I like the National Jewish Democratic Council's take on this news story better than anyone's:

NJDC welcomes Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party of 2009 is an inclusive party that believes political parties should be big tents. In contrast, the Republican Party of 2009 is a party which believes in circling the wagons into an ever smaller and smaller circle until only the ideologically pure are welcome. Senator Specter has been a Republican since 1966 but he has never been a conservative ideologue. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that he is not ideologically pure enough for the Republican activists of today.

The Republican Party’s continued shift to the right has had negative implications for GOP support in the Jewish community. Despite the fact that in every election cycle conservative Jewish activists claim that Jews are becoming more Republican, the Jewish vote for Republicans at the national level is stuck at about 20%. Moreover, over the last decade there are fewer and fewer Republican Jewish office holders at the national level.
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Making my life far easier in digesting the news :

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

Go read the whole thing.
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Exclusive: Heart's Nancy Wilson responds to McCain campaign's use of 'Barracuda' at Republican convention | Current Affairs, Music, Music Biz | Hollywood Insider | EW.com:

"'Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there.'"
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ANOTHER BLOG POST exclusive to MTV, as it is part of my Street Team 08 duties! This one delves more into one of my favorite paradigms, Symbol and Essence.

Words that came to me while thinking on our many forms of warring with the Other.

Crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican, Jesus' General, and OpEdNews.

YOUR FAITHFUL OREGON representative for the MTV Street Team '08 (ahem, yours truly) is invisible on this day, because Oregon doesn't exist when it comes to Super Tuesday. But my Street Team peeps are LIVE on the scene in each Super Tuesday state.
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DEAR MISTER ROMNEY, I really appreciate your steadfast commitment to your faith. I've heard people choose these types of ideologies because it grounds a person in morality and integrity and human values. And of course I can admire that. With all the hate- and fear-mongering filling the public square today, I welcome men of your caliber.

I only have a small question. Given that a central tenet of Mormonism is that the Indians of the Americas are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, how do you reconcile your current anti-immigrant stance with the fact that Mexicans are descended, too, from these same people? How do your actions fit into the theological framework now that you are the one trying to stop them from wandering?

and furthermore—
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