - 22 percent, with 24 percent undecided;
- Running as an independent, Lieberman gets 51 percent, to 27 percent for Lamont and 9 percent for Schlesinger.
"Lamont has turned what looked like a blowout into a very close Democratic primary race," said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.
As the saying goes -- stay tuned...
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