There’s no way of really telling if Sestak is telling the truth here

Umm, what? Why on earth would there be a reason to doubt it? There's not even a plausible motive for him to lie about this. As a retired officer, I can state from personal experience that the idea that one should not become entangled in partisan politics was pretty widespread.

I'm not a Pennsylvania resident and don't particularly have a dog in this fight, but I think that this suggestion that Sestak's registration as an independent was somehow inappropriate is absolutely bizarre. It's fine for Specter to say this kind of thing - that's politics - but Salon shouldn't pile on.

he can say and do what he pleases. That has always been the case.

As a Pennsylvanian, and as a Democrat, I know he is going to have a very tough time of it, even with the support of Casey and Obama.

He will end up spending a boatload of money, and for what?

He should have retired. He had a good run and should have determined the best way to bow out gracefully and leave the field to younger candidates -- yes, I said that -- like Joe Conti, who was the emergent Democratic candidate.

The state party leaders, and the national boys, dropped Joe like a hot potato when Spector decided to become a D. But, this tells us one thing--- the pols believe party loyalty means nothing. Their behavior is shameless and they will not be rewarded for it come November.

I believe Spector stands a strong chance of losing.

Ego of this sort cannot always prevail in a democratic society.

What does he think we are, absolute schmucks?

... he votes for cloture with the Democrats for the first time.

...I still can't believe I seeing it. We are all narcissists now.

As a retired officer, I can state from personal experience that the idea that one should not become entangled in partisan politics was pretty widespread.

As an enlisted veteran and a Democrat, I can state from personal experience that the idea that an officer should not become entangled in partisan politics is pretty widespread ... unless the officer in question is a Republican, in which case it's just peachy.

I don't question Sestak's honesty on this matter, but I do have to question either his judgement or his courage. The officer corps is becoming a rabid right-wing preserve, and officers who follow this ideology are not shy about making it public while those who disagree keep silent. We desperately need officers with different opinions to be willing to speak. If Sestak's personal beliefs are and have always been liberal, moderate, or even sane and rational moderate conservative, he could have done a lot of good by not hiding them when he was in the service.

Not that this has much to do with Specter vs. Sestak, of course, since Specter's pretty clearly an amoral opportunist; whatever Sestak is like, he's probably got more integrity and moral courage than Specter does. But it needed to be pointed out.

So the senator is going to have a tough time running as a Democrat?

Good. That will remind him of the tough time he gave Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearing.

He knew — or should have known — that she was telling the truth. He just didn't want to hear it.

than about party ideology.

Just look at Obama.....expanding Bush's illegal war even further into Afghanistan and Pakistan,

defending the kidnapping, torture, and indefinite imprisonment of any person on the planet,

increasing the faith based initiative that gives our tax revenue to churches,

a joke of a climate bill,

etc.

"Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.

The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years....

Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation."

http://www.americablog.com/2009/07/nasas-chief-climate-scientist-obamas.html

.

When I was an officer in the USAF, I was registered as a Democrat (not much of a surprise there). I didn't think anyone cared. Of course, I was only an O-2.

Be interesting to hear from some more ex-officer salonistas.

There is no prohibition or even any official discouragement from registering under the political party of your choice while on active duty. That said, there is also no particularly compelling reason to register, especially if you intend to register as a Democrat, while on active duty either.

Active duty personnel are prohibited from taking an active (read "campaigning") part in the political process, though this prohibition is not absolute and is enforced to varying degrees.

One reason that one might not want to register as a Democrat while on active duty? How about the preponderance of Republicans that surround you in the military which are part of a party often that uses words like traitor, anti-American and communist/socialist to describe people who are part of other (read "Democratic") parties?

I don't have an issue with Sestak not registering any affiliation in 2006. I do have an issue with the fact that he's yet another Blue Dog Republicrat who would have fit in with the mainstream of the Republican Party in the 1980's. And as for Specter, what was his affiliation in 2006? Yeah...thought so.