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Senator Arlen Specter Becomes a Democrat
Akido37 was one of many readers letting us know that US Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties to become a Democrat. This gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and 60 if and when Al Franken gets seated from Minnesota. However, Specter said in his announcement that he will not be an automatic 60th vote for breaking Republican filibusters. While the senator's move seems to have surprised many Republicans, it is understandable to moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said, "You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how they [Republicans] view moderates. Either you are with us or against us." Specter noted that in his home state of Pennsylvania, 200,000 formerly Republican voters switched party allegiance last year.
...nothing of value was lost or gained.
Gee - big surprise. This news comes just a weekend after news that his primary challenger, Pat Toomey, is showing a commanding lead in the polls.
I can see the fnords!
Specter left the Democratic Party in '81 because he lacked seniority for cool appointments. The Republicans were (and have been) desperate enough for a Pennsylvania senate seat that he could write his own checks in the GOP. Now, he's looking at being part of a permanent minority, and the majority party is probably going to give him nicer committee chairs than he could get with the GOP.
It's not a principled stand; it's politics.
Eh. Specter is an old school reagan-ish republican. He's pro-choice, pro-environment, and pro-immigration. He's crossed party lines repeatedly over the last few years: he was 1 of three senate republicans to vote for the big stimulus package.
The stimulus vote pissed off the republican leadership, with Steele going so far as to threaten not to contribute to his campaign fund. He's had republican challengers in the primaries for the last 2(?) primaries.
I think they did a good job of making him feel unwanted, and frankly, they can suck it up.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, that was a right-wing projection. Democrats never wanted us to lose the war, they wanted the U.S. to stop pursuing the policies that were failing. Republicans, in their typically hyperaggressive way, screamed themselves red in the face that this was wanting America to lose. Put another way, Rush Limbaugh explicitly has said he wants President Obama to fail. Not his policies. Not his programs. His entire presidency. No Democrat of any significance actually made any statement calling for the war to be lost.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
The Republican front-runner is Pat Toomey, lately the president of the right-wing anti-tax extremist group, the Club for Growth. He's further right than Rick Santorum was. In trial polling thus far, Specter easily destroys Toomey among the general electorate; it's only with the Republican primary he had no chance. As far as the Democratic primary goes, he will have opposition (at least one minor declared candidate says he will not withdraw), but Governor Ed Rendell has said he will work to support Specter in the primary - as have other prominent Democrats including President Obama. This may well come down to his vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, though. If he votes for cloture, then the PA labor unions will probably let him vote as he likes on the actual bill. If he votes against cloture, though, the politically-powerful PA labor unions will be mobilized strongly against him, and he may have trouble getting through the primary then.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
FAIL.
The right-wing extremism report was initiated by George W. Bush's White House, as a counterpoint to the left-wing extremism report issued earlier this year. The right-wing extremism report further did not identify conservatives as extremists; it identified two major groups within right-wing extremists, those being hate extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and single-issue extremist groups like abortion-clinic bombers. Agreeing with any of the issues does not mean that they called you an extremist, only that extremists have been known to share that issue.
Some squirrels are male and some squirrels are female. You are in all likelihood either male or female. This does not, however, mean that you are necessarily a squirrel. It's the same argument, except with 'squirrel' in place of 'extremist,' 'male' in place of 'hate groups,' and 'female' in place of 'single-issue groups.'
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
I agree with your premise, but the banking deregulation that (at least partially) led to the current situation was done under Clinton.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Unfortunately for you, the Supreme Court and the stewards of the Geneva Conventions disagree with you there. At a minimum, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions provide a baseline of protections the United States must afford to every detainee.