As expected, anything Joe Biden says gets the liberal blogosphere up in arms, even when he's right.  I knew this comment, taken out of context, would be no different.

But this time, yet again, he's right.  He told the Today Show this morning that:

the hearings [on judicial nominees] serve no purpose and should be replaced with a straight up or down vote on the nominee

In response to Bowers' latest Lieberman post and the general anti-Biden thrust in the liberal blogosphere:

I'm sick and tired of Biden being lumped in with Lieberman.  Lieberman can be legitimately labeled a Democratic traitor, but last time I checked, Biden has not regularly (if at all) attacked Democrats on TV or in the press for being soft on defense.  You may disagree with his views or votes, but he is a partisan through and through.

Also, he is not "center-right."  According to Progressive Punch, he has a score of 84.66% progressive, putting him at #25, just slightly to the right of the liberal-moderate center of our party's representatives in that body.  If you want to talk about "center-right splitters," how about Harry Reid (81.3%, #33) or Robert Byrd (78.75%, #37).  But I'm sure you wouldn't attack stalwart defenders of our party like these fine servants.

Twice a year, UNC conducts a telephone poll of 600-700 adult North Carolinians for research purposes.  The results have traditionally been very accurate as far as predicting election results and other measures of public opinion.  For my Poli Public Opinion class, I participated in conducting the poll one night by calling and interviewing some of the randomly selected respondents (I handled 1.2% of the completed interviews).  The results were released Wednesday, and there were some interesting findings.