Oh, our anti-war Democrats

Boston Globe columnist Darrick Jackson shows that some of our most ardent "anti-Iraq war" and "liberal" Democrats are cozy with the Defense Department.

the Globe recently reported that [Massachusetts U.S. Senator Ted] Kennedy slid $100 million into the 2008 defense authorization bill for a General Electric fighter engine that the Air Force said it did not need.

It gets worse in a defense budget that is zooming to $648.8 billion. The nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense last month analyzed 309 Senate defense earmarks. Four of the top five "earmarkers" were not Republican hawks but centrist and liberal Democrats.

[Michigan's Carl] Levin led the way with 44 earmarks. [Senator Hillary] Clinton was second with 26. [Rhode Island's U.S. Senator Jack] Reed was fourth with 23, one behind Republican John Warner of Virginia. In fifth place was Charles Schumer of New York with 21. When asked if she saw any change in defense earmark behavior since the Democrats took back the House and the Senate, senior analyst Laura Peterson of the Taxpayers for Common Sense said over the telephone, "No."

More proof the swamp is still full is the fact that only four of the top 10 senators in defense campaign contributions in the 2006 election cycle were Republicans. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats Kennedy, Clinton, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Dianne Feinstein of California, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut collected 60 percent of the $1.4 million the industry lavished among the top 10.

Odd, isn't it, that our nominally most "liberal" senators also come from states with the highest concentration of military-security-industry contractors?