Welcome, Senator Specter!

U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), a one-time Democrat who switched to being a Republican when the Democratic Party wouldn’t back his run for Philadelphia district attorney, appears set to announce a switch back to the Democratic Party. I remember watching Specter’s wife, Joan, at work on the Philadelphia City Council, where she was one of the only Republicans, when I worked in Philadelphia. I supported the campaign of then Pennsylvania Democratic U.S. House member Bob Edgar against Specter in 1986. That year, like most years, Specter faced a powerful conservative Republican challenger in the Republican Party, then had to pivot to face a strong Democratic challenger (in that year, Edgar).

Specter (pictured above in 2004 with now Vice President Biden – then dubbed “the third senator from Pennsylvania” given his pro-PA voting record and residence in Wilmington, Delaware just miles from the Delaware-PA line) was one of three Republicans in the Senate who voted for President Obama’s stimulus package. A 79-year-old cancer survivor, Specter pushed for a got a big increase in the National Institutes of Health’s budget in the stimulus package as one of the prices for his vote.

Already, it was clear that Senator Specter would once again would face a very strong conservative challenger in the 2010 Republican primary. With the switch, Specter will face that challenger in the general election and will not have to turn around and face a Democratic challenger in the general election. President Obama ended up winning Pennsylvania easily, and Specter’s PA colleague in the Senate (Bob Casey Jr.) is a Democrat and the state’s governor (Specter’s successor as Philadelphia district attorney and former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell) is a Democrat.

Once the Minnesota Supreme Court and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty award the Minnesota U.S. Senate seat that was up for grabs in 2008 to comedian Al Franken, who has apparently unseated Democrat-turned Republican and former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, the Democrats will now have the 60-seat filibuster-proof majority that eluded them when Georgia incumbent U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss won that December special runoff election.
Keep in mind that at least two Democratic U.S. senators have been ailing and are not always available for votes.We’ll see what all of this means for bipartisanship. It may that Democrats don’t have to threaten to use the budget reconciliation process to ram President Obama’s health care plan through. On the other hand, this will increase the power in the Senate not of the dwindling number of Republican moderates (of which Coleman and Specter were two) but of Democratic moderates (including Nebraskan Ben Nelson and – now – perhaps Specter) who have balked at plenty of Obama’s ambitious proposals.

P.S. Senator Specter has long served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was one of the thorns in Anita Hill’s side (though he was respectful) when she testified against the confirmation of her former supervisor, now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He chaired the committee when the Republicans were in the Senate majority earlier this decade, but only got that position – even though seniority would have normally given it to him anyway – when he promised conservatives that he wouldn’t interfere with any of then President Bush’s nominations of conservative Republicans as federal court judges.

P.P.S. Another factor in Specter’s decision: The rambunctious PA Democratic Party presidential election between then Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - especially in PA, a state in which primary elections are open only to those registered with the particular party – and then the increasingly popular candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Obama – shifted thousands and thousands of PA voters not only out of the ranks of independent voters and those not registered to vote – but also out of the Republican Party rolls. Now Democrats, these pro-Obama former Republicans would not be available to help Specter defend his seat in a Republican primary.

-- Perry

Catastrophe

I took David’s old box turtle, Greenville, with me up to Minnesota. While I was there, I discovered Twin Cities Reptiles, a great pet store just a mile from where I lived. After Stephanie, Vincent, and Frisco arrived, we bought from Twin Cities a specialty reptile “Critter Cage” – wider and flatter and shorter – and a stand for this and our conventional 30-gallon aquarium terrarium.

Eventually, we got a second (and – for six months – a third – Speedy) turtle, Speckles. For a while, Speckles was in the 30-gallon aquarium terrarium. But Greenville and Speckles seemed to get along (sometimes too well), and gradually they both stayed in the critter cage, on the upper level of the stand. Eventually I broke the old 30-gallon aquarium (which had been home to Sawyer, before he ran away in Tallahassee). Sawyer’s original 10-gallon aquarium has variously played host to our frog , snails, and fish (in Ohio) and here in Kentucky to Speedy and waves of Speckles’ eggs (see “Babies”).

Almost all of the rooms in our current rented house are small, including the family room. Our predecessor here had her TV in a little corner of the living room. But we put a TV on another side of the room and tucked the turtle stand and terrarium in that corner, near the front door and under the window, even though this means they don’t get great natural light and they’re a little bit out of the way.

Sunday night Vincent surprised us by coming home early from his girlfriend’s (last visit in at least a month it turns out) (see “House arrest”) while we were watching a movie. Apparently he swung the front door open really hard, and the door knob cleared the edge of the stand and slammed into the side of the critter cage, breaking and shattering the glass. Vincent apparently cleaned up some of the broken glass. The glass critter cage itself was beyond repair, as the turtles might get out and fall to the ground and the remaining glass shards might cut them.

We were happy that Vincent called us and tried to clean up but unhappy that he was so careless about opening the door. We figured it would cost us $200 plus to replace the critter cage (if we could even find one), on top of the $1,500 we already had to cough up the next day for Vincent’s lawyer. We also recalled ordering the original critter cage from a supplier of Twin Cities reptiles, and we weren’t prepared to drive up to St. Paul.

That night on the Web and after church the next day on the phone and in the car, we found that several local pet stores carry critter cage. We initially could not find one with a short enough top. But over at Pet’s Palace, we found one just like what we had (actually – on order) for $90. The salesperson actually tried to talk us into the more popular one several inches taller, arguing that putting the turtles’ heat lamp/ultraviolet/spectrum lamp so close to them wasn’t good, that the turtles would get too hot. But our turtles just stay under their big piece of tree bark or burrow a lot of the time. They just come out to bask near the lamp, eat, take a bath, or walk around sometimes. They don’t stupidly just sit right under the lamp for hours, frying/baking.

We listened to his arguments, but opted to end up waiting for the shorter cage. We like the shorter cage – the turtles can’t get out even of the shorter cage – because it’s easier to see and handle the turtles with the shorter cage. If we can’t see them and are less likely to pick them up, we’re less likely to stop and say hello and feed them regularly and to take them out for their weekly baths in our bath tub and then their 24 hours walking around the house. We like being able to interact with the turtle, and the shorter cage facilitates that. Stephanie and Vincent will probably go back to Pet’s Palace Thursday when the shorter cage is to arrive to get it. Last night Stephanie and I threw out the old cypress chips and pulled out the tree bark and heat/spectrum light lamp for temporary storage and the water and food receptacles for washing. That’s one good thing about the disaster – We’re de fact cleaning the turtles’ cage, which we haven’t done for a couple of years.

Speckles, the female who’s from further up north (North Carolina near the Virginia line) tries harder to mini-hibernate in the winter. Greenville is more active and eats more in the winter. In the summer, the roles are reversed. Greenville is a more picky eater in general (we think his eyesight is bad), and Speckles eats more and a more varied diet in the summer. In the summer, Speckles is more aggressive with the food, but Greenville, the male, is more aggressive some other ways.

They’ve been in a cardboard box since Tuesday – we hope they’ll adapt to the new habitat OK. At the pet stores we bought some more expensive and for-reptile-companion-animal-designed cypress chips and peet moss for the “bedding” for the habitat.

Happy new home, Greenville and Speckles!

-- Perry