Specter Switches Religions to Boost Seniority

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who last week became a Democrat to boost his odds of winning re-election, again shocked the political world when he announced today that he had switched from Judaism to Christianity in hopes of regaining the seniority which the senate stripped from him Tuesday.

The latest switch comes just a day after the senator expressed hope that Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota would win his lingering recount battle against Democrat Al Franken to ensure that the senate would still include a Jewish Republican.

Sen. Specter later retracted the remark, saying he would “never want to be perceived as a traitor to my own party like that.”

Despite previous promises from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would retain his seniority on key committees, yesterday the senate voted to bump Sen. Specter to junior status on four out of five committees.

“Now that I’m last in line,” Sen. Specter said, “I find the words of Jesus the Messiah very encouraging when he says ’some are last who will be first’. When I read that in the gospel of Luke this morning, I felt like the Lord was speaking directly to me. So when Jesus said, ‘come unto me, Arlen‘, I said, ‘Here I am, Lord’.”