Immediately after Specter switches parties, Souter announces his retirement - to
be effective as soon as a replacement is in place. Unfortunately, Specter
switching sides eliminated him as the necessary potential vote to get an iffy
nominee out of committee, and it is, um, "speculated" (in the DC sense - IOW,
Specter's people first "speculated" it...) that if any midstream rule-bending is
attempted by Dems, Specter will vote "no" on principle (or at least to avoid
looking like a complete servile hypocrite, whatever one's leanings suggest to
them).

And as an aside to Ken, guess whose wisdom, fairness, bi-partisanship, good
looks, and all-around gosh-darned-wonderfulness the Dems are praising as a R
who'll vote for the best nominee regardless...? Here's a hint - it's not Phil
Graham...

HTH,
R