Lieberman one of the first senators to fight for Social Security?

Excuse me?!?

Election Central has just obtained a political mailing which touts Joe Lieberman as "one of the first Senators to stand up to George W. Bush's dangerous plan to privatize Social Security."

Whoa there big fella. This is a BIG FAT LIE and everyone knows it. Millionaire Joe Lieberman was ONE OF THE LAST Democrats to oppose President Bush's proposal to scrap Social Security.

Contrast the mailing's assertion with this about Lieberman in the Times in March 2005, when President Bush was pushing his phase-out plan: "In recent weeks, he has angered Democratic activists nationwide for expressing a willingness to work with President Bush to change Social Security." The full text of the mailing -- and more from that Times article -- after the jump.

Although this mailing didn't come directly from the Lieberman camp, you can bet the house he gave the green light to publish it since he's ran around the state stating the same thing.

Hell, I'll let Sargent break it down, he makes it REAL easy to understand.

And here's more from that Times article:

Mr. Lieberman says he refuses to let partisanship interfere with solving real problems, including the solvency of Social Security.

"There is a whole attitude out there, 'Just say No!,'" he said. "In other words, 'Let the president sink with this proposal. We are winning.' But we are not winning because the victory here is to solve the Social Security problem."

Mr. Lieberman said he agreed with Mr. Bush that solvency gets harder to attain each year. But as for the president's proposal to divert part of the payroll tax to private retirement accounts, Mr. Lieberman said he had already rejected that idea before the 2000 election...

Republicans, however, see Mr. Lieberman as a potential partner and say Democrats are resorting to pressure tactics to hold members in line...

Mr. Lieberman set off alarms within the party even before the State of the Union address. "This is an ongoing problem, and we'd be wise to deal with it," Mr. Lieberman told The Hartford Courant in January when asked about Social Security. "If we can figure out a way to help people through private accounts or something else, great."

Then the night of the speech, and the kiss, Mr. Lieberman said in a statement that preserving the program's benefits ''may require we make some changes.''

A week later, Mr. Lieberman praised Mr. Graham for trying to fashion a plan that could win bipartisan support. Soon after, an unnamed aide to Mr. Lieberman told CongressDaily, a Washington newsletter, that ''he's still in a listening and learning stage and keeping an open mind'' but had not taken a position.

That report sent the network of liberal Web logs into apoplexy. "Stop the Presses!" Joshua Micah Marshall wrote on his blog, Talking Points Memo. Mr. Marshall refers to Mr. Lieberman as the "dean of the faint-hearted faction" -- a list of Democrats most likely to break with the party on Social Security.

r. Lieberman this week clarified his position on Social Security, telling his hometown paper, The New Haven Register, that he was ''totally unconvinced'' by the idea of creating private accounts, calling it ''a very risky thing to do.''

And on Thursday, Mr. Lieberman put his name on a letter signed by 42 Democratic senators urging the president ''to publicly and unambiguously announce that you reject privatized accounts funded with Social Security dollars.'' A spokesman said his previous sympathetic references to private accounts were intended to mean in addition to Social Security.

Ms. Clark, the New Haven activist, said she believed the outcry in Connecticut forced Mr. Lieberman to retreat. ''He backed off his previous position and that is a result of the pressure that the grass roots was applying to him..."