Joe Lieberman’s threat to filibuster any Democratic health care reform bill that contains a public option is an ironic coda to all those promises Joe made — in 2006 after he lost the Democratic primary and again earlier this year when his chairmanship was in jeopardy for backing John McCain for President — that he was a good Democrat at heart. We round up Joe’s broken promises — and the assurances so many establishment Democrats made on Joe’s behalf — in our latest slideshow.

(ed. note: Have we forgotten any especially oily comments from Joe and others that really rankle in light of the filibuster threat? Send them our way, preferably with a link so we can verify them.)

There’s nothing more threatening in a democratic society than prosecutors or law enforcement using their powers for political purposes or to settle personal scores. That is what the US Attorney firing scandal of 2007 was about after all. And now we seem to have a related case.

You may know of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the colorful and high-profile Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, best known for his hardline stance on illegal immigration. Early last month we told you about Arpaio’s and a political ally’s effort to import DC TV lawyer power couple Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing as “special prosecutors” for what appeared to be a fairly transparent hit against one of Arpaio’s local GOP political opponents.

That effort eventually got shut down by County officials. But now come reports that the FBI is investigating Arpaio for multiple instances of using his authority as Sheriff to retaliate against political enemies.

Special bonus: two of the fired US Attorneys from 2007 are involved in the case. One, Paul Charlton is defending one of Arpaio’s seeming persecutees and another, David Iglesias gave a local paper his opinion on the case and for his trouble received a blistering attack from Arpaio himself.

Read our report here — important story.

Late Update: David Iglesias responds to the Arpaio attack. —dk

In a letter to his Republican colleagues obtained by Greg Sargent, Majority Leader Harry Reid dispenses with his usual passive conciliation and goes with some aggressive mockery:

I would note that the Republican leadership’s health care plan remains a secret, unless perhaps it does not exist.

Needless to say, I fully understand if your plan is still under development, and would not presume to suggest that you publicly share draft legislative text for even an individual element of your plan, let alone an entire bill, before it is finalized. …

In today’s TPM Photo Feature: Joe Lieberman’s List of Broken Promises … his and those other credulous Dems have made on his behalf.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is now suing in federal court to retrieve documents allegedly taken by the son of the author of that book claiming CAIR plants Muslim spies as interns on Capitol Hill. The son, fittingly enough, was posing as an intern for CAIR to help his father research the book.

TPM Reader TG ponders the possibilities: “Imagine what would have happened to Joe Lieberman long ago if Lyndon Johnson were President.”

Purged GOPer Dede Scozzafava records robocall for Democrat Bill Owens.

Also fun: Hoffman, the Conservative party candidate who ran Scozzafava out of the race, says Glenn Beck is his “mentor.”

This race better end quickly for Chris Christie’s sake or else he’s going to have too many copyright infringement suits to handle. Monty Python is already threatening to sue the campaign for using one of their skits without permission. And now the Christie campaign has had to take down another ad for stealing stock video from a stock footage house.

Sort of a giveaway when the anti-theft watermark is still there on your thirty second ad.

More in a moment.

Near the end of the day on Monday, we now have a full, though murkier, picture of what the polls say about the New Jersey governor’s race one day out. Here’s the latest. (See all NJ-Gov polls here.)

Three polls out this morning or overnight all showed small margins for Christie. More significant, however, they all showed movement in Christie’s direction since the previous survey by that pollster. Most significant in my mind was the Quinnipiac poll which showed only a two point margin for Christie but a 7 point move in his direction since Quinnipiac’s last poll released October 28th.

This afternoon though we’ve had two more polls showing a narrow Corzine lead. One is the Dem-affiliated Democracy Corps poll, which is a solid poll but has consistently shown a Corzine-tilt relative to other polls during this campaign. And Monmouth has now released a poll showing a 2 point margin for Corzine — in contrast to a 1 point Christie margin in a poll Monmouth released over the weekend.

The question hanging over the NJ governor’s campaign is whether we’ll see the supposed pattern in which Democrats out-perform the polls through superior organization on the ground. One close watcher of New Jersey politics makes the following, paradoxical argument:

If Democrats win on the ground because of superior ground organization in the big population centers that’s because of the state’s big urban machines. Now, one of the Christie’s big cudgels in this campaign has been anti-corruption, anti-machine politics — an angle given particular salience by a series of high-profile corruption indictments. Ironically, though, Corzine’s really never been that close or particularly well-liked by a number of the key machine figures in New Jersey. Politically, Corzine’s always been sort of an outsider in New Jersey politics. And some of those machines aren’t as robust as they were a few years ago because of some of those indictments.

So while Corzine’s taken a lot of hits because of New Jersey machine politics it’s not entirely clear they’re going to be willing or able to pull out all the stops for him in the way they did for, say … Menendez in 2006. It’s a speculative point, but one worth considering.