Arlen Specter

Former Sen. Arlen Specter, on a return visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said Pennsylvania would be difficult for President Obama to win in next year's election. "I think it is tough; I think Pennsylvania's economy is hurting," Specter said in a brief interview outside the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room where he had just testified. Specter spent 30 years representing Pennsylvania before losing in the Democratic primary last year. Now from his view on the outside looking in, Specter said the president "has to become engaged" in state issues if he hopes to carry it again.

As Rick Santorum rises in the polls, the Republican presidential candidate is receiving fresh scrutiny over his endorsement of moderate Republican incumbent Arlen Specter against a strong conservative challenger in the 2004 GOP Senate primary in his home state of Pennsylvania. At the first two stops of his final swing through western Iowa, the most conservative part of the state and his stronghold, Santorum was questioned about his endorsement of Specter, an abortion-rights supporter.

President Obama, making an unusual foray into a Democratic primary election battle, told a paid crowd of supporters of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) on Tuesday that the senator would fight "to help me move this country forward." The reception drew 750 people, some of whom paid $2,400 to attend. The president was scheduled to attend a more intimate gathering of Specter's big-money donors later today. Overall, the fundraiser was expected to bring in nearly $2.5 million, split between Specter's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Former Sen. Arlen Specter, on a return visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said Pennsylvania would be difficult for President Obama to win in next year's election. "I think it is tough; I think Pennsylvania's economy is hurting," Specter said in a brief interview outside the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room where he had just testified. Specter spent 30 years representing Pennsylvania before losing in the Democratic primary last year. Now from his view on the outside looking in, Specter said the president "has to become engaged" in state issues if he hopes to carry it again.

Sen. Arlen Specter says he is a Republican and plans to remain so as a candidate for reelection in 2010. But with the five-term Pennsylvanian under fire from some within his state's GOP and facing the prospect of a tough primary battle next year, he's not ruling out the chance that he'll run as an independent. "It is an abstract possibility, but I am not making any plans on it," he said in a brief interview Wednesday.

Long before Hollywood discovered its political voice, medicine and medical research were the Industry's causes of choice. Locally, you wouldn't be far wrong if you called Cedars-Sinai the hospital that millions of movie tickets built. In recent years, the only thing that's bigger box office on the Hollywood fundraising circuit than a hot Democratic candidate is stem cell research, which is why the entertainment industry's unlikely man of the hour is the 79-year-old senior U.S.

When Sen. Arlen Specter gets out of bed at 6 a.m. each day, he no longer recognizes the face that greets him in the bathroom mirror. The tangle of auburn hair is gone. The skin is ashen and hangs from the corners of his mouth. The eyes are rimmed with red. Specter has five weeks to go in a six-month course of chemotherapy.

In the Year of the Woman in politics, Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania may be the Senate's most unwanted man. Democrat Lynn Yeakel certainly hopes so. And based on the latest polls in one of the nation's most closely watched Senate races, she has a solid chance of getting her wish.

Arlen Specter was never much of a Republican. He won't be much of a Democrat either. His record in the Senate has always been quirkily centrist. He has voted for Republican presidents' conservative Supreme Court nominees but still supported abortion rights. He was one of only three GOP senators who voted for President Obama's $787-billion stimulus bill. He often exasperated other senators by offering his own idiosyncratic bills. Conservatives dubbed him a RINO: Republican In Name Only.

Arlen Specter, the five-term senator from Pennsylvania and recently minted Democrat, is one of the great survivors of U.S. politics, and he may extend his lease on public office next year when he seeks reelection. But he shouldn't expect to win the nomination of his new party by default. Thanks to Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), he won't. Sestak, a retired vice admiral, announced Tuesday that he will challenge Specter in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Arlen Specter, a former Philadelphia prosecutor whose principal passion has always been law, used his final speech on the Senate floor to deliver what he described as his "closing argument" decrying a loss of civility among his colleagues. He stood Tuesday in the same spot where he had given countless speeches over a 30-year career ? defending federal funds for the National Institutes of Health or explaining constitutional nuances ? to reiterate his passions, but also to deliver a stinging evaluation of his colleagues and their partisanship.

When it comes to discussing the man who is running to replace him, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter would prefer the aptly named game of squash. Specter, 80, was among those who greeted President Obama on Monday when the president arrived in Philadelphia to campaign for Joe Sestak, who defeated Specter in the Democratic primary. The White House had strongly backed Specter, who converted to the Democratic Party last year, helping it to control the Senate where he had served as a top Republican since 1980.

It's no secret that the Obama administration wanted Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to drop his primary challenge to Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter. But did President Obama's representatives try to entice Sestak into leaving the race by promising him a job? It's a simple question, and one that Sestak already has answered in the affirmative, but the administration continues to treat the issue as much ado about nothing. Actually, it's much ado about something. Yes, political factors often influence appointments in unsavory ways — witness the practice of awarding ambassadorships to campaign contributors.

Reporting from Washington and Philadelphia In a year where the entire political establishment is being challenged by rank-and-file activists, Sen. Arlen Specter is a standout. He managed to run afoul of both parties in one election cycle. Specter, Pennsylvania's Republican turned Democrat, is one of the tallest trees to fall in this spring's electoral storm, ending a career that survived three decades of U.S. political history. Yet despite all the things that make Specter exceptional, his defeat — coupled with the results of other primaries and special elections this week — sends a message that resonates with career politicians across the spectrum.

Delivering a powerful message of discontent, voters Tuesday swept out veteran Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, nominated a "tea party" movement founder for a Senate seat in Kentucky and forced Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a runoff for the Democratic nomination in Arkansas. Looking shell-shocked and speaking to fewer than 100 supporters in a half-empty ballroom, Specter delivered a brief speech in Philadelphia conceding the Democratic race to two-term Rep. Joe Sestak — marking the end of his 30-year Senate career.

As Sen. Arlen Specter stood alongside steelworkers whose pensions he helped save, he urged Democratic voters to remember his record in Congress, even his decades as a Republican. He always put principles before party, Specter said, citing his vote for President Obama's economic stimulus plan. He reminded them that was the vote that pushed him out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic fold, whose primary voters will decide the five-term senator's fate Tuesday. "The little guys need representation in Washington," he told supporters at a union hall here.

Sen. Arlen Specter received a hero's welcome at the White House on Wednesday, while the Republican Party he left behind continued to grapple with the implications of his defection. Specter stunned his colleagues Tuesday by announcing he would run as a Democrat in next year's Pennsylvania Senate primary, further decimating the ranks of a party whose popularity has been waning in recent years.

Sen. Arlen Specter has been told by several of his most faithful GOP backers in Pennsylvania that they'll abandon their support if he votes for a union-rights bill working its way through Congress, an ultimatum that carries significance both for the measure and for Specter's reelection next year. The threat has come in unusually blunt terms at a time when some Republicans in the state are furious at the five-term senator for backing the economic stimulus package.

Rep. Joe Sestak needs a comb. His wavy, graying hair has been through a hectic morning, and the Pennsylvania Democrat is racing toward his third interview of the day, this time with ABC News. "Nobody under 40 carries a comb," he says. "See, watch this." Sestak, 57, looks at one of the young aides rushing ahead of him up an escalator in the Capitol Visitor Center: "Do you have a comb?" The staffer answers nervously: "No, sir." Primped or not, Sestak's life as a Senate candidate is a constant scramble to get his face on the air or his words in print, a frantic push to paint a portrait of himself for state voters -- and anyone else with the time to listen -- as he fights to get noticed.

A recent string of decisions made by officials at the Arlington Independent School District in Texas has ensured that there will be no politics in the classroom there. And, apparently, there will be no fun, either. It all began when district Supt. Jerry McCullough denied students a chance to watch President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren about the importance of education. McCullough banned the address because, he said, it might interfere with lesson plans and cause a distraction.