Arlen Specter has died

Althouse ^ | 10/14/2012 | Ann Althouse

[BfloGuy]

Arriving on Capitol Hill in 1981, he became a dominant force during the Judiciary Committee’s rancorous Supreme Court nomination battles. More than anyone else, he helped defeat conservative nominee Robert Bork in 1987, and his aggressive questioning of law professor Anita Hill four years later — he accused her of “flat-out perjury” — helped secure Clarence Thomas’s confirmation.... “He was a Rockefeller Republican, a liberal Republican, and was willing to take on Presidents Reagan and Bush, and became a true leader in the bipartisan efforts that strengthened all the civil rights laws and defeated Bork,” said Ralph G. Neas, a longtime civil rights and health-care advocate.

“Then you had a line of demarcation,” Neas said, beginning with Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination and continuing with the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate after the 1994 midterm elections. “Arlen Specter became an especially cautious politician,” Neas said.... After Sen. Specter warned President George W. Bush not to nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court case that essentially legalized abortion rights — conservative Republicans protested his appointment to the Judiciary Committee. Sen. Specter later said he would not use a “litmus test” to deny confirmation to abortion opponents.

He presided over the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and was a key force behind passage of some of the Bush administration’s controversial anti-terrorism laws, including the Patriot Act. But as controversy erupted over the government’s handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Sen. Specter became a leading proponent of habeas corpus rights for unlawful combatants.

[SC_Pete]

I wish that the new media could save freedom and liberty, but the new media just as easily promotes communism, terrorism, propaganda, flash mobs, union demonstrations, voter fraud, drug trade, human trafficking, Chinese and Russian espionage, cyberterrorism, and repetitive motion thumb injuries. The God of Re-election changes every politician, drives pork, bailouts, loans, grants, tax credits, Agribusiness, the entire lobbying industry, and distorts the national economy. The professional political class should be put out of business tomorrow. To paraphrase William F. Buckley, I’d rather be governed by the first 500 people in the Boston phonebook.

[New Perspective]

[TChris]

The very definition of a RINO.

RIP Arlen.

[KC_Conspirator]

lol