Dolting Joe certainly had himself a memorable Sunday morning, one that none of us should ever forget. On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, the independent Senator from Connecticut said "If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote."

A matter of conscience? More like a matter of protecting the pockets of Connecticut's insurance citadel.

Then on the recent tragedy in Fort Hood that left 13 dead and injured another 30, Senator Lieberman seems to have all his facts in and drawn his own conclusions. The chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security committee said that the deadly shooting at Texas' Fort Hood military base was an act of "Islamist extremism."

Senator Lieberman said while it was too early to definitively state the motives of Nidal Hasan in very his next breath he notes that the clues pointed to terrorism. The Senator who heads the Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said initial evidence suggested that the alleged shooter, Army Major Nidal Hasan, was a "self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist."

"There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act," he told Fox News.

"It's clear that he was, one, under personal stress and, two -- if the reports that we're receiving of various statements he made, acts he took are valid -- he had turned to Islamist extremism," he said.

"If that is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act."

I would think that one would wait until all the evidence is in before making such pronouncements. He intends to launch a congressional investigation into the motives behind "the worst terrorist attack since 9/11."

Meanwhile the New York Times reports that there's little evidence of terrorist plot in the Fort Hood slayings.

After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.

Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist's suicide mission.

But the investigators, working with behavioral experts, suggested that he might have long suffered from emotional problems that were exacerbated by the tensions of his work with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home with serious psychiatric problems.

They said his counseling activities with the veterans appear to have further fueled his anger and hardened his increasingly militant views as he was seeming to move toward more extreme religious beliefs -- all of which boiled over as he faced being shipped overseas, an assignment he bitterly opposed.

Investigators have gleaned most of their findings from Major Hasan's computer use and from interviews with his family members, co-workers and neighbors. One significant investigative thrust has involved determining whether Major Hasan had contact with extremists who preyed on his increasingly angry and outspoken opposition to American policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But so far, investigators have unearthed no evidence that he was directed or steered into violence or ever traveled overseas to meet with extremist groups, as defendants in some recent terrorism cases are accused of doing, the officials said.

The officials emphasized that their findings were preliminary and that the investigation was fluid. New information could alter their perceptions of Major Hasan's motives. But the early conclusions are already influencing the course of the inquiry, including which law enforcement agencies lead it.

I think it is too early to draw definitive conclusions. The investigation remains fluid. But it is long overdue to act on Joe Lieberman. It is time to strip Dolting Joe from his chairmanship and oust him from the Democratic caucus.