Ned Lamont was for Joe Lieberman's criticism of Bill Clinton right before he was against it...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — Ned Lamont, Connecticut's Democratic Senate candidate, has sharply criticized Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's public rebuke of former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, suggesting this week that Mr. Lieberman turned his back on a decades-old friendship and helped make a tragic episode a "media spectacle."

Mr. Lamont said on Wednesday night that he shared Mr. Lieberman's "moral outrage" over Mr. Clinton's sexual misbehavior, but Mr. Lamont was harsh in attacking a speech that was praised as principled by many leaders in both parties and helped propel the Connecticut senator to national prominence.

"You don't go to the floor of the Senate and turn this into a media spectacle," Mr. Lamont said of Mr. Lieberman's remarks eight years ago this month.

HARTFORD, Conn. —Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who recently denounced U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman for his public scolding of President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, lauded the senator at the time for his eloquence and "moral authority."

Lieberman's Senate office this week released copies of a letter that Lamont sent by e-mail to the senator shortly after Lieberman took to the Senate floor to chide Clinton in September 1998.

"I supported your statement because Clinton's behavior was outrageous: a Democrat had to stand up and state as much, and I hoped that your statement was the beginning of the end," Lamont wrote.