Anti-war activists were all atwitter this week over Senator Lieberman’s public comments of support for President Bush’s call for increasing troops. The blogsphere, naturally, was the fulcrum for pushing the message that Lieberman was sucking up to the GOP and not a true Democrat. Many example of this line of thinking can be found at My Left Nutmeg. The Iraq occupation has become to many, the litmus test position, that supposedly decides where political philosophies can be gaged. The reality is that what to do with Iraq, theocratic Islamic states, terrorism, foreign oil dependency and propping up defense contractors have all become a knot of conflicting interests that aren’t so simply defined, and more importantly solved. As long as President Cheney Bush calls the shots as commander in chief, there’s not much bloviating senators can do to change things. Unless of course they follow the money and take away the checkbook from the reckless spenders in the white house.

Meanwhile, it was Democratic Senate leadership that water-downed the earmark reform bill that would have made it much tougher for those last minute anonymous requests for funding unrelated projects to be ticky tacked onto bills. From Talking Points Memo:

Part of the Senate’s ethics reform bill deals with earmarks — lawmakers’ often abused practice of inserting items in legislation to direct funds to special interests (a la Duke Cunningham). According to current rules, lawmakers can attach earmarks anonymously, a state of affairs inviting abuse. Reform efforts have sought to change that. Republicans and good government types have criticized Reid’s version of earmark reform legislation, which is weaker than the version passed by House Democrats, saying that it doesn’t go near far enough in terms of disclosure.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered an amendment today that mirrored the tougher legislation passed by House Democrats.

According to Craig Holman of Public Citizen, Reid’s version, if it had been applied to earmarks as part of legislation passed last year, would have disclosed the sponsor of only approximately 500 earmarks. DeMint’s amendment would have forced sponsors to be known of roughly 12,000.

“DeMint’s version is considerably tougher,” Holman told me, noting that both Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who co-sponsored the bill, are “on the appropriations committee and haven’t really believed in strong earmark reform propoals in the first place.”

But Democrats sought to block DeMint’s amendment, with an effort led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). They failed, due mostly to nine Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and freshmen Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Jim Webb (D-VA), who crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Here’s the roll call tally.