Specter: Special p3 cave-in countdown

(Update: Congressional Republicans hate and fear Feingold's censure motion; Congressional Democrats merely fear it; but Democratic voters--remember them?--think it's a pretty good idea.)

The official countdown clock is started:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a hearing for next Friday on the call by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to allow electronic eavesdropping without warrants.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the panel, said he had decided to schedule the session after Mr. Feingold, in a television interview, pressed for hearings on the censure proposal.

This is Part 1 of Specter's trademark two-part M.O.: First he makes some handwringing public statement indicating his concern that this time the Bush administration has gone too far. That the American people won't stand for it. That he's going to get to the bottom of it. That, if they think they can just run roughshod over our constitution and the people, they've got another think coming.

Here's Specter's lock-and-load moment from the censure debate:

"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it,'' Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. ''I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong.''

Specter was one of the first Republicans to publicly question the National Security Agency's authority to monitor international calls -- when one party is inside the United States -- without first getting court approval.

(Remember that it was Bush's flouting of the Fourth Amendment and FISA law--and the resolute refusal of the GOP-controlled Congress to exercise its proper oversight function in the matter--that prompted Feingold to introduce the censure motion in the first place.)

Then, in Part 2, Specter collapses like a wet taco and not only allows Bush to get whatever he wants, he uses his position as Judiciary chair to abet it.

Part 2 will come next Friday, when Feingold's censure moment is killed in the Judiciary Committee, in some procedurally nasty fashion.

And that's the thing--here's what will make it a uniquely Specter-rific moment: Specter won't just sit back passively and let it die in the predictable party-line vote. He'll find some way to use his power as committee chair to hand the motion an anvil as it goes over the cliff. Perhaps he will rule all discussion by the Democratic committee members out of order. Perhaps he will simply require that all questions or statements by Democrats must be in pig-Latin, or maybe Esperanto. Perhaps he'll invoke some little-known Senate rule requiring that votes for censure must be written in blood from the still-beating hearts of supporters on the committee.

No one has established precisely why he does this. After all, he certainly doesn't have to go to the bother of all that Capraesque foot-stamping; he could simply fall in line enthusiastically with the worst of the Bush administration's tendencies from the start like, say, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Specter's GOP counterpart on the House Judiciary Committee. Not for Sensenbrenner the wasted motion of feigning bipartisan sympathy.

Perhaps Specter is simply that cynical. It could be.

Or it could be that he genuinely means to do the right thing, but then Karl Rove messengers over to Specter a package--perhaps containing the severed finger of a loved one, or maybe photos of Specter playing bocce with Satan. And a beaten, cowed Specter slinks back inside the fence, secretly hoping that next time--next time!--will be his chance to see justice done.

Either way, it doesn't make much difference. Friday will come and Specter will not only oversee the defeat of the censure motion in committee like the loyal Republican button man that he is; he'll add some gratuitous shiv-in-the-back that will be all his own.

Think I'm wrong? This is Specter, looking ahead to Friday's hearing:

Mr. Specter said his intent was not to use the session as a political forum but to explore issues surrounding the proposed censure. He said he believed the proposal was baseless.

"I am prepared to deal with it," Mr. Specter said. "I am sure not going to sit back and have Feingold spout off."

(Handy decoding hint: When a Republican vows "not to use the session as a political forum," it means "the session will be exclusively for the purpose of saving our partisan political hides.")

The clock is running.

(Update: And while Specter postures and plots, Bush continues his extra-constitutional power grab--you know, the one Specter says is "plain wrong.")

Specter: "Hoping that it would all go away"

Now I know we've been a little hard on Senator Arlen Specter around here at p3. It's true, we've called him the Plumed Specter Cave Warbler, as well as a partisan hack and Bush button man.

And, of course we ridiculed him pretty much non-stop about his pattern of blustering and grousing about "getting to the bottom" of this or that outrage committed by the White House--and then caving in on cue, giving his party leaders everything they want and more.

But I just want to take this opportunity to say one thing:

He deserved every bit of it.

In fact, if anything, we were too nice. I think the proper analogy for Specter is not some exotic, preening bird. It's Grover Dill. Every bully needs a toady, and that's Specter to a T--the toady to the GOP leadership's bullies. (The analogy's a little deeply pitched, I grant you, but I think that with a little fine tuning I can get some good mileage out of it in the next couple of years.)

Will Bunch, from my favorite former hometown, picks up this amazing story about the Senate Judiciary Committee vote authorizing subpoenas for uncooperative White House aides:

After 90 minutes of heated debate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) went along with Republican requests not to hold a roll-call vote. So, Leahy ordered a voice vote and barked out for all those in favor of the subpoenas to say "aye" - and all 10 Democrats clearly yelled "aye", as did Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Specter, who is advocating a compromise in which Rove would testify publicly but not under oath and without being subpoenaed, clearly opened his mouth and seemed to move his lips.

Then Leahy asked for the "nays", and Specter's mouth didn't open a sliver. Capitol Briefing convened a meeting of reporters afterward to decide whether Specter had voted in favor of the subpoenas. There was no clear answer, no one could actually confirm whether they heard him say "aye".

We pounced on Specter and demanded an answer. But Specter refused to say which way he voted. He said he did what he did and if we didn't notice he wasn't going to help us. After trying a number of different ways to get him to show his hand, we gave up and left.

But Specter had a change of heart and decided to clear the air, tracking down a few reporters. He did not deny that his mouth might have opened during the call for "ayes", but Specter denied saying anything, uttering any sound.

"The fact of the matter is that I did not say anything. I did not vote and say either 'aye' or 'nay'. I just sat there hoping that it would all go away through negotiations," he said. "Factually, I did not say a thing."

Amazingly, people still call Specter a "moderate," but I think that's simply mistaking Grover Dill, who lags back and only administers a couple of kicks to the breadbasket after the victim's already down, for Scut Farkus, who put him on the ground in the first place. Gingrich, DeLay, Barr, Sensenbrenner, Hastert, Hatch--at least those guys will look you in the eye while they stick the shiv in you. You always know where you stand with them. Only with Specter do you get the sad sight of someone who waits until the serious in-fighters have done the wet-work, and then comes in and pokes the body with a stick a couple of times.

MyDD traces the moment when any semblance of genuine (i.e., non-Dillian) moderation on Specter's part disappeared: When he pulled every lever available to make sure that Clarence Thomas's 1991 Supreme Court nomination was evaluated on anything but the merits.

Specter's announcing his candidacy for 2010 re-election in a couple of weeks. There's a race where I'm certain I'll PayPal some money to the Democratic candidate; the only question is whether I'll commute to Pennsylvania on weekends to ring doorbells and stuff envelopes.

Reading: Hentoff asks, Will Specter sell out again?

Silly question. Of course he will.

From the Capitol Hill Bestiary, I quote this entry on the habits of the Plumed Specter Cave Warbler:

The Plumed Specter Cave Warbler is noted for its elaborate display rituals, in which it positions itself conspicuously in front of the media, spreads its plumage and warbles its signature cry "I'm going to get to the bottom of this!", after which it darts back into its cave.

Nat Hentoff predicts another sighting is near:

The often independent Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) is now—surprisingly—the White House's major accomplice in trying to find the president and his felonious colleagues a way out of this acute inconvenience, especially with midterm elections looming.

Arlen Specter has negotiated with the White House what he calls a "compromise" bill that would "modernize" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the president has repeatedly violated.

Jim Dempsey of Washington's Center for Democracy and Technology—an expert civil liberties source of mine for decades—cites, among other connivances in Specter's legislation:

"A new Section 9 [to FISA] that would vastly expand the scope of warrantless surveillance that never has to be submitted to a court." As Jim Dempsey explains it to me, the government would be able to say to the FISA Court: "There are so many people we can't name whom we want to put under surveillance that we need one warrant to cover them all"—rather than the specific individual warrants under present law.

This would amount to—as Shayana Kadidal, a key litigator for the New York—based Center for Constitutional Rights, says—"whole programs of warrantless surveillance." Kadidal adds:

"Senator Specter's proposal" would enable "the President to target anyone believed 'to have communication with or be associated' with any organization 'believed' to be preparing for terrorism—or any persons associated with them. That description includes more or less every attorney I work with at the Center for Constitutional Rights, according to the government's claims about our clients."

But to please the president much further, Kadilal points out on the University of Pittsburgh law school's Jurist website:

"For good measure, Section 801 of the bill would also eliminate the criminal liability of the President and all his minions who ordered or participated in warrantless surveillance if they could convince a court that the surveillance fell within the inherent Presidential Constitutional Power that the administration claims justifies the NSA program."

But this insistence on commander-in-chief Bush's "inherent Presidential Constitutional Power" has been used by the administration to justify the abuse, and worse, of our suspected terrorist prisoners in violation of our War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the president does not have this "inherent" power to act unilaterally and violate our laws and international treaties.

Specter's sellout is puzzling since he has stated more than once his conviction that Bush has indeed violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—as Judge Taylor unambiguously decided.

Given that Specter's behavior in this case fits a long pattern of sputtering accommodation to the worst constitutional excesses of the Bush administration, it's not immediately clear to me why Hentoff is being so generous; his sellout is, unfortunately, neither "surprising" nor "puzzling."

The rest of Hentoff's article builds the case that Bush is asking for--and expecting--nothing short of an extra-constitutional Get Out of Jail Free card, and teases some interesting back-story on the federal judge whose integrity triggered this latest problem for Bush. Read it.

Hentoff's piece is in the Readings list on the sidebar.

Why would Democrats even consider trusting Specter?

As recently as the beginning of the month, Arlen Specter's name was being floated as a potential 60th vote to head off filibuster on Employee Free Choice Act.

There were even those--and this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic--who imagined the EFCA as the fulcrum that could lever Specter into the Democratic Party sometime between now and his re-election in 2010.

Anyone who believed that was a sap.

The outcome in Specter's latest to-be-or-not-to-be performance was as inevitable as in all his previous theatrical turns: Specter announced today that he will be joining the rest of the Civil War Re-Enactment Society Senate Republicans to filibuster the EFCA and will vote against it if it makes it to the floor.

Arlen Specter is a one-trick pony--before the vote he makes moderate-sounding rumblings, after which the extremist wing of the Republican party threatens him, after which Specter toes the GOP party line when the vote comes down. That's what he does. That's all he does.

Is it that he wants to do the moderate thing but he's too pusillanimous to stand up to the extremists in his party? Or is it that he simply loves to play Hamlet for the cameras before coming home to the extremists?

It doesn't matter. Any legislative strategy that hinges on Specter actually opposing the extremists in his own party is destined to fail.

Specter shifts: And this is good news because . . . ?

In a move guaranteed to lower the average integrity level of both congressional parties, Sen. Arlen Specter, facing a can of whoop-ass from the hard right in his 2010 re-election campaign, has just announced that he is shifting his affiliation to the Democratic Party.

Moments ago, longtime GOP Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican since 1966, announced he is switching parties and becoming a Democrat!

Senator Specter's bombshell comes on the heels of Democratic Congressman-elect Scott Murphy's come from behind victory in NY-20. It also comes as the ongoing legal battle in Minnesota draws closer to a conclusion that will now make Al Franken the 60th Democratic vote in the U.S. Senate.[...]

In making his announcement that he is now a Democrat, Senator Specter said, "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans. When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing."

If they seriously think this moves them one vote closer to breaking the inevitable filibustering of All Things Obama by the Civil War Re-enactment Society Senate Republicans, the DSSC are kidding themselves. Specter jumping ship has nothing to do with his "political philosophy" and everything to do with his electoral philosophy, i.e., the fact that he faces an ugly and expensive primary challenge from Club for Growth-backed former congressman Pat Toomey.

But his shtick will remain the same:

Step 1. Race to the cameras to express grave concern about Republican proposals or tactics. Grave, grave concern.

Step 2. Vote with the Republicans anyway, and shed a bitter tear.

Specter was and will remain a reliable conservative vote. The only difference between him and the rest of the Senate minority caucus is that he wants to be sure you appreciate how difficult his position is.

Watch how many filibusters Specter helps break in the next 12 months: There'll be one or two votes for show, where the outcome won't be in doubt so he can safely go ahead and vote for cloture, and for that he'll get a lot of the media attention that he loves so much. But there won't be any cloture votes in which his is the deciding vote. None. Zippo. Nada. Not gonna happen.

Worse, Senate Democrats will now feel compelled to waste even more time courting him, as an alleged Democrat, than they did when he was an alleged moderate Republican.

(Hat tip to Doctor Beyond.)

Specter cave-in countdown: Update

Last Sunday I predicted that Arlen Specter would find some signature way to torpedo Russ Feingold's censure resolution with the Judiciary Committee takes it up on Friday--this after insisting that Bush was "plain wrong" to claim he could authorize warrentless surveilance of American citizens.

(Okay, "predicted" is probably a little too self-aggrandizing, since Specter's pattern in such matters is so well-known. Let's say "pointed out" instead.)

Anyway, semantic haggling aside, the first tremblings of the Specter cave-in may have already been detected. Here's the first half of the story, at National Review Online a few hours ago:

Specter also discussed a conflict with Judiciary Committee Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold over Feingold's call to censure President Bush. Specter has scheduled a committee hearing for Friday on the censure resolution, but he said Feingold has asked that it be delayed.

"He says he's going to be someplace else," Specter said of Feingold. "I don't know if I can have a hearing without him, and my instinct is, I'm offering him a hearing, and if he doesn't take it, he's not going to have a hearing."

But over at firedoglake they've got Feingold's blunt denial that he's asked for any postponement, in which he also raises the question of whether it might in fact be Specter who's looking for a way to get out of holding the hearing on Friday.

Stay tuned.

Without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion

I sometimes like to imagine a non-existent moment of testimony from a never-going-to-happen Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In my reverie, it goes something like this:

Senator: Sir, are you familiar with the phrase "a government of laws, not of men?"

Bush Administration Official: Yes, Senator, I am.

Senator: Can you summarize its meaning for us this morning?

Bush Administration Official: [Covers microphone with hand, whispers with staffer, who begins thumbing through briefing books] Uhm, Senator, I . . .

Senator: Sir, let me see if I can help you out. Doesn't it refer to a form of government under which laws are designed to operate honestly and fairly, regardless of who happens to be in charge of executing and enforcing those laws on any given day?

Bush Administration Official: [Looks sharply at staffer, who stares back, frozen in terror] Senator, to the best of-- [Looks at briefing book for a moment]--Senator, I suppose that is a fair interpretation of the phrase. Yes.

Senator: And do you believe that phrase describes the American system of laws and justice?

Bush Administration Official: [Eyes dart from one Committee member's face to the next, find no safe haven, finally returning to the Senator] Yes, I suppose so.

Senator: I'm glad to hear it. Sir, in your testimony today--and, I might add, in your testimony before this Committee on numerous previous occasions--you have asked us to give you unprecedented power to ignore the will of Congress and of the American people, to escape essential Constitutional limitations of the Executive Branch, and to commit acts which are destructive of the fundamental civil liberties enjoyed by Americans, liberties which define our great nation. And you assure us that we may rest comfortably in the expectation that you will not abuse these extraordinary powers, that you will only use them with extreme constitutional caution and only in the most limited and exigent circumstances--that we may rest assured that in giving you these powers we will not soon regret it, because you have given us your word that you would never abuse these powers for personal or partisan advantage. Is that essentially your testimony? Would you say that correctly summarizes your position here today?

Bush Administration Official: I . . . I . . .

Senator: I have good news for you, sir. Because America is the sort of place you've agreed that it is--because it is fundamentally a nation ruled by laws, not men--you are relieved of the burden of offering us your personal assurances on this matter. We have something far better upon which to rely.

No, the guarantee that you will not abuse these powers is not your solemn word that your principles or character would not allow you to do so; it is the fact that the law will swiftly and publicly visit justice upon you if you should attempt it. With that in mind, federal marshals are now passing among you and your staff, distributing subpoenas. I look forward to the pleasure of discussing this matter with you in considerable detail in the near future.

And so on. It's a lovely idyll, isn't it? But then I always wake up.

A year ago, I was finding ample opportunity to mock then-Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter, who as a Bush loyalist made sure that there was no congressional oversight of the Bush administration's lawlessness, yet always professed shock and dismay at each new round of constitutional fast ones by the executive branch.

A year later, Specter's lost the gavel, but, as Glenn Greenwald points out, he's clearly learned nothing (ad viewing required for link):

Now that even Alberto Gonzales' DOJ has acknowledged that the FBI has been violating the law with regard to its NSL powers, there are some important lessons that one can learn, if one is so inclined, about how our country has operated for the last six years. Let us begin with the fact that the Inspector General's Office which issued this report is merely a mid-level subordinate DOJ office that reports to the Attorney General, and its conclusions (particularly its exculpatory ones) are hardly dispositive. The oversight here is not the Report itself. That is just the start. The oversight is the Congressional investigation which must follow to determine the scope of the wrongdoing and what actually motivated it.

But the good little authoritarians who always reflexively embrace every unchecked pronouncement by the Bush administration as though it is the Gospel Truth -- the attribute which is, at its core, the defining one of a mindless authoritarian -- are (consistent with that mindset) now running around shrilly insisting that the Leader did no real wrong, because the DOJ Report said that nothing was really done with malicious intent here. The DOJ has spoken, and that settles that. With this mentality, these reflexive Bush defenders are exhibiting precisely the profound character flaw that has led to all of these abuses in the first place: namely, blind, gullible, cult-like and distinctly un-American trust in the assurances of the Leader without any demands of scrutiny, accountability, corroboration or oversight. […]

As is so often the case, Arlen Specter enables excellent insight into how this mindset functions. With these revelations of the FBI's lawbreaking yesterday, Specter was strutting around making all sorts of dramatic protest noises, acting as though he is some sort of guardian of checks and balances and civil liberties. In fact, as Judiciary Committee Chairman from 2002 until 2006, Specter eagerly enabled a virtually complete dismantling of the system of checks and balances on presidential power, and did so by blindly and timidly relying upon administration assurances that they were acting properly.

The same Specter who now professes such grave concern over the abuse of the NSLs is the very same one who led the fight on behalf of the administration to re-authorize the Patriot Act by stampeding over concerns about, among other things, the potential for abuse of NSLs. On December 12, 2005, Specter wrote this letter (.pdf) to six Senators (including 3 Republicans) who were resisting renewal of the Patriot Act due to concerns about the potential for abuse by the Bush administration of NSLs.

Specter's letter -- written after publication of Barton Gellman's documented expose of NSL abuses in The Washington Post -- emphatically assured those worried Senators that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, because the administration secretly assured the Intelligence Committee that everything was being handled properly, and that settles that […]

(Read the rest of Greenwald's essay. It's also going onto the Reading list in the sidebar.)

Such was life under the gavel of Specter the partisan hack and Bush button man. And yet, even in Democratic hands, the Judiciary Committee may still prefer to be swindled, and to let Senators like Russ Feingold--who warned a year ago that the fix was in--continue to wander in the desert.

When a marriage of convenience stops being convenient

I never expected much of Arlen Specter as a Democrat, although in fairness he hasn't been as quickly or deeply treacherous after switching parties as I expected him to be.

A strong primary challenger from within your adopted party does concentrate the mind wonderfully.

And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet. Here's a story that Specter, a.k.a. Don Altobello, a.k.a. the plumed cave warbler, probably wishes he hadn't served up:

For three decades, Specter prided himself on being a coalition builder, relishing a self-appointed role as a liaison striving to find the moderate solutions to liberal and conservative extremes.

Now as a Democrat, that role has vanished. For that reason alone, Specter has questioned his storied party switch.

"Well, I probably shouldn't say this," he said over lunch last month. "But I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I'd stayed a Republican."

Kinsley's Law of Gaffes: It's not a gaffe when a politician accidentally says something that isn't true; it's a gaffe when he accidentally says something that is true.

(Will Bunch reduces Specter's poor-me-ism to rubble in about a paragraph, calling it a fantastical rewrite of history on many levels--and he's probably just being nice because he has the bad luck to have Specter for his senator.)

The reality is, as a Democrat, Specter gets far fewer invitations to play Hamlet in front of the TV news camera, and far fewer presidential muffin baskets from the White House. Watching the Blue Dogs get all that face time in the media during the health care reform battle last year, while he sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, it's not surprising he's been reconsidering his choices.

A p3 guide to Great Caves of America

Carlsbad Caverns: An extensive range of geological formations near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Overview (CCNP website): Carlsbad Caverns National Park contains more than 100 limestone caves that are unequaled in the profusion, diversity and beauty of their formations. The caves are the summer home for a world-famous colony of migratory Mexican free-tailed bats. The park contains 33,125 acres of rugged wilderness backcountry terrain.

Arlen Specter: Chair-to-be of the Senate Judiciary Committee, backs down on defense of women's right to abortion.

Nov 4, 2004 (Philadelphia Daily News): Specter, as presumptive chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that he would block any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court who opposed abortion rights. Reiterating his position that a woman's right to choose is "inviolate," he said overturning Roe v. Wade today would be akin to trying to reverse Brown v. Board of Education, the court's 1954 landmark desegregation decision.

Nov 17, 2004 (Fox News): After two days of appealing to fellow GOP senators, embattled Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he would make a public statement to assure Republicans at large he would not block anti-abortion judicial nominees from President Bush.

Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, backs off pressuring Attorney General Gonzales on domestic surveillance revelations.

Dec 21, 2005 (Fox News): Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Wednesday he remains skeptical about a government surveillance program despite an explanation from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. [ . . . ]

"When a cannon hits you between the eyes, you take notice and I was immediately asked what I thought about it and I said, 'Well, it's a matter that requires a hearing,"' Specter said.

Feb 6, 2006 (Think Progress): Attorney Alberto Gonzales won’t be sworn in [before his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the government program surveilling U.S. citizens], even though the last time he testified under oath he misled the committee about the program. Leahy noted he was sworn the other two times he appeared before the committee. Leahy appealed the ruling of the chair and asked for a roll call vote.

[Following the roll call vote, Specter fretted: "This is really not a very good way to begin this hearing."]

Arlen Specter dead at 82. Pundits disagree about his real motives.

Sic Transit Senator Specter.

Senator Specter was a Republican to the very end, even after he switched parties and became a notional Democrat. Like his fellow faux-Democrat Joe Lieberman, who also changed horses at the end of his Senate career to salvage one last re-election, Senator Specter's trademark was pretending to hold moderate politics while selling out Democrats on critical votes, usually with a long Hamlet-esque speech right before he put the shiv in.

We here at p3 have had a lot of fun at Specter's expense over the years, every single bit of which he had coming and more, but in the interests of de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I will note that Slate.com's Dahlia Lithwick always held him in a certain regard because he was a long-time and determined advocate of bringing cameras into the Supreme Court.

Don Altobello speaks!

Shorter Specter: Let's bring White House people in for another round of lies and evasions to help Bush run out the clock--we can always try to actually get the truth later.

Arlen Specter, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on how to respond to the White House's claim of executive privilege as grounds to insist that it will only allow its subpoenaed staffers to testify if they aren't under oath and if there is no transcript (i.e., only if they can lie with complete impunity):

I think we ought to give consideration to bringing in those individuals and finding out what we can under the president's terms. It doesn't preclude us from compulsory process and proceeding with the subpoenas at a later time.

Specter, it should be pointed out, has only a tiny little smidgen of conscience, a cheap little toy compass that works better as a bracelet charm than as any sort of guide to principled action.

When he was chair of the Judiciary Committee, it was a sad yet infuriating joke. He would rehearse this same little dithering speech--exactly!--whenever Gonzales and his bunch would come in and lie to his face about wiretapping, torture, or what have you, and he insisted there was no need place them under oath. Then they'd lie, Specter would read about it in the papers and get asked about it on Sunday morning TV, and he'd fume, "We've got to get to the bottom of this!"

Until the next time, when they'd do it to him again. Lucy Van Pelt never found a more willing sucker.

Fortunately for Senator Specter, there's a ready line of talking-head shows willing to bring him on and present his particularly adle-pated form of accommodationism

Hat tip to Doctor Beyond, for knowing perfectly well that once he mentioned it to me I wouldn't be able to drop it.

Specter: "I'm no puppet"

Press Conference 101: Never repeat the other side's attack words in your response.

I concede that, over the last three years at p3, I've had some sport at the expense of Senator Arlen Specter, former chair and now ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yes, I've made several "cave" jokes. I've compared him to the double-dealing Don Altobello. I've likened him to a foolish, posturing plumed fowl. Twice, I confess, I specifically used a borrowed analogy to draw an unfavorable comparison between Specter and a wet taco. I even compared him not to something as elevated as a grade-school bully, but to a grade-school bully's toady sidekick. At times I did everything but take bets on when next he'd make a finger-shaking press conference threatening to "get to the bottom" of some unethical, illegal, or unconstitutional act by the Bush administration, only to sheepishly vote for it (or against proper investigation of it) when the time came.

Really. I got a lot of shots in there. And now I can only say, I’m sorry, but in my defense I only had three years. There was so much more material to harvest that I never had time for.

All of which brings us to this recent bit of clueless hoof-stamping, which probably identifies the single best metaphor for the senior senator from Pennsylvania:

Taking offense at being described as a “puppet” of President Bush, Sen. Arlen Specter fired back at Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday, suggesting the Nevada Democrat isn’t up to running the Senate.

Reid on Dec. 4 had blamed what he called Republican obstructionism in the Senate on allegiance to Bush.

“He is the man who is pulling the strings on the 49 puppets he has here in the Senate,” Reid said, referring to the chamber’s GOP members.

Specter, R-Pa., cried foul and declared that Reid had not only violated Senate Rule XIX, which prohibits the questioning of a senator’s integrity, but was just flat wrong.[…]

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said it’s understandable that Republicans are sensitive about being associated with Bush.

“But the results speak for themselves when Republicans stall the process and then complain it’s not moving fast enough,” he said.

The Senator's figure then levitated upward from the stage, drawn by the wires affixed to his limbs, and was returned to a trunk in the basement of the Executive Office Building where he'll remain until he's needed again.

(Image via Youssouf's Sheeplog.)

"Blessed" is the peacemaker

In the otherwise-forgettable and not-worth-a-link "Godfather Part III" is the memorable character of Don Altobello, longtime associate of the Corleone family, whose preferred way of advancing his own interests is to come in the guise of the peacemaker.

"The richest man," says Don Altobello as he arranges the sell-out of one faction to another, "is the one with the most powerful friends."

Comes now Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, failed presidential wannabe (so long ago it's nearly forgotten), and "peacemaker" between the Bush administration--especially Attorney General Gonzales--and, well, nearly everyone else.

Liberals, moderates, and sane people (not a perfectly overlapping set of Venn circles) keep hoping for Specter to finally deliver on his feigned outrage against the statutory and constitutional excesses of the Bush administration.

They hope in vain.

The ACLU sent out this statement today regarding the so-called "compromise" arrangement by which Bush says that he will allow--he will allow! the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution must be spinning in their graves!--judicial oversight of his domestic spying program:

You may have read headlines calling the Cheney-Specter bill on surveillance oversight a "compromise." But make no mistake, this deal is nothing short of a complete capitulation to the Bush administration.

The bill includes legalized assaults on our civil liberties worse even than the sweeping powers ceded to the government by the Patriot Act, and would write into law what is now the administration's belief that the president can wiretap any American he wants without any check.

From the Supreme Court to people on the street, America is starting to wake up to the Bush administration's abuse of power. Unfortunately, Congress hasn't gotten the message and is poised to rubber stamp a dangerous agenda that is doing real harm to our democracy.

Not only is Congress considering NSA "oversight" legislation that would hand the president vast new powers—only days after the Defense Department stated that it will comply with the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of detainees—a top Justice Department lawyer urged Congress to "ratify" the military commissions that the Supreme Court invalidated two weeks ago.

The headlines are full of White House spin claiming that Senator Arlen Specter's (R-PA) bill on surveillance is a successful compromise between Congress and the White House. Of course, Senator Specter would like you to believe he is taking a stand on the Bush's administration's actions because he knows that is what most Americans want Congress to do. But in reality these ill-advised proposals give the president a blank check to spy on Americans without a warrant and without mandatory judicial review of his actions.

Read Glenn Greenwald's take on the sham compromise, the Democrats' options, and the clueless (or craven) coverage by the respectable media.

The RNC on Obama's "'rock star' aura"

From an RNC fundraising email currently making the rounds:

Like an annoying tune you can't get out of your head, Barack Obama keeps using his ''rock star'' aura to campaign for Democrat candidates...and they keep on losing. So much for star power and presidential ''coat tails.''

First in Virginia and New Jersey, then Massachusetts and now Pennsylvania just this week, Barack Obama's endorsement has led to election flop after flop.

Okay, I know it's just a Republican "ask," so it probably was never designed to survive close scrutiny on the merits. But two things:

First, Obama's "rock star" aura -- and the rest of him -- were nowhere to be seen in the run-up to Specter's loss in Pennsylvania this week. He and Biden dodged Specter like they owed him money. The presidential endorsement that killed Specter wasn't Obama's; it was Bush's.

Second, is the RNC counting on low-information donors to miss the fact that, although Obama's candidate in Pennsylvania lost, it didn't mean a Republican won -- since it was a Democratic primary? (Probably. In fact, Sestak has a better chance of defeating Toomey than Specter did -- which is why the Democrats were stuck with him in the first place.)

There. Just had to get that out of my system.

(H/t to Doctor Beyond)

The unforgiving minute

Paraphrasing a classic one-liner about former Senator Al D'Amato and ethics, being called flagrant hypocrite by Arlen Specter is like being called ugly by a frog.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter called his fellow Democrat, Rep. Joe Sestak, a "flagrant hypocrite" and accused his rival of registering as a Democrat "just in time to run for Congress."

Sestak has said that he will challenge Specter, who has the backing of President Obama and party leaders, for the Democratic Senate nomination next year. Specter, a longtime Republican, switched his party registration to Democrat this year.

Minute's up.

Wrong-way Kristol: Specter's switch will hurt Obama

This was wholly predictable, but some credit should be given that it took less than 24 hours to happen.

Background: Last week in the Guardian Eric Alterman tallied up the short but happy life of William Kristol, who's been wrong about everything but his shirt size for years and years, but just keeps failing upward from one high-profile job to the next anyway. Most of us know the general arc of his career, but to see the cavalcade of error listed out on the page is a pretty jaw-dropping experience.

This morning in the Washington Post--where Kristol landed after getting the "it's not you, it's me" speech from the NYTimes a couple of months ago--he shows he's still got it:

On May 24, 2001, I wrote an op-ed for The Post in the wake of Vermont Sen. James Jeffords’s party switch. I argued that the switch, which cost Republicans control of the Senate, could well turn out to be good for President Bush.

Not entirely for the reasons I speculated on in the op-ed, I turned out to be right. Bush was still able to get enough cooperation to govern over the next year and a half, and he was also able to run successfully against the Democratic Senate in the fall of 2002. The GOP regained control that November.

Similarly and contrarianly, I wonder if today’s Arlen Specter party switch, this time to the president’s party, won’t end up being bad for President Obama and the Democrats.

Okay, two things here.

First--"contrarianly"? Dude.

Second, noting that Bush managed to stay in office after Jeffords switched parties is hardly the same as proving that the switch was "good for Bush." Of course, that was back in the days when, if a sparrow fell from the sky, beltway commentators climbed over one another to explain why this was bad for the Democrats and good for the Republicans. (And for some, it appears those days never ended.)

Kristol's reasoning (and I use the word strictly without prejudice here) runs as follows: A filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate--which Specter's defection does not make a lock, even assuming that Al Franken will be seated within his own lifetime--will give Obama no one to blame if things continue to go badly.

Removed from the Post web site and returned to the school yard where it belongs, this is a slightly more polished way of saying "There! And I hope you choke on it!" Nice.

The good news, of course, is that if Kristol says Specter's defection will be bad for the Democrats, then it will probably strengthen their hand more than I've given it credit.

Feingold!

Sadly for the Plumed Specter Cave Warbler, his attempts to free the Bush administration from a few more of the remaining Constutional checks on their behavior never made it out of committee.

Forbes.com reported this a few minutes ago:

President Bush's support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the committee's chairman, said the bill stalled because of election-year obstructionism.

"We have seen the incipient stage of filibuster by amendment," the Pennsylvania Republican testily declared as he called off a vote to move his bill to the Senate floor. "Filibuster by speech, filibuster by amendment. Obstructionism."

The target of his ire was Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who spoke against the bill for about a quarter of the panel's two-hour meeting and offered four amendments. Feingold, a possible presidential candidate, said Specter's bill would give the White House too much power to eavesdrop without a warrant in some circumstances.

"The president has basically said: I'll agree to let a court decide if I'm breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I'm not breaking the law," Feingold said. "That won't help re-establish a healthy respect for separation of powers. It will only make matters worse."

Feingold opposes the GOP machine, again, and lives to tell about it--again. The other congressional Dems exchange puzzled looks--could there be some way that his tactics might be expanded, so that the Democrats acting together might increase their power? They would be a party, yes--but they would also be in opposition. A party . . . in opposition. What might we even call that, they wonder aloud? America holds its breath, waiting . . . waiting . . .

Postscript: Was anyone else as amused as I was by Specter's recitation of Feingold's offenses? I didn't think he had that kind of humor in him.

Cave troll

Sen. Arlen Specter wants you to know he is shocked--shocked!--to discover that Bush administration continues to engage in warrentless domestic spying:

"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong."

This might be newsworthy on its merits--a top Senate Republican calling the President out on extraconstitutional actions--except for two things:

First, Bush has long made clear that he does not consider himself or his administration bound by any law that Congress might happen to pass anyway, including Constitutional protections against warrentless invasions of privacy.

Second, Specter, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee (although a chair without a backbone is really more of a stool) refuses--out of political cowardice or misplaced loyalty, you decide--to provide exactly the congressional intervention whose absence he bemoans, since he's prevented the Judiciary Committee from properly investigating Bush's domestic spying program. Most recently, he blocked attempts by Committee Democrats last month to require Attorney General Gonzales to be placed under oath before giving his testimony on the subject.

This pattern by Specter--public handwringing for the health of the republic followed by craven obeisance to the Bush ideological agenda once the gavel bangs down--has become so familiar it's surprising the AP covers it as news anymore.

Ms. Shoe, meet Senator Other Foot

My, how times change.

Here's the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee making yesterday's talk-show rounds:

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday offered an unusual defense of Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers, saying her critics had put together ''one of the toughest lynch mobs" he had ever seen.

"What you've had here on Harriet Miers is not a rush to judgment. It's a stampede to judgment," Specter said on the ABC News program "This Week."

Miers was being attacked by "one of the toughest lynch mobs ever assembled in Washington, D.C., and we really assemble some tough lynch mobs," Specter said.

Specter's remarks amounted to a tacit rebuke of conservatives.

Hm. Let's review: We've got the Supreme Court nomination hearings of an underqualified Bush family puppet being publicly characterized by one of the players as a "lynching"?

It seems to me that this isn't the first time we've been down this road.

The unforgiving minute

America can sleep safer tonight, knowing that defenseless corporations have had their rights to free speech restored to them via the Citizens United ruling.

Why look--here comes some corporate free speech right now, in the Senate Anti-Trust subcommittee hearings on the Comcast merger with NBC-Universal:

You know what I'll bet Specter thinks is the most brilliant thing Comcast's executives have done? They've donated a whopping $108,580 to his 2010 re-election campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. That only makes Comcast the second largest source of campaign cash for Specter, however. The biggest is the Philadelphia-based legal and lobbying powerhouse Blank Rome. You know who one of Blank Rome's lobbying clients is? Comcast Corp.

As the Roberts Court would say: Money talks.

Of course, this story would sting more if Specter had had any integrity to begin with.

Minute's up.