Spare Some Change?

Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter recently made political waves for switching the "R" behind his name to a "D". He did this partly, he said, because he finds himself leaning more to the left of the GOP party line, but also because he was polling miserably behind the previous Democratic candidate for his senate seat. And the crass chicanery just keeps on coming. Lately, Specter has been talking up his new website, Specterforthecure.com. As a cancer survivor, it makes sense that the senator would be interested in raising money for cancer research and hopefully a cure for the disease. He's even introducing a bill which would free up such funding from the federal government. The only problem is that when you click the "Donate Now!" button on Specterforthecure.com, your money isn't going toward, say, finding a cure for cancer. No, it's going straight into Specter's re-election campaign fund. In all fairness, there are words to that effect on the website's front page, but they're tucked into a layout that looks suspiciously like a charity site. The moral of this story? Our political problems in the United States have less to do with how many Democrats or Republicans are in congress and more to do with the fact that our capitol building is overrun by raging sociopaths. More details here.