Joe Lieberman was active in politics right up to the end. The former senator was the founding co-chair of the nonpartisan group No Labels, which is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign on behalf of a yet-to-be-identified bipartisan “unity ticket.” Lieberman did not live to see whether No Labels will run a candidate. He died on Wednesday at 82 due to complications from a fall. But this last political venture was entirely in keeping with his long career as a self-styled politician of the pragmatic center, which often took him across party boundaries.

Former US Senator and vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman has died at 82.

The cause was complications from a fall, according to a family statement obtained by CBS News, the BBC's US partner.

The centrist represented the state of Connecticut in the Senate for nearly a quarter of a century.

Mr Lieberman became the first Jewish politician to join a major party US presidential ticket in 2000 when Al Gore selected him as his running mate.

Mr Gore said he was "profoundly saddened" to learn of Mr Lieberman's passing.

Joe Lieberman, who died Wednesday at age 82, was the kind of Democrat who can’t be found much these days, and there aren’t many like him in the Republican Party either. He was a foreign policy hawk who believed in the necessity of American military power and diplomacy to expand the zone of freedom in the world.

Lieberman rose in Connecticut politics as a moderate Democrat in a more moderate age. We first met him in 1988 when he ran for the Senate against the liberal Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker. He ran to Weicker’s right and won in an upset.

Joseph Lieberman, four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut, was noteworthy for two reasons, one of special interest to this magazine, the other of interest to the nation. In 1988 WFB, a Connecticut resident, had had it with Senator Lowell Weicker who, besides being politically undesirable — he was a liberal Republican — was gaseous and vain. Democrats had taken control of the Senate two years earlier so keeping a nominal R no longer mattered. Bill accordingly endorsed Joe Lieberman, the Democratic state attorney general.