When Did Joe Lieberman Grow a Conscience?

Senator Joe Lieberman says that he will filibuster any health reform bill that contains a public plan option:

If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

A "matter of conscience"? When did Joe Lieberman grow a conscience?

This is the same man who voted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in order to send "our children and grandchildren" to their deaths, hunting for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Today, when the country has the opportunity to spend money to heal the sick and to save lives, he is suddenly worried about the deficit.

This is also the same man who, during a 2004 presidential debate, supported the creation of a national public health plan:

I'm proposing to create a national health insurance pool from which — like the one that members of Congress get our insurance from. And we would say this: If you don't have insurance now, you'll be able to get it, probably free, if you're among the low-income working poor. If you're a child, you will be covered by insurance at birth. If you are fired from your work or lose your job, you will not lose your health insurance.

MediKids is part of my program. Every child born in America will become a member of MediKids, and it will cover them from birth through 25. . . .

Finally, this is the same man who in 1994 tried to kill the filibuster altogether. Lieberman described the filibuster as a procedural "dinosaur" and as a "symbol of a lot that ails Washington. . . ." Today, when Democrats are attempting to pass comprehensive health care reform, Lieberman threatens to use the filibuster to kill the legislation.

Lieberman says that he is acting to satisfy his conscience -- not the insurance industry, which has given him more than $1 million dollars in donations over the course of his career in the Senate and which has a powerful presence in Connecticut, the state Lieberman represents. Sorry, Joe, but in order to vote your conscience, you must first have a conscience.