Democrats claim that they want to reconnect with people of faith but their betrayal of Joe Lieberman raises serious questions about their intentions. Recent polls show the three term Democratic Senator, who was praised by his entire party as a candidate for Vice President a mere six years ago, losing the Connecticut primary to his lttile known challenger, Ned Lamont. Of course the main issue in their intramural battle is Lieberman's eloquent and impassioned support for President Bush's leadership in the war against Islamo-Nazi terror, but more recently major liberal voices also attack the Senator's outspoken commitment to his Orthodox Jewish faith. New York Times columnist Frank Rich (himself of Jewish heritage and, according to his own declarations, an active synagogue member) recently ripped  Lieberman as "a fellow traveler in the religious right's Schiavo and indecency jeremiads.... Lieberman is hardly the only Democrat in the Senate who signed on to the war in Iraq, but he's surely the most sanctimonious." Rich goes on to slam the Senator for his "incessant Bible thumping" and to cite the increasingly liberal and strident Anti-Defamation League as condemning Lieberman's public Scriptural citations as "inappropriate and even unsettling in a religiously diverse society such as ours."

  Actually, I thought that Lieberman's unapologetic observance of ancient Jewish rules of Sabbath observance, dietary laws and other traditions profoundly advanced the cause of religious diversity-- rather than threatening it. While secularist extremists like Frank Rich may have persuaded themselves of the absurd notion that Evangelical Christians want to "ram their beliefs down the throats" of all other Americans, they certainly don't suggest, do they, that religious Jews like Lieberman (or like me) want to enforce kosher rules or Passover observance through the force of law.

   The new Jihad against Joe by uncompromising secular militants shows that it's not Christianity, or "the Religious Right" that scares them: it's any politician, of any denomination, he speaks too openly about taking his faith seriously. Though I can't yet bring myself to provide open support for any Democratic US Senator (maintaining GOP control of the Senate is simply too important), I do hope that the voters of Connecticut will rebuff the attempts by intolerant leftists to discredit and marginalize a decent and conscientious man of faith.