Well, this year certainly hasn’t turned out the way Arlen Specter expected. Today came the latest bad news for the senator, as a prominent Democrat in Pennsylvania jumped into the party’s primary:

A congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs will challenge U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic Senate primary.

In an interview with The Wayne Independent Wednesday morning, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.,confirmed his intention to run against Specter, a long-time Republican who switched to the Democratic party earlier this year.

“I am going to get into the race against Arlen Specter … for senator,” said Sestak[.]

Pennsylvania Democrats haven’t forgotten that Specter proudly called himself a Republican and friend of George Bush until it became clear that he would lose his former party’s primary. He still holds several right-wing positions unpopular in the Keystone State, not the least of which is opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

Sestak, on the other hand, is a career-long Democrat who opposed the war in Iraq, criticized the Bush Administration, and supported Senator Obama’s run for the presidency. He’s a very active member of Congress and a favorite of high-ranking Congressional Democrats.

If Arlen Specter loses the Democratic primary, his long political career will be over. Pennsylvania electoral law prevents a candidate from losing a party’s primary and then running as an independent. If Sestak is as strong as many expect him to be, Specter is (frankly) screwed.

Via Hot Air.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of lower court judges, including Sonia Sotomayor, has hurt the nominee’s support for confirmation amongst the general public. That’s what a new poll from Rasmussen Reports released today shows.

A heavily publicized U.S. Supreme Court reversal of an appeals court ruling by Judge Sonia Sotomayor has at least temporarily diminished public support for President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the two nights following the Supreme Court decision, finds that 37% now believe Sotomayor should be confirmed while 39% disagree.

Two weeks ago, the numbers were much brighter for the nominee. At that time, 42% favored confirmation, and 34% were opposed.

Sotomayor has a poor image with both men and women, with both demographics having more people disapproving of her than approving. Even most income brackets find majorities disapproving of her as a court nominee.

Will this hurt her chance of confirmation? I doubt it. Democrats are more interested in appeasing their special interests and repaying victim groups than putting up someone the American public approves of. She’ll still get confirmed, but it may hurt both the Obama Administation and Congressional Democrats politically.

The United States Supreme Court has overturned a decision made by Obama nominee Sonia Sotomayor during her time as an appeals court judge.

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, with Antonin Scalia writing a concurrence. Kennedy finds that the failure to establish that the defendents met the requirements to discard the test amounts to a violation of  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and that the lower court — including Sotomayor — improperly applied the Equal Protection Clause.

We conclude that race-based action like the City’s in thiscase is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute. The respondents, we further determine, cannot meet that threshold standard. As a result, the City’s action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII. In light of our ruling under thestatutes, we need not reach the question whether respon-dents’ actions may have violated the Equal Protection Clause. …

In other words, there is no evidence —let alone the required strong basis in evidence—that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the City. Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions. The City’s discarding the test results was impermissible under Title VII, and summary judgment is appropriate for petitioners on their disparate-treatment claim.

Justice Samuel Alito also wrote a concurrence, noting that the dissenters forgot to mention something:

I join the Court’s opinion in full. I write separately only because the dissent, while claiming that “[t]he Court’srecitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story,” post, at 2 (opinion of GINSBURG, J.), provides an incomplete description of the events that led to New Haven’s decision to reject the results of its exam. The dissent’s omissions are important because, when all of the evidence in the record is taken into account, it is clear that, even if the legal analysis in Parts II and III–A of the dissent were accepted, affirmance of the decision below is untenable.

The overturn is really bad imagery for Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House. Up to this point they’ve been selling Sotomayor as one of the brightest minds in our nation. Now the very court she’s been appointed to is overruling her previous decisions, finding she inappropriately applied the Equal Protection Clause? Not the best press you can get.

Not the concept itself, but rather the exact bill sitting before Congress today. The environmental group opposes Waxman-Markey because it doesn’t do enough to destroy industry, but I’ll take any opposition to the legislation at this point.

“Since the Waxman-Markey bill left the Energy and Commerce committee, yet another fleet of industry lobbysists has weakened the bill even more, and further widened the gap between what Waxman-Markey does and what science demands. As a result, Greenpeace opposes this bill in its current form. We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it. Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation, we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest, and shows the significant limitations of what this Congress believes is possible.

“As it comes to the floor, the Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions. To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak. “

They’re right about the highlighted part, though they believe it for different reasons. The legislation will pass higher energy costs to consumers, your average Americans, during a deep recession in which they’re already having difficulty keeping up with the bills. As Ed Morrissey says, cap-and-trade is a tax.

Cap-and-trade is a tax, one imposed through an artificial scarcity model onto an industry that drives the economy.  The AP reports the CBO and EPA cost estimates without mentioning that those predictions only cover the actual mechanical costs of cap-and-trade.  They do not predict the economic impact on American families from the loss of economic power as energy becomes more scarce and expensive.  This bill will lose the US 2.5% of its GDP each and every year in the years after the first decade of implementation.

Call your representative.

Rep. David Obey (D-Wis) allegedly pushed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) during an altercation on the floor of the House of Representatives, The Hill reports. Apparently the argument was over just how much of the taxpayer’s money they should waste.

After the House floor had largely cleared following a series of votes, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) split apart from a heated conversation and began yelling at one another.

“You’re out of line,” Waters shot while walking down toward the well.

“You’re out of line,” Obey shot back before turning and walking away.

But then Obey stopped, turned back toward Waters, and shouted: “I’m not going to approve that earmark!”

Obey turned away, but Waters went to go huddle with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. She could be over heard telling them: “He touched me first.”…

Waters and Obey have had an ongoing dispute about an earmark for a public school employment training center in Los Angeles that was named after Waters when she was a state representative.

Obey rejected that earmark as violating policies against so-called “monuments to me.” Waters revised her request to go to the school district’s whole adult employment training program, so the district could decide whether the money would go to the school named after Waters.

Thursday was the committee markup of the spending bill that would include the earmark, and Obey let it be known that the earmark would be denied. She approached him and complained.

A Waters aide said that Obey had pushed her.

A spokesman for Obey claims that he tried to defuse the confrontation but, as far as I can tell, doesn’t deny Waters’ accusation that she was pushed.

Because God forbid we spend $369 million to acquire F-22 fighter jets in defense of the nation. No, let’s spend that money on global warming alarmism or expansion of welfare rolls instead. Outrageous, deficit-building spending for everything but defense, apparently.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives was poised to approve on Thursday a $550.4 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2010 that has drawn a veto threat from President Barack Obama because it contains money for fighter jets he does not want.

The bill also authorizes $130 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year that begins October 1.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said it supported the overall bill but the president’s senior advisers would recommend a veto unless some provisions were dropped.

One congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the White House veto threat as “a bargaining tool.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee was to unveil its defense authorization bill for 2010 later on Thursday, but the legislation was unlikely to be approved by the full Senate until September. House and Senate negotiators must then hammer out a compromise version before final passage.

The OMB said it strongly objected to the House decision to include $369 million in advanced procurement funds to buy 12 more F-22 fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin Corp despite a Pentagon decision to halt production at 187.

The Obama Administration apparently also objects to spending $603 million for building an improved engine for the F-35 fighter jet. Million with an “m” — not billion with a “b”. Suddenly, when it comes to defending the nation, the Obama Administration has found that it objects to large-scale spending. Either that or it’s not a fan of building the technology necessary to protect America.

Exit question: Would the Obama Administration really risk vetoing a bill providing funds for troops in harm’s way and projects that employ quite a few Americans? Even the fact that he’s blocking spending for the defense of the country aside, funds are needed for the defense programs that employ many thousands of Americans during a recession. Doesn’t sound like a smart political move outside of Berkeley.

Exit question 2: Let’s say Obama does veto the bill. Do Democrats possess the backbone to stand up against Obama in order to protect the country? I have my doubts.

How could this man possibly have lost the presidential election? He’s such a class act.

The Bay State senator was telling a group of business and civic leaders in town at his invitation about the “bizarre’’ tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had “disappeared for four days’’ and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.

“Too bad,’’ Kerry said, “if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin.’’

The Democratic-centric crowd laughed.

Lovely.

The Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday that the health care legislation put up by Senate Democrats would increase the national deficit by $1 trillion over the next 10 years, while still leaving about 30 million — with an “m” — Americans uninsure. The announcement shocked even those who favor such legislation.

But as if that statistic wasn’t horrible enough, Senate sources for the Associated Press report today that the true cost would be about $1.6 trillion.

Senate sources say the latest cost estimates for health care legislation are around $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Two Senate staffers, one Democratic and one Republican, said Congressional Budget Office estimates put the cost of the Finance Committee version of the bill at around $1.6 trillion.

How bad has the heat gotten since then? Uncle Teddy was thrown under the bus by Barack Obama today. Despite working hard to rally support for health care reform measures currently in Congress, the White House says Obama is distancing himself from the bill:

“This is not the Administration’s bill,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement following the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care reform legislation, “and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill.”

Both statements are true, though it’s not clear who, if anyone, had been saying that the legislation drafted by the powerful chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Committee constituted President Obama’s bill. Kennedy is but one of several legislators taking a crack and drafting legislation that will proceed through the legislative meat grinder and result in a bill that President Obama will sign. In reality, there is no actual “Administration” bill.

But wait. It gets worse. Apparently the CBO projection doesn’t include all of the costs in the bill and the Medicaid expansion. What’s the total cost after all of that? Phillip Klein:

For instance, because it was only working with a draft of the bill that had holes in it, the CBO did not estimate the costs associated with increasing Medicaid elgibility to 150 percent of the poverty level, or the full cost of providing subsidies to individuals with incomes at up to 500 percent of the poverty level to purchase insurance through state-run exchanges. Once this is taken into account, liberals are right that the final CBO estimate will reflect more people being insured, but the cost of the legislation will go up as well.

Health Systems Innovations Network, a consulting group, went ahead and estimated the full cost of a bill that included the subsidies and Medicaid expansion, and reduced the number of uninsured by 99 percent. With these assumptions, they estimated (pdf) the cost at a staggering $4 trillion over 10 years, resulting in the shift of 79 million Americans to government-run health care. The report does not include possible tax increases or spending offsets, but notes that, “this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality.

Four. Trillion. Dollars. The entire federal budget for fiscal year 2008 was $2.97 trillion.  We’re talking of an average increase of $400 billion per year…for the next decade. Good Lord.

More: Michelle Malkin.

And this is before his relative silence on the ongoing violence and murder in the streets of Tehran. Hint: He’s “deeply troubled” that Iranian citizens are being beat and murdered by their own government and its sympathizers in the streets. Oh, and he gave a bland statement on Iranians picking their own leader (except that they’re not.) He was tougher on the George Tiller murderer, and in a shorter period of time, too.

But back the poll. How did Americans think Obama would act in relation to Iran? Did they think he was a hawk bent on ending its nuclear program through any means necessary? He talked about how he didn’t view the country’s regime as a big threat, promised to sit down for tea with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, and was reneging on promises to Jewish voters just hours after addressing AIPAC. The man sat in a church that prints the Hamas terror manifesto in its bulletin for twenty years. What were they expecting, John F. Kennedy?

A FOX News poll released Monday finds more than two-thirds of Americans say Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea (69 percent), while some 15 percent think his actions have been “about right” and 3 percent think he has been too tough…

On Iran, the findings are almost identical: 66 percent overall say Obama has not been tough enough, including 57 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents.

Fifty-seven percent of Democrats? Fifty-nine percent of independents? That’s a political nightmare scenario on two major foreign policy issues. One expects to lose the support of your opponents, but your own party? That’s just pathetic.

A little insight into how the Obama Administration views those who would get in the way of its agenda.

You’ll recall that Thomas Lauria, representing a host of shareholders in Chrysler, alleged that the administration attempted to intimidate them into giving up their rights by threatening to destroy them via the White House Press Corps. Well, apparently members of Congress decided to look into the claim and in the process came across e-mail exchanges between the auto task force and an analyst.

In the video below, Rep, Steven LaTourette (R-OH) reads from some of the emails, including one where the task force refers to Lauria as a “terrorist”.

Wow. As LaTourette points out, Lauria was representing a teacher’s pension fund in Illinois. The teachers thought it was a safe investment because they were secured creditors, meaning they have a legal right to be first in line for payback during a bankruptcy. Lauria apparently had the nerve to demand that the U.S. government follows contract law, and that earns him being referred to as a “terrorist”? Your government at work.