HolyJoe -- bad dog, bad dog.

In response to Obama kindness and political smarts in allowing HolyJoe to retain his committee chairmanship, he seemed to be trying to redeem himself with praise for Obama's foreign policy smarts, which he had snidely criticized during the campaign.

But I'm afraid HolyJoe is still a jerk. Read this:

At last night’s black-tie dinner at Washington’s Alfalfa Club, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) couldn’t resist cracking a joke about torture. Politico’s Mike Allen reports:

More from Senator Lieberman: ‘We had hoped Vice President Cheney would be here tonight. I hope it’s not his back injury that’s keeping him away. Apparently, he hurt it moving some things out of his office. Personally, I had no idea that waterboards were so heavy.

Last year, Lieberman, who has voted against banning waterboarding, “reluctantly acknowledged” that he doesn’t believe that waterboarding is torture. “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” he said.

What pathetic lack of understanding and callous disregard of human suffering. It's not torture because it's psychological?

Maybe it plays differently when you're actually at one of these dinners where politicians try to get a laugh by making fun of serious policy issues (like bush pretending to look under the table for WMD), but I thought this was not only in bad taste but makes HolyJoe sound like the jerk that I thought he was.

Ralph