Yesterday Arlen Specter was back at his old media home, Fox News, singing a new tune, dancing the Lieberman shuffle, calling the GOP "a party of obstructionism." Well, he's got that right; they are. And until consistent polling showed that a right-wing extremist, Club For Growth head Pat Toomey, would kick his ass from Chester to Erie and from Waynesville to Carbondale in the Republican primary, Specter was very much a part of that obstructionist machine. Staring into the eyes of political mortality, Specter cut a deal with the White House to jump the fence and "become" a Democrat. He made the purely opportunistic switch on April 28. And here he was two weeks later on Meet The Press letting Pennsylvania voters know exactly what kind of a "Democrat" he would be:

Today he was calling his old colleagues obstructionists on the exact same issue for doing precisely what he was doing, although he has also bragged about how he will also vote with Republicans against Employees Free Choice. (The only difference is that he takes even more in thinly-veiled bribes from the Medical-Industrial Complex--$4,266,393, the most of any member of Congress who didn't run for president-- and Big Insurance--$1,058,655-- than most of them do.) Oh... and there's one more difference: Admiral Joe Sestak. Joe Sestak's constant pressure on behalf of working families has pushed Specter away from his unswerving support for his corporate donors. Petrified of being defeated in the Democratic primary, Specter sounds like he's almost a Democrat.

It was in the spring of 2006 that Blue America first started following Admiral Sestak as he sought, successfully, to dislodge another corrupt Republican barnacle obstructing progress in Washington, Curt Weldon. He was one of the first candidates our PAC ever endorsed and we have been immensely impressed by something that has distinguished Rep. Sestak from almost all the other members of Congress we've worked with. He is a critical thinker who seems to relish a debate of ideas. We don't always agree on every single issue but he never gets all brittle and uptight when challenged and he is always eager for input and eager to go through the thought processes that led him to make a decision. If there's one thing I've learned since starting Blue America, it's that no one is buying a member of Congress with an endorsement and no member of Congress will agree with you on every single vote. (Barney Frank once famously said even you wouldn't agree with you on every single vote.) What we do look for is someone with a sterling character who is open-minded, courageous and with inherently progressive sympathies. That's why we've continued to support Joe Sestak and why we asked him to come over to Crooks and Liars today for a live chat. He'll be joining us this afternoon at 3pm (PT), 6pm back in Pennsylvania. And he's bringing along another ole Blue America friend, Ned Lamont.

When I spoke to Rep. Sestak on the phone last week about the health-care debate, he was very forceful. "I'm going to have a very difficult time if I'm asked to vote for a bill that doesn't have a public option," he began. "I support a public option so that individuals are no longer stuck in insurance markets with no choices and no competition to bring down costs... I want to end unfair rationing by insurance company executives, like the small business owner who came into my District office because to complain about not being able to purchase insurance for herself or her employees because she had ovarian cancer ten years ago... As vice-chairman of the small business committee, I understand the need to reduce health care costs for small businesses. Only 62% of all small firms (less than 200 employees) offer health insurance, as compared to 99% of large firms. When they do offer insurance, it costs roughly 18% more than for larger employers."

You can find the rest of Specter's real health care record at DownWithTyranny. Meanwhile, please join us in the comments section below for our chat with Joe Sestak and Ned Lamont. After you've heard them out, if you'd like to sign up as a volunteer or donate to Rep. Sestak's election fund, you can do it on his website.

C&L is honored to have proud progressives Congressman Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, and 2006 Democratic nominee for US Senate from Connecticut Ned Lamont, joining us for a live chat at 3 pm Pacific / 6 pm Eastern. The conversation will be wide-ranging, from health care and the economy to the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections. Ned Lamont endorsed Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate race earlier today.

Everyone is invited; if you haven't registered as a commenter here you will need to do that at this link in order to participate.

Those classy guys in the GOP. Will Bunch:

Some of 55 years after the vicious, Red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy were repudiated by America's better angels, the state GOP is picking up the tattered banner of McCarthyism and running with it -- literally, in fact, with this banner ad (top) on a popular political Web site. In this case, it's hard to say what is more appalling -- equating the sitting president of the United States with the Soviet dictators who slaughtered their political enemies and sent others to brutal gulags, or the cause this ad is promoting: The election of a judge to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The ad was was first noticed on the Pennsylvania blog Gort42 (also h/t downwithtyranny) -- it appears on the top of the website GrassrootsPA, which is the leading state-oriented conservative Web site in Pennsylvania. Last night, the image -- as captured and posted by Gort42 and now here -- and this ad was at top of the site when I first visited there around 10:30; later in the night, the same banner displayed a different message -- about bailouts, healthcare and the stimulus. It's not clear whether the image with the hammer-and-sickle "Obama" was replaced or whether it alternates with the other message.

It's not the first time that the Pennsylvania Republican Party has used extreme rhetoric about Barack Obama. Last fall, when he was the Democratic nominee -- as reported here at Attytood -- the state GOP chairman Robert Gleason issued a press release that called Obama "a terrorist's best friend." This new ad also picks up a theme that gained attention earlier this fall in Kansas City, when an anti-Obama billboard placed on I-70 had the Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem with the message: ""How do you like your change now? Obama Nation. They are coming for you! The Taxpayer. First and Second Amendments are in jeopardy. Live free or Die."

My god, these are the same party who destroyed CDs and sent death threats when the Dixie Chicks said they were embarrassed to be from the same state as GWB and demanded Congress react to MoveOn's ad "Gen. Betray-Us?". But yet they throw around loaded symbols and allusions to some of the most brutal regimes of the last century, and think nothing of it.

I was in my then-doctor's office in Yardley, Pennsylvania, home to several of the pilots and crew members who died in the attacks. None of us knew that at the time, of course. We were just there to see the doctor.

When I walked in for my 9 a.m. appointment, they had the radio on. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center," the receptionist told me. Weird - that's an awfully big building to miss. I assumed it was a small plane, sat down and picked up a magazine. (I think I was there for a sinus infection.)

And as we sat there half-listening, a few minutes later the weirdness replayed itself: Another plane crashed into the other building.

At this point, dread set in and we knew something really, really bad was happening.

I remember the drive home, heading south on I-95. It was completely empty, except for one state trooper I'd passed. I'd never seen that. I remember thinking it looked like the end of the world.

On the ride home, I kept trying to call the people I cared about - not to see that they were physically safe, but as an emotional touchstone. The phone lines were busy everywhere and it was hard to get through. (I remember my then-boyfriend was not all that interested in hearing from me, so something else died that day.)

My grown son was staying with me while he looked for a job and was sleeping on the couch when I came home. I flipped on the TV and it woke him up. We watched as they showed the planes crashing into the building, again and again and again.

"Turn it off," he said after an hour or so. "This is pornography, war pornography. Turn it off."

So I did.

When we have our limbic brain punched over and over again by horrific images, and those images are then used to justify more horror, there is only one solution: Turn off your TV.

My son was right: The 9/11 images were war pornography, something watched over and over as we stroked ourselves into wargasm.

In honor of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, comments are closed to this post. We offer this opportunity for our readers to take a moment of silence in deep respect to those whose lives were lost, both here and in Iraq.

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Joe Sestak says his intentions are to get into a primary race against Arlen Specter pending a final family decision. Sestak says he'll make his formal announcement within a few weeks. TPM had the scoop earlier today. Sounds like Sestak has pretty well confirmed it.

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The pressure is mounting on President Obama's Justice Department to take on the case of Luis Ramirez, the Latino man whose killers were set free by a rural Pennsylvania jury that likely indulged in classic race-based nullification -- and Exhibit A in the debate over why we need a federal bias-crime law.

Yesterday, Latino advocates held a news conference outside the Capitol to make the push:

Joined at a news conference outside of the Capitol by U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., members of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Anti-Defamation League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the federal government should press civil rights charges against Brandon Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19.

... "This trial sends a message that the Department of Justice and our congressional leaders should be very concerned with," said John Amaya, legislative staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "If you are Latino in America, if you are brutally attacked because of your ethnicity, if you died as a result of that brutal beating that is senseless and unjust, there is no justice for you."

The Justice Department has acknowledged it has an open investigation in the case, but has declined to be specific.

Gladys Limón of MALDEF has a piece up at CNN explaining in more detail why the case needs a closer examination -- at least, the sound legal reasons.

But there are larger reasons. As the Editors at The Sanctuary put it, murders like Ramirez's are an essential building block "in the process of establishing a subhuman class":

The third, overarching, shocking reality thrown into sharp relief by the murder of Luis Ramirez is how easily an environment of violently xenophobic rhetoric and targeted hate has normalized a modern-day lynching to the point that it is absorbed and diluted with barely a blip into the everyday news cycle and into public consciousness. How effortlessly a subhuman category of being is constructed and subsequently reviled. How a verdict has been passed on just how to deal with this synthesized Creature, and how effective that virulent messaging has been evidenced in a death like this one and in a pattern that plays out in various towns, cities, and states across the country. Seemingly unconnected cells of hatred hammer the dominant culture's sentence down upon a targeted group, and the system nods and winks when all is done.

The populace nods and winks along with them, too. This is particularly the case in rural areas, where bias crimes are rarely reported, rarely investigated or prosecuted, and even more rarely ever produce a conviction. As you can see in the above news reports, back in Schuykill County, the denial is layered on thickly:

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You don't have to have been from rural Pennsylvania to have been able to predict the outcome of this case:

Some satisfied, others outraged with verdict for immigrant's death

Friends and relatives of two teens accused in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant struggled to contain their relief as not-guilty verdicts were announced on the most serious charges against the former high school football stars Friday.

Gasps filled the courtroom and some had to be restrained by sheriff's deputies as they tried to rush the defense table after Derrick Donchak, 19, and Brandon Piekarsky, 17, were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation for the death of Luis Ramirez.

Piekarsky was also found not guilty of third-degree murder for the death of Ramirez, who died of blunt force injuries after an encounter with the teens last summer.

As Avery Friedman argues persuasively in the video from CNN yesterday, this was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

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From Hardball May 1, 2009. Joe Sestak may buck the establishment and challenge Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

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The Republican Party is now on suicide watch:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."

He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

MSNBC's David Shuster, in the video above, relayed the information that Specter reached the decision because he realized that his vote for the stimulus package had irrevocably breached his relationship with the increasingly wingnutty Republican base, and that he was no longer willing to submit himself to the judgment of that base in the GOP primary. Smart move.

Of course, now that he's a Democrat, don't expect any miracles. Reportedly, he still intends to vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act ...

UPDATE: Here's Specter's statement:

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.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

Back when I was a reporter, I once explained to a (Republican) politician that it was against the state ethics law to use his wife as the township secretary, since the two of them could collude to change the public record. He looked at me, shocked, and said, "If you're not in politics to make money for yourself and your family, why would you bother?" Why, indeed.

Privatizing public facilities gives them one more way to make illegal money:

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) - Two Luzerne County judges are headed for federal prison.

Federal authorities say President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan were involved in a $2.6 million scheme to place juvenile offenders into facilities in which the judges had a financial interest.

Court documents state that in some cases, Ciavarella ordered children into detention even when juvenile probation officers did not recommend it.

The two have agreed to plead guilty to honest services fraud and tax fraud. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in federal prison. They have agreed to step down from the bench.

Awwwww ... and I was so looking forward to covering Sen. Tweety.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews put an end to speculation that he was considering a bid for the U.S. Senate, telling his producers Wednesday that he had decided not to jump into the 2010 race in his home state of Pennsylvania.

In a routine production meeting before his daily show "Hardball," Matthews informed the staff that he was not going to pursue the seat, network spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. The cable host, who is negotiating a new contract at MSNBC, declined to comment.

For the last several months, Matthews toyed with taking on Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. He went so far as to talk to state Democratic power brokers about what it would take to challenge the five-term senator.

Matthews' interest in the seat put MSNBC in an uncomfortable position as reports mounted that he might run. In recent weeks, executives told him that he needed to make up his mind quickly and let them know his plans.

According to this less-than-flattering profile of Matthews in the NY Times, Matthews' contract is up in June and neither side seemed inclined to renew it, despite this report to the contrary. I wonder what changed Tweety's mind. Maybe he realized the kind of coverage he'd be subjecting himself and his family to, the kind he's been doing himself. Ah, sweet irony.