We’ve been rather harsh in our commentary about Senator Lieberman, and certainly not bashful in our desire to see him retire from public life after 33 years of being a professional politician. Certainly by now all 25 of our readers have formed their own opinions about the man, his politics, and his goals.

Say this about these two primary candidates: while Senator Lieberman immediately slipped into the standard Republican lying mode in negative campaign attacks, Mr Lamont seems to want to bring a new breath of fresh air to the public discourse. He seems to want to discuss issues, goals, priorities, and it looks like his priorities are the citizens of Connecticut.

Via Liberal Oasis:

A TV ad, with a message approved by Sen. Joe Lieberman, uses a phony Ned Lamont bumper sticker to falsely claim that all Lamont has to say is "No More Joe."

The ad ran today on Hartford's Fox affiliate WTIC-61, during "Fox News Sunday." (It was also shown during C-Span's airing of the Lieberman-Lamont debate.)

The narrator begins the ad with: "In the battle of the bumper stickers, this one has a simple message: 'No More Joe.' But what else does Lamont really have to say?"

A graphic of a "NO MORE JOE" sticker is shown. The second line of the sticker reads: "Ned Lamont * Democrat for U.S. Senate". In the bottom right corner of the sticker is a URL, www.nomorejoe.com.

Problem is: there is no www.nomorejoe.com.

Actually, there IS a www.nomorejoe.com. According to myleftnutmeg.com it is a domain name owned by Highground, Inc, a PAC whose contact representative is Paul Bentz, who backed a man named Dan Saban, in October 2004 when he opposed Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Myleftnutmeg.com concludes:

Highground still owns the domain, though the registration expires next month.

This means two things are possible.

The Lamont campaign is the dumbest campaign in history, making bumper stickers sending people to dead website that they don't own.
Or the Lieberman campaign, desperate to find an attack line against a strong challenger, has to lie and pretend Lamont has nothing positive to say about his own platform.

Mr Lamont has presented a rather unusual TV spot in response, and it appears this is the first in a series of ads. In fact, Youtube.com has a collection of Lamont ads.

Maybe we’re just jaded here at Main and Central, tired of “business as usual” among the criminals, thieves and their pundit enablers of the DC Inner Beltway. But if I lived in Connecticut I wouldn’t want to be represented by a man who uses every pro-Bush, pro-Fascism talking point there is.