You may have heard the news. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is threatening to help Republicans block a vote on health care reform if the bill includes a public health insurance option.

But when reporters asked Lieberman if he'd be willing to lose his powerful committee chairmanship as a consequence, he said:

"Oh, God no."

What's our answer? Hell yeah!

Please join 90,000 others in petitioning Democratic senators to strip leadership titles from Lieberman (or others) if they block reform. Click here.

We'll deliver this petition to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), among others. When Democrats let Lieberman keep his chairmanship after he endorsed John McCain for president, Bayh said:

"If he does retain his chairmanship, we still exert oversight over him... He doesn't have the ability to just do whatever he wants. The caucus still has the right to remove him from that position at any time..."

Now's the time for Democratic senators like Bayh to let Lieberman know they'll make good on that promise. Lieberman needs to be held accountable.

While we all know that online surveys are not an effective way of remedying important issues, netroots activism has been very successful so far in moving the Senate to the point where a (limited) public option has been included in their version of the bill, so it's worth the clicks, in my opinion.

Except this: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2009/10/29/joe_lieberman