The Buzz hears that State Rep. Fletcher Smith, D-Greenville, didn’t seem to understand what wasn’t, um, kosher, about his introduction of Hadassah Lieberman at a Greenville campaign event for her husband Friday.

The people need a president like U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Smith told the crowd, someone “who can bring home the bacon.”

Whoops. The Liebermans are observant Jews and don’t eat pork in any form.

Hadassah Lieberman took the remark in stride, quipping for the crowd that it would have to be “kosher bacon.”

A LEAN, MEAN LAW-MAKING MACHINE

The Buzz was practically giddy Wednesday when a gaggle of House members came back to town for the first full Ways and Means committee meeting since June.

The air was definitely first-day-of-school. There were spiffy new ties, long hairdos and a decided trend toward skinniness.

The Buzz hesitates to name names, because we don’t want to embarrass anyone, but we’ll say the trend crosses all party and regional lines, with four skinny-minnies in the Upstate, Pee Dee and Lowcountry.

State Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Greenville, was proud of his weight loss.

“Budget cuts,” Cooper said. “In my own grocery budget.”

STANDING ROOM ONLY, BUT PLENTY OF CHAIRS

It was a packed house in the Ways and Means committee room, as lobbyists, Senate staffers, agency budget writers and advocates jostled to get their first peek at next year’s budget numbers.

The Buzz is tempted to say that there were no empty seats, but that would be wrong.

Even though it was standing room only, there were four empty seats in the front row of the audience. They were marked: Reserved for the Governor’s Office.

Nobody was sitting in them.

“I noticed that, too,” said state Rep. Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, chairman of Ways and Means, who has not always seen eye-to-eye with Gov. Mark Sanford on budget matters.

Turns out former state Rep. Mike Easterday, Sanford’s legislative aide, was standing in the back, nursing a running injury. But Sanford’s budget writers and other aides were not around.

If appearances matter, and The Buzz is assured that they do, looks like Easterday’s isn’t the only bruise that will need healing.

VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

House members learned (surprise, surprise?) that budget cuts look likely again next year.

That was a pox to state Rep. Ken Kennedy, D-Williamsburg.

He knows the state is taking in less money; his Greeleyville stores are sending in half the money in sales tax this year than in the past. People don’t have money to spend, he said. They’re suffering.

“In the leadership of our great state, has there been a discussion of trying to raise revenue?”

Uh, no, Harrell said.

Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican governor, election year... even The Buzz can do that math.

But Kennedy was despondent. “I don’t want to come up here cutting and cutting.”

State Rep. Annette Young, R-Dorchester tried to help. “Maybe you ought to skip this year.”

THE REB NOW THE LIB?

The S.C. Republican Party doesn’t have The Reb to kick around anymore.

Rebekah “Reb” Sutherland of New Ellenton announced recently that she has joined the Libertarian Party.

Sutherland finished sixth out of seven candidates in the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary. She also said former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges has “the prettiest blue eyes” and has recently proclaimed that his party has adopted tenets of communism as its platform.

In a news release announcing her switch, Sutherland slammed the GOP for taking “a giant step to the left of the political spectrum.” That giant step, she said, was the national Republican chairman’s saying that the federal role in public education has been settled.

Sutherland is an avid home-schooler who has said public schools undermine individual freedoms.

Luke Byars, executive director of the S.C. Republican Party, was neither heartbroken nor magnanimous upon hearing of Sutherland’s Libertarian switch.

“I congratulate them for doubling their S.C. membership,” Byars said. “But seriously, my heartfelt condolences go out to Libertarians everywhere.”

There are more than two Libertarians in South Carolina, obviously. Libertarian Kenneth Curtis got more than 15,000 votes in the 2002 lieutenant governor’s election — more than five times the 2,770 votes Sutherland won in the gubernatorial primary.