Requiem For A Heavyweight

It is damning Arlen Specter with faint praise to note that he never was a creature of either the Republican and Democratic fund-raising machines and was, in his own way far more mavericky than John McCain.

While his defeat to Joe Sestak in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary was a result of the anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the land, when the five-term U.S. senator's epitaph is written it will be said that he managed the neat trick of pissing off both parties.

The overall primary results nationally for the Dems were not the train wreck that many a pundit had predicted, while the Republicans got clobbered in the one race of consequence -- a real-live election in PA-12 to replace longtime Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha -- because these dumb bunnies yet again tried to make it a referendum on Obama, Pelosi and Reid while the voters had more local concerns.