When Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced last year that he was switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party, he said, "My change in party will enable me to get re-elected." But on the eve of Tuesday's Democratic primary in the Keystone State, it is far from certain that it will even help him get renominated.

The federal agencies distributing money under the massive economic stimulus program certainly have some interesting and imaginative ways to create jobs. One of them is to help the state of Massachusetts force retailers who sell cigarettes to display signs with graphic anti-smoking images or pay fines of up to $300.

As a professor of law at the University of Chicago, Elena Kagan wrote that the lack of substantive questions and answers in confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees had made those hearings “a vapid and hollow charade.” As Solicitor General of the United States and nominee for the Supreme Court, she now takes a more benevolent view of the charade.

Could it be that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, is something less than thoroughly committed to the legal doctrine that abortion is an option guaranteed to women by the U.S. Constitution? A memo written by Kagan when she was a policy advisor to President Bill Clinton urged the President to support a compromise ban on partial birth abortions, referred to in news reports simply as "late-term abortions." News of the memo, reported May 10 by the Associated Press, and the dearth of other information about Kagan relating to the issue, has some "pro-choice" activists looking for a clearer picture of how Kagan might rule on efforts to place any limits on the option to abort by whatever procedure is agreed upon by a woman and her physician.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett of Utah has become the first congressional incumbent to be defeated this year. Given that distinct and dubious honor by the delegates at the Utah Republican Convention on Saturday, Bennett would still rather be his party's nominee for U.S. Senate, as he has been for his past three elections.

Evangelist Franklin Graham said the Obama White House was behind the decision to bar him from speaking at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon because of his comments about the Muslim religion. After the 9/11 attacks, Graham called Islam a "very evil and wicked religion." More recently, the Associated Press reported, he has said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins. U.S. Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said on April 22 that Graham's remarks were "not appropriate."

Buoyed by the popular backlash against "ObamaCare" and polls showing strong support for GOP candidates, Republicans in the Granite State promised to "Take Back New Hampshire" Saturday as about 300 delegates gathered at Bow High School, just a few miles south of the state capitol in Concord.

A Republican who became the leader of the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court, 90-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, has announced he will retire at the end of the current term, after more than 34 years on the nation's highest tribunal. Nominated by Republican President Gerald Ford, who said he wanted "the finest legal mind I could find," Stevens was quickly confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0, and was sworn in as Associate Justice on December 19, 1975.

The New Hampshire Sunday News of January 3 of this year ran a front-page feature story on the state’s senior U.S. Senator, Judd Gregg, the “deficit hawk.” But those paying close attention may have a hard time reconciling such a description of the Republican solon after his 17 years thus far in the Senate.

It may be considered a strange case of “Back to the Future,” halfway around the world. Twenty years after the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the apparent demise of Soviet communism, the United States appears to be emulating pre-Bolshevik Russia. Without knowing exactly how or why, America has become the land of the “czars,” men and women appointed by some undefined process, often of dubious legality, literally to rule over various segments and activities of our political, social, and economic life. America has a Science Czar, a School Safety Czar, a Car Czar, and even a Czars Czar.