Minister Without Portfolio

Michael Ledeen is so proud of Joe Lieberman he could bust.

All hail Joe Lieberman! He has denounced his Democratic Senate colleagues for quietly reducing—by two-thirds!—the funding to support democracy in Iran.

The administration had famously asked for $75 million, but Senator Joe Lieberman told Radio Farda (our Farsi-language facility to Iran) that a Senate appropriations subcommittee had reduced that request to $25 million… You'd think the State Department would be up in arms at this sabotage of its program. You'd think the White House would be annoyed, too. But no. It takes a Senator.

But in completely unrelated news:

Hobbled by inadequate funding, unclear priorities, continuing reorganizations and the absence of an overarching strategy, the Department of Homeland Security is failing to achieve its mission of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, according to a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office.

The highly critical report disputes recent upbeat assessments by the Bush administration by concluding that the DHS has failed to make even moderate progress toward eight of 14 internal government benchmarks more than four years after its creation.

The inspiration for the Department of Homeland Security came from Joe Lieberman. The chairman of the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs is… also Joe Lieberman.

I can't shake the impression he's more interested in Iran than he is in the Homeland, these days.