ARLEN SPECTER

Sinema looked set to face an arduous primary if she sought reelection as a Democrat, so the move makes some sense for her personally. But what about the political impact more broadly?

The nine justices of the Supreme Court made clear in their landmark ruling Friday whether they stand on abortion.

In one form or another, every Supreme Court nominee is asked during Senate hearings about his or her views of the landmark abortion rights ruling that has stood for a half century.

The left and abortion-rights supporters have tried to get Supreme Court nominees to label Roe v. Wade a "super precedent." But Jackson stopped short of that.

ObamaCare set up today's filibuster fight

‘If you laid off the Patriots, there’d be a lot of money in Palm Beach,’ former president allegedly told Senator Arlen Specter

The state GOP chair, Lawrence Tabas, promptly emailed state party committee members to tell them he was planning a meeting to discuss the Senate’s action. That meeting — if it happens — is expected to involve a censure resolution, as a wave of county parties have already voted to censure Toomey. AdTabas and the party brass have kept silent this week, as Toomey supporters have begun to push back. A state committee member from Erie County, Jezree Friend, emailed members to try to talk them out of holding a censure vote. He refused to say whether he would vote for Trump until he voted an hour before polls closed, ultimately for Trump.

Toomey had long expressed an interest in running for governor, and he drew calls on a daily basis from people who he said wanted to help him run for governor or for reelection to the Senate. Toomey said he still hopes to become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. With both offices open in 2022, Democrats have a bench of prospects who have won statewide races — Lt. Gov. Republicans, meanwhile, are left without any natural heir or obvious front-runner for either governor or U.S. Senate. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Toomey has said he still hopes to become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, not the Senate.

2012: Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who embodied a vanishing breed of liberal Republicanism before switching to the Democratic Party at the twilight of his political career, dies at age 82 following a long battle with cancer. Specter died of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at his home in Philadelphia. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980 and represented Pennsylvania for 30 years, longer than anyone in the state's history, before losing in a 2010 primary election. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. Hide Caption