Sen. Arlen Specter has just announced that his cancer, an advanced form of Hodgkin's lymphoma, has returned.

I think I speak for all of myDD when I say that our thoughts and prayers are with him.

He's always been one of my favourite senators, even though he's batting for the wrong team.

Get well soon, Arlen.

The race for the Senate in the 112th Congress (yes, that far out) is already beginning to ramp up with an aging blue state Republican announcing that he will seek reelection in 2010 -- and that he is already raising funds for his campaign. Kimberly Hefling has the story for the AP.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate who has often clashed with the Bush administration and his fellow GOP lawmakers, plans to seek a sixth term in 2010.

Specter, 77, will formally begin his re-election campaign April 4 at a Philadelphia fundraiser, Scott Hoeflich, a Specter spokesman, confirmed on Monday.

Hefling wrongly buys into the Specter spin that he is "a moderate who has often clashed with the Bush administration and his fellow GOP lawmakers." For those who have been watching Specter over the past two years -- or, heck, since he became Clarence Thomas' most ardent and important supporter more than 15 years ago -- it is apparent that Specter is willing to shed his coat of moderation at any time if he believes that it is politically advantageous to him. One need look no further than the beginning of the 109th Congress when Specter caved to the demands of the Bush White House in order to secure his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a move that has led to the confirmation of two virulently anti-choice justices to the Supreme Court and to the insertion of language into the renewal of the Patriot Act that granted the administration to replace United States Attorneys indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Now I won't lie to you. There was a time when I liked Arlen Specter, when I fell into the same trap as Hefling. I believed that Specter actually would stand up for the values he so often spoke of. I believed that he would follow through, as Senate Judiciary Chairman, with his quasi-call not to confirm anti-choice jurists to the Supreme Court. If you want a portrait of my naivete, look no further than this post from just a year and a half ago. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's something I'll admit to. I fell for Specter's nice-sounding rhetoric more than one too many times before being greatly disappointed in his knee-jerk support for the Bush administration and its radically conservative view of government.

The good news is that Specter's reelection in 2010 is far from assured. Although Specter won reelection in 2004 fairly handily (his renomination was tough to come by, though not his reelection), Pennsylvania is a different state than it was even two or three years ago. Last fall, Democrats picked up four congressional seats in the state -- more than in ay other state -- won an extremely expensive Senate race by 18 points, and a gubernatorial race featuring a much-touted Republican candidate by an even larger margin. Simply put, Pennsylvania is a more Democratic-leaning state than it was even a few short years ago and, what's more, it seems to be trending even more so in that direction.

The Democratic bench in the Keystone state is fairly deep, and I don't know too much about the big players in the state, whether they be in statewide elected office, in the House of Representatives, members of the state legislature or something else. So I put the question to you: Who should be the Democrat to step up to the plate and offer Arlen Specter the challenge he so greatly deserves?

Did Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, just call for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over the prosecutor purge scandal? You be the judge (h/t TPM Muckraker).

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that Gonzales's status as the nation's leading law enforcement officer might not last through the remainder of President Bush's term, pointedly disputing the attorney general's public rationale for the mass firings.

"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Specter said at a committee hearing where a new round of subpoenas to the Justice Department was considered.

After the meeting, Specter declined to elaborate on that remark, but told reporters that most of the blame for the ongoing controversy rests with the attorney general. "It's snowballing, mostly with the help of the Department of Justice," he said.

Specter is certainly not a doctrinaire conservative -- at least not the likes of John Ensign, who has also come out recently with sharp words over this scandal -- but this could nonetheless be a real problem for the Bush administration and AG Gonzales, specifically, as they try to combat the coverage of this scandal. Should it come to the point where Gonzales is hauled before the judiciary committee or, however unlikely (at this point, at least), he is impeached in the House and tried in the Senate, Specter could serve as a strong Republican voice in opposition to the prosecutor purge.

Update [2007-3-8 17:59:32 by Jonathan Singer]: Just in from Chuck Schumer, via release, Gonzales appears to be beginning to back down.

“While we didn’t get any better explanation for these unprecedented firings, two important developments came from this meeting. First, the Attorney General told us the Administration would not oppose our legislation requiring Senate confirmation for all U.S. Attorneys. Second, in one form or another, each of the five Department of Justice witnesses will be made available to us for questioning. The details and venue are still being worked out, but we are hopeful they will cooperate.

PA Action, in partnership with Vote Vets, Move On, Lower Bucks for Democracy, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq and the SEIU wil be holding a press conference today in front of Sen. Specter's Philadelphia office.   The topic will be opposition to escalating the war in Iraq and our demand that Sen. Specter stops filibustering the troops already in harm's way and denying the American people the Iraq War debate they deserve and have long been denied.   

If you can't get to Philly, you can participate by sending a fax along those lines to Sen. Specter's office between 11:00 AM and noon.  Sen. Specter's contact info is:

        Tel: 215-597-7200

        Fax: 215-597-0406

This was our only shot at stopping the bill, and the amendment failed by a small margin.  Senators are stunned at the call volume, and we picked up a bunch of moderate Republicans. Sherrod Brown's vote for the bill in the House allowed his Senate opponent Dewine to vote 'No', and that was a possible pickup. If you want a sense of how the Senate Democratic caucus deliberated, this piece is pretty good.  Every Democrat except Ben Nelson stood up for Habeas.  Sometimes we lose.  That's politics.

If we had another 24 hours we might have won this, but we didn't. There's an outside shot that Rockefeller could get his amendment through (which would force a conference committee, I think), but the Habeas amendment died.

Update (Chris): Here is the roll call.

Several reasonably well-placed sources have told me that defeating this bill is unlikely.  It passed the House, and a vote in the Senate will probably happen tomorrow.  It feels to me like there's just no coordinated strategy in place in the Senate, probably because there's disagreement within the caucus.  This makes the Maine Senators important, because the disarray in the caucus increases the need for Republican votes.  The only chance for defeating this bill lies with convincing a group of Republican Senators to oppose it.  That's not impossible, but it's not likely.  Still, the phones are ringing in the Senate today.

On the House side, Nancy Pelosi is out and public, and in very strong terms is against this bill.  Most Democrats in the House did us proud.

The bill, if it passes, will face legal challenges.  And the outcome of the vote is important in framing how the political landscape looks.  John McCain completely crumpled on the key issues here, giving in to the White House.  I didn't use to be worried about a McCain candidacy, but what's becoming increasingly clear is that the Democratic candidates are simply unwilling to attack him.  That's a serious problem.  If Democratic Presidential candidates won't go after him now, after he faced a humiliating defeat by an unpopular President, just how are people going to go after him in 2008?

Anyway, keep those calls coming, and we'll see what happens in the next 24 hours.

The debate is on C-Span 2 here.  The Levin substitution failed 43-54, and Lindsay Graham is speaking.  Here are more specific instructions on what to say to the Maine Senators.

Call Senator Collins/Snowe and urge her to vote against S. 3930 .  This unAmerican bill betrays our constitutional tradition and costs us what little moral authority we retain, not to secure the country -- torture doesn't produce useful intelligence -- but because desperate politicians want something to brag about on the campaign trail.  Tell Senator Collins/Snowe that no cheap partisan stunt is worth exposing our troops to torture, alienating our allies, and abandoning the Constitution.

Susan Collins
461 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2523
Fax: (202) 224-2693

Olympia Snowe
154 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5344
Toll Free: (800) 432-1599
Fax: (202) 224-1946

Update: As is indicated in the comments, the phones are getting pounded. Regardless of what happens, we're on the record against this.

The issue with NSA spying and the FISA court is very simple.  Do you trust Bush?  If so, then let Arlen Specter's bill (S2453) empower him with limitless authority to spy on you and your family.  The FISA legislation Specter authored completely neuters any oversight the courts have over wiretapping.

If you don't trust Bush, call the Senators on the Judiciary Committee and ask them to vote against Specter's proposed legislation on FISA.  Here are the phone numbers for the Judiciary Committee.

Senators aren't expecting a lot of feedback on this bill, since it's a hot July and few people are paying attention.  Well-placed phone calls can matter here.  The House will take up the bill eventually as well, so we'll have to go to the House if we can't stop it in the Senate.

Oh, and candidates that are challenging incumbents - now's a good time to go on the record about this legislation.

Arlen Specter, Chairman - Pennsylvania - Fax (202) 228-1229
Orrin G. Hatch - Utah - Fax (202) 224-6331
Patrick J. Leahy - Vermont - Fax (202) 224-3479
Charles E. Grassley - Iowa - Fax (515) 288-5097
Edward M. Kennedy - Massachusetts - Fax (202) 224-2417
Jon Kyl - Arizona - Fax (202) 224-2207
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. - Delaware - Fax (202) 224-0139
Mike DeWine - Ohio - Fax (202) 224-6519
Herbert Kohl - Wisconsin - Fax (202) 224-9787
Jeff Sessions - Alabama - Fax (202) 224-3149
Dianne Feinstein - California - Fax (202) 228-3954
Lindsey Graham - South Carolina - Fax (864) 250-4322
Russell D. Feingold - Wisconsin - Fax (202) 224-2725
John Cornyn - Texas - Fax (972) 239-2110
Charles E. Schumer - New York - Fax (202) 228-3027
Sam Brownback - Kansas - Fax (202) 228-1265
Richard J. Durbin - Illinois - Fax (202) 228-0400
Tom Coburn - Oklahoma - Fax (202) 224-6008