Results tagged “arlenspecter”

• Tyler Perry is sending all of the kids who were turned away from the Valley Swim Club to Disney World.
• Taxi drivers protested against unfair tickets and fees this afternoon in Center City.
• Newly Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter and his Republican challenger, Pat Toomey, are virtually tied according to a recent poll.

This Phillyist would like to know who thinks feeding children is bad. Who, precisely, would look at a group of kids coming to school without lunch, and believe that it is okay for them to remain hungry?

• The Sestak vs. Specter smackdown begins! Rep. Joe Sestak has decided to run against Senator (and former Republican) Arlen Specter in the Democratic primaries.
• Protests against torture and the Inquirer's employment of John Yoo begin at 4:30 today. Scheduled activities include a free waterboarding demonstration!
• Nutter's chief planner resigned yesterday and is headed to London.

Miss Bee contributed to this post.

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Somehow, we think that calling him Arlen "the whore" Specter isn't making you seem like the most reliable source, Michael Savage.

Has the Republican Party taken another step towards complete and utter meltdown? Or is it simply time for the GOP to rid itself of the non-believers in the conservative right? Either way, Arlen Specter is apparently abandoning ship. News has broken that Arlen Specter, one of the last remaining sane Republicans holdovers from the pre-neoconservative days of the Party of Lincoln, is jumping over to the Democratic side of the aisle. The reason for Specter's switch will come as a surprise to noone; based on the Senator's statement regarding his decision, it's based on the growing disenchantment Specter and the new Republican base have had with each other over the last ten years or so, and the coming challenge Specter would face from Pat Toomey in the upcoming Republican primary for his Senate seat. (We figured that if Toomey beat out Specter in the primary, which was a very real possibility, then that seat was going to end up in the Democrats' column anyway, so why not have it be in the hands of a Democrat Arlen Specter: a double eff you to the Republicans.)

Pennsylvania is an increasingly Democratic state. In 2004, Kerry won the state by a hair; Obama won it with a handy ten percent lead. In 2004, twelve of nineteen Keystone Congressmen were Republican, as well as the two Senators. Now, eleven representatives and the junior Senator are Democrats. In 2004, there were roughly 500,000 more Democrats than Republicans in the state; during the extended primary last year, that lead expanded to well over a million. To Republican Pat Toomey, however, that's clearly not enough. For this reason—at least, it's the only reason that makes any sense—he announced yesterday that he's considering a primary run against Arlen Specter.

We bring you the buzz in the 215 blogs this week.

I’m filling in for Ross this week with Asshole of the Week, and the honorable fossilized simpleton from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, is my selection for this prestigious award. This camera-ready attention whore, who is so desperate for air time that he calls up 610-WIP every Monday morning and eagerly reveals how little he knows about Philadelphia sports while the majority of the hosts' mics are turned off in order to stifle their stupefied laughter, spent this past Wednesday meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell getting down and dirty about why Goodell destroyed the illegal tapes seized from noted cheater and sore loser, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The meeting came on the heels of the delusional Specter stating that the destruction of these tapes was reminiscent of the CIA’s destruction of tapes depicting torturous Al Qaeda suspect interrogations. The guy who invented the Single Bullet theory out of the recesses of his furtive imagination now sees it as his job to question other people's reasoning abilities, raving about how all the Commissioner had to do was lock up the tapes to keep them from being distributed, which Goodell states is his main reason for banishing the videos to the trash compacter (make no mistake about it, Goodell’s excuse is probably bullshit, but who cares?). Utilizing the folksy, common-man charm that has allowed the Pennsylvania senior senator to be reelected five times, Specter waxed poetic about the American citizens’ right to “honest football games.”

John Stewart mentions the #1 sports mascot in the country at the end of this video. How? You'll just have to wait and see.

Or, at least, not putting up any new ones for now.



In a victory for Philadelphians and all Americans, on Friday the National Park Service announced that a proposal to enclose Independence Hall within a security fence has been scrapped [Philly.com]. If realized, the plan would have cut Independence Square in half with a six-foot tall black iron barricade, hypocritically restricting access to one of the world's most important symbols of freedom.

After releasing the plan, the NPS also allowed for a period of public commentary, accepting thoughts from citizens via their website. Apparently the people of Philadelphia and elsewhere turned up in droves to criticize the proposal, fueled by local blog protests like this one on phillyskyline.com. In that entry, author Brad Maule summarized the problem this way:



Comments from Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) during Friday's press conference implied that the local outcry was the main reason for reconsideration of the proposal. The public's statements resonated so well, in fact, that some of the "temporary" bicycle barricades we've endured at the site for years will also be removed. Security upgrades moving forward will focus more on improving "human resources."

This is great news. Thank you, National Park Service, for trashing this ill-conceived plan.

- And speaking of local lawmakers getting uppity, Senator Vince Fumo has declared the war in Iraq to be "unnecessary, immoral and counterproductive." In the same speech he referred to the Bush presidency as a "dictatorship" and also accused the administration of ignoring the Constitution. That pesky Constitution. Seems Pennsylvania Senators are fixated on it.