Former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has Died from Complications of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma at Age 82

82 year old Arlen Specter, the former US Senator of Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011, has died Sunday at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Arlen Specter: (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) – Rest in Peace

Specter, who announced in late August that he was battling cancer, died at his home in Philadelphia from complications of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, said his son Shanin. Over the years, Arlen Specter had fought two previous bouts with Hodgkin’s disease, overcome a brain tumor and survived cardiac arrest following bypass surgery.

Arlen Specter Wiki:

Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat, but was a Republican from 1965 until switching to the Democratic Party in 2009. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for thirty years in the Senate. Specter was a moderate who staked out a spot in the political center.[2]

Specter was born in Wichita, Kansas to an American mother and a father who immigrated from Russia. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and served with the United States Air Force during the Korean War. Specter later graduated from Yale Law School and opened a law firm with Marvin Katz, who would later become a federal judge. Specter served as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy and helped devise the “single bullet theory.” In 1965, Specter was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia, a position that he would hold until he lost his re-election bid in 1973.

On April 28, 2009, Specter announced that, after 44 years as an elected Republican, he was switching membership to the Democratic Party,[3][4] On May 18, 2010, Specter was defeated in the Democratic primary by Joe Sestak, who then was defeated by current Senator Pat Toomey in the general election. Toomey replaced Specter on January 3, 2011.

UPDATE I: Of course in typical liberal media bias CNN had to make the reference that Sen. Arlen Specter embodied a dying breed of liberal Republicanism before switching to the Democratic Party at the twilight of his political career. You mean a RINO? Hmm, so who embodies conservatism in the Democrat Senate? One, two, three … waiting?