Breaking news that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s decision to switch parties means that when Sen. Franken is seated the Democrats will have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. (And make no mistake Franken will be seated, so give it up already Coleman - I mean have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?) Specter, 79, a longtime moderate voice in the party was facing a tough reelection in 2010, and clearly decided to abandon a ship that was on an increasingly conservative course out of the mainstream.

The bigger problem for the GOP is that if a north eastern moderate Republican like Specter is abandoning the party because he feels he can’t get reelected, does this mean that the GOP is really ceding the north east for a generation?

Hello 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority:

From the WaPo:

“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.”

UPDATE: Specter’s full statement below the jump. (more…)

Top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt made a surprisingly ringing endorsement of same-sex marriage in a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans:

It seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence – liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, I believe, gives the argument of same sex marriage proponents its moral force.

I know mine is a minority view among Republicans, and I don’t honestly expect our party will reverse in the very near term its opposition to same sex marriage. Nor do I yet see support for it from a strong majority of the general public. And, I do believe that such a highly charged political question such as this should be settled by the freely expressed will of the people, and not by the courts. That doesn’t relieve advocates of the responsibility to make their case urgently. I understand how tired many Americans are of being admonished to be patient to right what they believe is an injustice. But I’m confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it.

In advance of the Valentine’s Day of environmentalism, I’m going to be conducting a Twitterview with Chip Giller, editor in chief of Grist.org, to talk about the magazine’s “Screw Earth Day” campaign.

You can follow the live action on Twitter starting now. I’m @7im. Chip is @cgiller. The hashtag is #screwearthday.

Bush’s defenders are defending the indefensible.

If he hadn’t been Bush’s speechwriter Marc Thiessen could have ably practiced in Jay Bybee’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, “as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, ‘brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship.” In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can — and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that “Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable.” The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

This is the secret to the program’s success.

The eagle eyes at TPMMuckraker picked up on a detail I missed over in Bybee’s memo: As Long As You Don’t Keep The Guy Awake For More Than 11 Days, It’s Fine

I’m reading through one of the Office of Legal Counsel memos by Jay Bybee, giving the greenlight to torture Abu Zubayda.

News to me: in the finest legalese, Bybee authorized the CIA to throw the guy in a coffin-like-box… with insects.

But the grotesque, lawyerly logic Bybee uses to justify waterboarding is what really gets to me:

Thus, although the subject may experience fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering.”… Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.

Note: This guy is now a 9th Circuit Judge.

UPDATE: The New York Times is reporting that like many examples of grotesque OLC lawyering, this memo was the brainchild of John Yoo, signed by Bybee.