Hillary Clinton thinks Joe Lieberman is still a Democrat who should chair one of the most important committees for oversight in the Senate. She identifies Lieberman as an “Independent Democrat,” a designation of Lieberman’s creation with no meaning other than that added by Democrats and reporters who deign to give it meaning.

Lieberman ran against the Democratic nominee for Senate in Connecticut in 2006. He said he would wait to see who each party nominated for the presidency before endorsing, but ended up endorsing Republican war hawk and ideological twin John McCain before a single primary vote was cast. Lieberman has done robocalls, fundraising emails, events, and election night parties for McCain.

Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat, yet he is afforded the privilege of chairing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. This is the Committee that would be responsible for conducting oversight hearings into the Bush administration’s non-existent response to Hurricane Katrina. Yet after a year in the majority, with Lieberman a member of the Democratic caucus and sitting in the cherry seat on Homeland Security, he hasn’t held one hearing to look into how the Bush administration erred. Brian Beutler at Mother Jones writes:

So as we all take the measure of 2007, here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in a year’s worth of congressional oversight.

Quiet as a mouse. There certainly have been gaffes, softballs, and missed opportunities. And the most obvious are found in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security—the Senate’s version of Rep. Henry Waxman’s Oversight Committee in the House. Unlike Waxman’s enthusiastic probing, the Senate chair conducted zero proactive investigations into Bush administration malfeasance. It’s chairman? Connecticut’s Joseph Lieberman.

Lieberman holds no value to the Democratic caucus. His is arguably the most vocal supporter of the war in Iraq. He has utterly failed to use his Committee as a tool to make our government work better and be more accountable. He has endorsed a Republican war hawk for President and traveled the nation to help him win votes.

Lieberman is not a Democrat. He is not a Democratic super delegate. He does not preserve a majority in the Democratic caucus. He does us no good and should be stripped of his Committee chairmanship. Of course, that will never happen as long as Hillary Clinton defends him on national television.

I hope George Jepsen is pitching a fit with the Clinton campaign today, because this is just shameful.