Lieberman's Big Filibuster Flip

Joe Lieberman may be America’s top filibusterer right now, but once upon a time he hated the filibuster, calling on senators to give up some individual power, Rachel Maddow demonstrated in delicious detail last night. Back in 1995, Lieberman co-sponsored a bill with Tom Harkin to kill the filibuster once and or all. In the old clips Maddow mustered, Lieberman decried the “tyranny of the minority” and vowed to “keep charging” at the “fortress of the status quo.”

Harkin on the other hand hasn’t given up on the idea; he’s contemplating re-introducing the legislation. “I think, if anything, this health care debate is showing the dangers of unlimited filibuster,” he said. Only this time, Maddow says, Lieberman won’t be a co-sponsor, he’ll be “the nation’s walking-talking filibuster-threatening evidence of what it looks like when a single senator decides to take this power to extremes.” (More Joe Lieberman stories.)