Arlen Specter: The face of abstinence education politics?

Not the first thing you want to see in the morning:

Go inside the Politico piece, though, and you’ll find yet another example of Arlen Specter’s deep, deep cynicism:

Between 2003 and 2009, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter obtained nearly $10 million in earmarks for abstinence education.

Then he became a Democrat.

Since switching parties last spring, Specter hasn’t sought a dime in earmarks for abstinence education — a dramatic reversal that critics describe as a case study in the cynical politics of pork-barrel spending.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Arlen Specter’s problem isn’t that he switched parties this year. He could always make the case, like Ronald Reagan did going the other direction, that he hadn’t left the Republican Party — it left him. But that’s not entirely the truth. The man has been in public life for half a century now. And we still can’t say with any certainty what he really stands for. You expect all good politicians to shift a little bit with the winds; Specter takes it to an extreme.

Arlen Specter’s sexist remark to Michele Bachmann: An old man’s act is played out

The Inquirer reports today that Arlen Specter has apologized to Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann for admonishing her, on a recent radio program, to “act like a lady.” It’s good that he did so, but the damage is surely done.

My colleague Brendan Skwire wrote about Specter a few weeks ago, concluding that the senator is “an old man who’s watching history pass him by; who’s tired of politics but doesn’t know what else to do with himself; and who woke up one morning and found that he’d become an outcast in his own party. The truth is that despite for all the hoopla of the establishment Democrats’ support for his candidacy, Specter isn’t all that popular with the electorate.” That sounds about right, particularly in light of the Bachmann remark.

The amazing thing is that after nearly 30 years in the Senate, there’s precious little that Pennsylvanians can say that Arlen Specter stands for … aside from standing for Arlen Specter himself. His “pro-choice” leanings in the Senate were effectively jettisoned when they stood between him and chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee; his “independence” as a newly minted Democrat quickly went by the wayside when he realized Democratic primary voters were actually paying attention to his votes; and his shift to the Democratic Party was, of course, utterly mercenary. The only common thread through this and a million other anecdotes is that Arlen Specter always acts for the good of his own survival. But to what end?

The “act like a lady” comments don’t really fit into that thread neatly, admittedly. Instead, they add to the sense that Specter’s time has played out. The man turns 80 next month. His career is already part of our history. Maybe it’s time to turn to Pennsylvania’s future.

Arlen Specter is getting you that health care bill

Kevin Drum quotes Paul Krugman:

I haven’t seen anyone point this out; but it occurs to me that we all owe thanks to the Club for Growth. If they hadn’t targeted Arlen Specter, he wouldn’t have switched parties, the Democrats wouldn’t have 60 seats, and the world might look very different.

Heh.

Magic Johnson endorses Arlen Specter

TPM:

At a town hall at the University of Pennsylvania last Friday, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) surprised students by showing up alongside basketball Hall-of-Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

Johnson and Specter met by chance right before the town hall.

“This young man is a person who really cares about America,” Johnson said. “I only hope to do half as much as he’s done.”

Johnson endorsed Specter and also said he’s a “treasure.”

We’re hoping Joe Sestak can come up with the all-too-critical Daryl Dawkins endorsement.

Obama’s smoke and mirrors on state secrets

I’ve been pretty disappointed in President Obama’s embrace of the “state secrets privilege,” which the government — under both him and his predecessor — tried to get torture lawsuits dismissed on the basis of national security concerns. Judges haven’t been able to see evidence that that such lawsuits would actually harm security; they’ve had to rely on the president’s assertion. And that’s bad.

It’s not that I don’t think that national security doesn’t sometimes trump other concerns; but there has been no real process in place to ensure the privilege is used legitimately instead of as a means to cover up government misconduct.

The Washington Post reports today that the Obama Administration is promising to hold itself to a tighter standard when it comes to invoking the privilege:

The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive information would present significant harm to “national defense or foreign relations.” In the past, the claim that state secrets were at risk could be invoked with the approval of one official and by meeting a lower standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful.

Which sounds great. Except that if the Bush Administration taught us anything, it’s that you can get whole teams of Justice Department lawyers to sign off on conduct that’s plainly illegal if that’s what the president wants. In the past, the executive branch’s use the state secrets privilege has amounted to: “Trust us.” Under Obama it’s: “Now you can really, really trust us.”

Only we can’t.

This has nothing to do with Obama, personally, and everything to do with the nature of executive power. It wants to be untrammeled. But it should be trammeled, and under the Constitution’s separation of powers it is. When it comes to the state secrets privilege, though, the executive branch is telling the courts: “No need to check us. We got this one.”

That’s not how it should work. And it doesn’t have to be that way: You’ll remember that Arlen Specter a few months back introduced legislation that would allow a judge to privately weigh the evidence that the government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege is, in fact, warranted. It’s a way of keeping the president in check, to make sure he doesn’t use national security concerns to cover up misconduct.

Specter’s bill appears to be going nowhere. That’s too bad. Letting a judge check and balance the president would have minimal harm on national security, but it would mean a great deal for letting citizens hold their government accountable.

Does Pat Toomey secretly wish Arlen Specter was the GOP candidate for Senate?

The New Yorker today unveils a big story about the Pennsylvania race for U.S. Senate (registration required), in which Pat Toomey — having spent the better part of a decade trying (and kind of succeeding) to purge the moderate Arlen Specter from the GOP’s ranks — now is all lovey-dovey  with the moderates:

“I’m pretty conservative,” he said. “I’m pro-life, for instance. But it never occurred to me that someone who is pro-choice can’t be a good Republican, or shouldn’t be part of our coalition. We can disagree about that issue, we can try to persuade each other about that issue, but that should never be a reason for excluding someone. On fiscal matters, nobody’s got a monopoly on exactly what the right number is that we ought to be spending this year. Now, I think we’ve spent too much, and I’ll argue that pretty forcefully. But reasonable people can disagree about what the right number is. Those are all very healthy discussions to have within a great party.”

But, uh, why weren’t those great discussions to have with Arlen Specter in the GOP?

It’s obvious what Toomey is doing: Having secured the conservative base, he has to tack to the middle — which is left of him — to have any hope of winning Specter’s Senate seat. Fine. But his rhetoric shouldn’t obscure his actions. Take the two together and this is what Toomey is really saying: “I love moderates. I especially love them when they’re seen and not heard — they should be voting for Republicans, and they should be part of our coalition. But they shouldn’t actually be the people who have power. That’s going a little too far.”

Censuring Joe Wilson

Arlen Specter wants the South Carolinian reprimanded:

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) just tweeted that Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) apology for heckling the president Wednesday isn’t enough — the congressman should be reprimanded.

“Rep. Wilson apologized immediately afterward but I don’t think that’s adequate,” he wrote. “There ought to be a reprimand or censure of Rep. Joe Wilson to discourage that kind of conduct in the future.”

Pat Toomey: Obama-loving socialist moderate?

Pat Toomey basically chased Arlen Specter out of the GOP for not being conservative enough. Today, though, he’s praising Barack Obama’s school speech which was — remarkably — only a little bit socialist. Dave Weigel wonders if Toomey, after years of playing the hard-right side of the table, is tacking to the middle:

While some polls have shown Toomey becoming more competitive in his 2010 U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, the fact remains that he’s a conservative Republican running in a blue state against a Democrat (either Rep. Joe Sestak or Sen. Arlen Specter) who will surely have the backing of powerful local labor unions. Toomey has veered hard to the middle since forcing Specter into the Democratic Party, first by endorsing Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, now with this.

Damnit. Now we have to get a real Republican to challenge Toomey. Who could possibly be to his right?

Barack Obama loves Arlen Specter

If there was any question which side the president is going to take in the Specter-Sestak primary, those doubts are now dispelled:

PRESIDENT OBAMA will attend a Sept. 15 fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, according to an e-mail that Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen sent supporters.

The event that Mayor Nutter, Gov. Rendell and Specter will attend features a $1,000 cocktail reception, another VIP reception for those who raise at least $10,000, and a dinner for which “an individual must write (not raise) a minimum of $10,000 or raise $50,000″ to attend, Cohen’s note says. The missive asks guests to make checks payable to Pennsylvania Senate Victory 2010, and promises that all dinner guests will have a picture taken with Obama and Specter.

This seems short-sighted. Put aside, for the moment, that Specter is a party-jumping opportunist who looks to have simply run out of support from Pennsylvania voters. There’s also the matter of him being old. Really old. Old enough, in fact, that the 2010 will be — if I were a betting man — his last.

Democrats might think they’re taking advantage of incumbency by backing Specter, and maybe they are. But they might not have an incumbent in 2016. That’s probably too far away for most politicians to think about — we’ve got to win now! — but if Joe Sestak won the seat next year, Dems would have the advantage of incumbency for, perhaps, a few terms to come.

Sen. Specter gets an earful on health reform

I’m confused. Does that mean health reform is a sin that God will punish someday? Seems counterintuitive.