Pat Toomey

The shock waves from the explosive scandal at Penn State are reaching Washington. Pennsylvania Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey will rescind their Medal of Freedom nomination for former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno in the wake of the child abuse scandal involving his former assistant coach, the senators said Thursday. Paterno was fired Wednesday evening by the school's board of trustees, ending his 46-year-tenure as head coach. The award is considered the highest honor a civilian can receive.

Democrats and Republicans pounding each other on the airwaves in the run-up to the Nov. 2 midterm elections have found one common enemy: foreigners. In political commercials around the country, candidates are sounding a nativist tone, castigating their opponents as supporters of foreign corporations, illegal immigrants and workers abroad. "Is Baron Hill running for Congress in Indiana ? or China?" asks a television ad by the National Republican Congressional Committee that features revolutionary-style images of a Chinese flag and clenched fists punching the air. A spot by MoveOn.

Arlen Specter, the storied Pennsylvania politician who was a state institution for decades before switching political parties and losing in a Democratic Senate primary two years ago, is hospitalized with a very serious illness. Specter, who survived a brain tumor and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, is ailing from another form of cancer that flared up several weeks ago, according to CNN. Several sources at the Republican National Convention who know Specter confirmed that he is very sick. Specter, 82, famously co-authored the "single-bullet theory" during the investigation into President Kennedy's assassination.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, the last World War II veteran in the Senate and a stalwart Democrat who led congressional battles over three decades to toughen gun laws, ban smoking on planes and crack down on drunk driving, died Monday at age 89. Lautenberg, who was the Senate's oldest member and his state's longest-serving senator (28 years, 5 months and 8 days), died of complications from viral pneumonia at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, his office announced.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) on Tuesday dealt a major setback to organized labor's top legislative priority, announcing that he opposes a bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize. That leaves the measure without a crucial Republican swing vote. In a speech on the Senate floor, Specter said the dismal economy makes it "a particularly bad time" to enact the Employee Free Choice Act -- the so-called card check law -- but that he might reconsider "when the economy returns to normalcy."

Republican leaders in Congress announced Wednesday the party's six appointees to the "super committee" tasked with making recommendations to reduce the federal deficit; most are veterans of Washington budget fights. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) named Jon Kyl of Arizona, the GOP whip and member of the Finance Committee; Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who was elected last November and served as president of the fiscally conservative Club For Growth; and Rob Portman of Ohio, also a freshman and the former budget director under President George W. Bush.

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.

Rick Santorum faced a room of Pennsylvania conservatives Saturday morning, offering not quite a mea culpa for the ways he'd disappointed them in the past, but presenting himself as humbled since his crushing Senate loss. Trying to shed his Washington insider image, he described his 2006 loss as a "gift" from Pennsylvania voters that forced him to step outside the Capitol Hill bubble and realize he wasn't really getting it. "The only thing I feel toward the people of Pennsylvania is overwhelming and profound gratitude," he said.

Democrat Kendrick Meek reasserted on Friday that he was in Florida's three-way Senate race to stay, despite reports that he had been urged to withdraw in favor of Gov. Charlie Crist. Meek took to the airwaves in the morning to deny reports that former President Clinton had urged Meek to withdraw so that Crist would stand a better chance of defeating Marco Rubio, the Republican nominee who is a "tea party" movement favorite. "I told him I didn't have any thoughts about getting out of the race," Meek said of Clinton on ABC's "Good Morning America.

President Obama appears determined to publicly keep his distance from the congressional super-committee and its failure to put forward a deficit-reduction plan, despite Republican efforts to shift blame to his end of Pennsylvania Avenue. In his first public event in Washington since returning from a nine-day overseas trip, Obama made no mention of the imminent deadline for the 12-member panel. Instead, before signing a bipartisan bill that offers tax credits for businesses who hire veterans, Obama made a generic push for Congress to "keep working.