WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arlen Specter, a gruff, independent-minded moderate who spent three decades in the U.S. Senate but was spurned by Pennsylvania voters after switching in 2009 from Republican to Democrat, died on Sunday of cancer, his family said. He was 82.

Specter had announced in August a recurrence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. His son Shanin Specter confirmed his death.

Resilient, smart and aggressive, the former prosecutor frequently riled conservatives and liberals on his way to becoming Pennsylvania's longest-serving U.S. senator. He was elected to five six-year terms starting in 1980. He left the Republican Party because he said it had become too conservative.

Specter steered a moderate course during an era when the two major U.S. political parties became increasingly polarized, and often broke with his party. His sometimes testy demeanor and opportunistic maneuvering earned him monikers like "Snarlin' Arlen" and "Specter the Defector."

In 2009, Specter left the Republican Party after 44 years when he concluded he could not win his party's primary in Pennsylvania in 2010 against a conservative challenger. But his bid for re-election in 2010 ended in failure when he was beaten by a liberal challenger for the Democratic nomination.

Chris Maddaloni / CQ-Roll Call Photos

Former Sen. Arlen Specter prepares to testify at a Senate Judiciary Administrative Oversight and the Courts Subcommittee hearing on "Access to the Court: Televising the Supreme Court."

After President John Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Specter served on the Warren Commission that investigated the shooting, and he helped devise the disputed "single-bullet" theory" that supported the idea of a lone gunman.

During his lengthy Senate career, Specter was crucial in increasing U.S. spending on biomedical research.

Slideshow: Arlen Specter: 1930 - 2012

Tom Williams / Roll Call

The Republican-turned-Democrat, who played a key role in many Supreme Court nominations, was 82.

Launch slideshow

He helped get one conservative, Clarence Thomas, confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in 1991, while torpedoing the Supreme Court nomination of another conservative, Robert Bork, in 1987. He infuriated liberals during the Thomas confirmation hearings with prosecutorial questioning of Anita Hill, a law professor who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment. At one point, Specter accused her of "flat-out perjury."

Specter annoyed fellow Republicans by voting "not proven" on impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton in 1999, helping prevent the Democrat from being ousted from office over his affair with a White House intern.

Specter unsuccessfully sought the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. He had several health scares, undergoing open-heart surgery and surgery for a brain tumor, as well as chemotherapy for two bouts of Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In February 2009, a month after Democratic President Barack Obama took office, he became one of three Republican senators to vote for Obama's economic stimulus bill that Specter said was needed to avert a depression like that of the 1930s.

Specter was reviled by some conservatives for giving Obama an important early political victory. In April 2009, Specter at age 79 abandoned the Republicans - saying his party had moved too far to the right - and was welcomed by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as a Democrat.

Incumbent senators rarely face stiff challenges for their party's nomination for re-election, but Specter barely survived conservative Pat Toomey's challenge in 2004. Pennsylvania Republican primary voters are more conservative than the state's overall electorate, and Specter calculated that he could not win the Republican primary in 2010.

"I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate - not prepared to have that record decided by that jury," Specter said in April 2009 in explaining his defection.

In the 2010 Democratic primary, Specter had the support of the Democratic establishment, including Obama, Pennsylvania's governor and labor unions. But liberal challenger Joe Sestak, a retired Navy admiral and two-term congressman, painted Specter as a political contortionist concerned only about himself.

A Sestak TV ad featured a clip of Specter telling a news interviewer: "My change in party will enable me to be re-elected." Sestak thumped Specter in a May 2010 primary.

"He has been a serious and consequential senator for three decades, yet mostly ungenerous words come to mind: driven, tenacious, arrogant, self-righteous, opportunistic," Congress expert Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution think tank told the New York Times after Specter's defeat.

Specter was born in Kansas in 1930 during the Great Depression. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who owned a junkyard. Specter moved to Philadelphia at age 17 to attend the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1951, then served in the Air Force before attending Yale Law School.

He was a Democrat until age 35, when the Republicans offered their nomination for district attorney of Philadelphia. He served as the city's district attorney from 1966 to 1974.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., arrives on Capitol Hill on Oct. 10 for a hearing on the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The GOP attack dog is not letting go of the Obama Administration's leg.

On Sunday, U.S. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who has spent years investigating the alleged misdeeds of Democrats, accused Team Obama on CBS' Face the Nation of being prioritizing public relations over security at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

"We believe they didn’t want the appearance of needing the security. We want to put real security ahead of the appearance of not needing security,” said Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The criticism was in response to last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, which killed American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

The California Republican said the consulate attack reminded him of President Bush's "mission accomplished moment," referring to the 2003 incident in which Bush announced the end to major combat operations in Iraq underneath a banner behind him that read "Mission Accomplished." The fighting, obviously, did not end following that event. 

Taylor Hill / Getty Images

TV personality Stephen Colbert promotes "America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't" at Barnes & Noble Union Square on October 2, 2012 in New York City.

America just got a glimpse of the real Stephen Colbert. 

The Comedy Central host broke out of character—a rare thing for the funnyman—during an interview with David Gregory on Sunday’s Meet the Press.

Colbert argued rather earnestly that the presidential election matters because there’s a difference between President Obama and Mitt Romney’s governing style. 

 “I’m not Ralph Nader. You know what I mean?," the comedian said. "I don’t think that there’s no difference. There is a difference. I don’t know what the difference is, though."

Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images

Beau Biden has some strong words for Paul Ryan: Lay off my dad, hypocrite.

On Sunday, the Delaware attorney general and son of the vice president dug his claws into his father's opponent at last Thursday's debate. Appearing on Sunday's This Week, the younger Biden dismissed as "outrageous" the Republican claim that the Obama administration doesn't take seriously the security of diplomats around the world.

It's "especially outrageous coming from the congressman, who in his budget proposed to cut diplomat security by $200 to $300 million," he said.

The subject of diplomat security has become a hot-button issue on the campaign trail since the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed in an attack in Benghazi last month. 

Beau Biden, a 41-year-old Iraq War vet, blasted Romney's foreign policy record, pointing out that the former Massachusetts governor once disclosed a meeting with a secretive branch of British intelligence, in addition to casting doubt over London's readiness to host the Olympics. 

Koch Industries, the multi-billion-dollar company owned by conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, sent a mailing to its 50,000 employees earlier this month offering guidance on how to vote in this year's presidential election. The documents were obtained by In These Times magazine and provided to Up w/ Chris before publishing their report.

The packet sent to employees includes a letter, dated October 1st, from Koch Industries president and Chief Operating Officer David Robertson. Robertson writes:

Dear co-worker,

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit. If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences. ... It is essential that we are all informed and educated voters. Our future depends on it.

The packet includes editorials blasting the Obama administration, written by Charles and David Koch for newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. And then there's the flier it includes, containing information on early voting options and voter registration deadlines. The flier contains this passage:

The following candidates in your state are among the candidates who have received support from a Koch company or KOCHPAC, the employee political action committee of Koch companies.

Just beneath that passage, the document lists the Koch brothers' favored candidates for president and vice president: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO -- Speaking in a heavily Democratic area of Ohio Saturday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan attacked how President Barack Obama’s administration is dealing with China.

“The administration had their eighth chance to label China a currency manipulator – it's due in two days – they say they are going to push this deadline off until after the election. That’s eight opportunities to say, ‘you know what, play fair with us, trade with us fairly,’” Ryan told the crowd at Youngstown State University, implying the decision to delay release was political.

Related: Romney, Ryan campaign in Ohio, revel over VP debate

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury announced it would delay putting out a regular report on foreign exchange – including whether to name China a currency manipulator – until after the Nov. 6 election.

Ryan told the crowd in the heavily manufacturing Buckeye State that a Mitt Romney administration would not tolerate China stealing American jobs and property rights -- a topic the VP nominee frequently talks about on the campaign trail.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during the vice presidential debate at Centre College Oct. 11, 2012, in Danville, Ky.

“We are going to stop this kind of cheating from occurring, if people are manipulating our currency, we are going to say that ‘they are manipulating our currency.’ If they are stealing our products, we are going to say ‘stop stealing our products or else you have consequences.’ That’s a big deal. That takes our jobs,” he said.

However, Ryan, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, claimed “two million jobs we’ve lost” because of China just as Romney did in a TV ad “Stand up to China” which FactCheck.org claimed false.

According to the independent fact-checking website, that 2 million jobs lost number “is unrelated to currency manipulation. It is an International Trade Commission estimate of jobs that could be created if China enforced U.S. intellectual property rights.”

Asked about the accuracy of the claim, Ryan’s spokesman, Michael Steel, said “a lost job is a lost job.”

Obama campaign spokesman Danny Kanner wrote in a statement: “Congressman Ryan’s tough rhetoric can’t hide the fact that Mitt Romney will never crack down on China’s cheating – just look at his record. When President Obama stood up to China on behalf of American tire workers, Romney called it ‘decidedly bad for the nation.’”

Campaigning later Saturday afternoon in conservative southeastern Ohio, Romney, too, hammered President Obama for what he said was a failure to get tough on China, implying the administration was making a political consideration in holding off on labeling China as a currency manipulator. 

"Over the past several years, the president’s failed to call China a currency manipulator. He had the occasion on Friday to come out with that official designation," Romney said at a rally in Portsmouth, Ohio. "Do you know what they said? We’re not going to make any determination until after the election. Let me tell you on day one of my administration I will label China a currency manipulator, we gotta get those jobs back and get trade to be fair."

During his 17^th public event in the battleground state of Ohio, Ryan continued hammering home the GOP message on China: “You don’t want to put your country in the position where you have to borrow all this money from another country to pay for your government. This compromises our sovereignty, it compromises our independence, its harming our economy and we need to put a stop to this. It's making – it's a huge problem we need to deal with.”

Following the town hall, Ryan and his family stopped by a local soup kitchen and helped wash dishes.

"We just wanted to come by and say thanks for doing what you're doing. This is what makes society go," Ryan said to volunteers at St. Vincent DePaul Society, run by a Catholic charity.

by Chris Hayes Story of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes

ABC's Martha Raddatz did, I thought, on the whole, a pretty good job moderating Thursday night's vice presidential debate, particularly when asking questions on her area of expertise, foreign policy. But her final question of the night, about the negativity and sordidness of electoral politics, really bothered me.

Here's what she asked: 

I recently spoke to a highly decorated soldier who said that this presidential campaign has left him dismayed. He told me, quote, "the ads are so negative and they are all tearing down each other rather than building up the country." What would you say to that American hero about this campaign? And at the end of the day, are you ever embarrassed by the tone? 

 That soldier, of course, isn't alone: Lots of Americans feel the same way. I've heard the same thing from random voters I've interviewed in every campaign I've covered. And it's a recurring theme among the political press paid to cover politics to bemoan the nastiness and negativity of the thrust and parry of electoral politics. But it's an impulse we should collectively resist, because it contains the kernel of an insidious view of the value of democracy and diplomacy and bureaucracy and the manifold ways that we as human beings channel and resolve conflict in a non-violent fashion.

 The same distaste for the plodding, clunky, at times flat-out ugliness of process in Raddatz's question was also on display in Paul Ryan's repeated attacks on the administration's UN-based diplomacy on Iran.

It's true that the UN can be maddeningly dysfunctional, that the constitution of the security council is an accident of history and that Russia's objections to any and all US proposals can seem to Americans truculent and spiteful, but what, exactly is the alternative? The answer is violence, war, death, bloodshed. 

It’s a work of political fiction, one that ended up including a real-life sit down with then-presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and a hug from Mitt Romney on the evening of the Iowa caucuses.

Jane Edith Wilson, star of  “Janeane From Des Moines,” joined The Last Word Friday to talk about her unique film opening in New York theaters Friday.

The mockumentary follows the fictional character of Janeane Wilson, an avid conservative who goes on the campaign trail in the spring of 2011 in search of a Republican candidate to support. She does this while facing mounting economic, financial, and health difficulties.

“It’s part-fiction, part-reality, just like politics,” Wilson told O’Donnell.

Wilson, with her film crew, is so effective at improvising and deception that a moment she was able to steal with Gov. Romney ended up on the ABC News evening broadcast. She dramatically pleads with Romney to “save the small families of America.” He tells her that he will pray for her, and that people in her situation are among the reasons he’s running for president.

Reports about Wilson and her encounter were also mentioned by the Des Moines Register, Talking Points Memo, and Washington Post.

For O’Donnell, the film’s formula is unusual. "I love this movie, and I don't know what this movie is," he said.

“Borat” is the only artistic precursor. Wilson’s credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm, ER, and Seinfeld, and several TV ads for Tide detergent and Hyundai.

Critics have given the film kudos for refusing “to go the predictable route of ‘punking’ the candidates for easy satire or cheap laughs.”

On Friday’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow hashed out one of the strongest key moments that defined Vice President Biden’s hard-hitting performance over Congressman Paul Ryan. She spoke to MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes about why Biden nailing Ryan’s flagrant hypocrisy on the stimulus was so much more than just a “zinger” or a “gotcha” moment.

Hayes said he believes that what made all the difference was Biden going beyond Ryan’s flip-flopping and actually defending the stimulus: 

“People should read Michael Grunwald’s 'New New Deal,' which I’ve talked about before on air, because he lays out in some ways, what Joe Biden did in overseeing that stimulus spending, it wasn’t some petty, trivial undertaking. It was actually really remarkable. And in fact, they lived up to, despite all the Solyndra demagoguery that has come from Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, they lived up to an incredibly high standard, in terms of the efficiency and prudence, of spending that much money in that period of time. It was, in some ways, a great testament to effective bureaucratic deployment, to government doing what it should do. And that story has remained woefully untold.”

Hayes went on to explain that Ryan’s hypocrisy on the stimulus is part of a much larger misleading Republican trend. In 2002, Ryan made an impassioned plea before the House in favor of George W. Bush’s $700 billion in stimulus package, telling the Journal Times “you have to spend a little to grow a little.” Bush’s plan included an extension of unemployment benefits and millions of checks being mailed directly to people’s homes. Ten years later, Ryan called Obama’s stimulus a "wasteful spending spree."

With that evidence in mind, Hayes cautioned against buying into the idea that Republicans will shrink government.

“What they want to do now, in opposition, is create this ideological vision of smaller government, going after malformed bureaucracy," he said. "When they are in power, they do not do that. And no one should be suckered into thinking that they will.”

With Election Day looming, many folks are taking their politics very seriously. But approaching issues through comedy may actually be more effective in getting a message across – and, it helps take the edge off. On Friday’s Hardball, Chris Matthews spoke to The Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead and Mik Moore from the Jewish Council for Education and Research about the latest ad from their comedy-driven super PAC, Actually.org.

Moore explained how the organization works with comedians and American Bridge to make sure lies don’t go unchecked in politics. Their latest video features Rosie Perez mocking sympathy for Mitt Romney, who joked at a fundraiser in September that he could have had a better shot at winning the presidency if his father had been Latino. 

Perez has strong words for Romney’s policies affecting Latinos and brings the ad home with a message for him: “Being Latino wouldn’t win you the election. But saying jokingly that you wish you were might actually lose it for you.”

Winstead then told Matthews why she may have a better shot at connecting with voters than he does:

“I’ve been doing political satire for almost 30 years now. This is such an elevated time of people who are totally insane, so I think with comics you can hit with some raw language that sometimes is the inner voice that people want to use…I think that comics, they can resonate in a way that other folks can’t or regular ads can’t. So when you say, 'this is insane at this point, people,' we’re allowed to do that in a way that broadcasters aren’t and news men aren’t, and it’s been really effective.”

AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

U.S Army soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment, (1-22) of the 4th Infantry Division, talk onboard their M1 tank in front of a mosque in Tikrit, Iraq.

While recovering from being trounced on foreign policy in a feisty debate performance from Vice President Joe Biden Thursday night, the Romney-Ryan campaign is seizing on soundbites from the night to drive fears of a decreased U.S. military presence.

The Romney campaign is out with a new radio ad for voters in Ohio, attacking President Obama and his right-hand-man Biden for downsizing the nation's military industrial complex.

Biden came out strong in the debate, asserting that the Pentagon—including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta—advocated the cuts. “Look, the military says we need a smaller, leaner Army. We don’t need more M-1 tanks, what we need is more UAVs," Biden said Thursday night, pushing for more unmanned aerial vehicles, a heavily contested strategy known commonly as drone strikes.

The Romney campaign latched onto the latter end of Biden's statement for its new radio ad, playing the soundbite on loop with the vice president's assertion: "we don't need more tanks."

Shakil Adil / AP

Pakistani children pray for the recovery of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai during a candlelight vigil in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday.

While 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai remained in the hospital recovering from a gun shot to the head, fellow school children in Pakistan gathered Friday to offer prayers for her recovery.

Yousafzai was targeted and shot by gunmen Tuesday on a school bus in Pakistan under order of the Taliban because of her outspokenness on education for girls and against the Taliban. She had previously blogged for the BBC on these issues under a pseudonym. Three suspects were arrested.

Radio Free Europe reports:

The prayers in schools and other places across Pakistan on October 12 are in response to a call by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government for people around the nation to express solidarity with Yousafzai.

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf is due to visit Yousafzai on October 12 as the gravely wounded schoolgirl recovers in a military hospital in Rawalpindi.

Prayers were held throughout the country Friday as leaders condemned the attack. A spokesman called Yousafzai's condition "satisfactory," but said the next two days are critical.

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Pakistani Muslims pray for the early recovery of child activist Malala Yousafzai during Friday prayers in Karachi on October 12. Pakistanis at mosques across the country prayed Friday for the recovery of the schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban as doctors said the next two days were critical.

The European Union was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for the 27-nation bloc's history of "advancement of peace and reconciliation," Friday. The award arrives in the midst a crippling debt crisis in the eurozone that has pitted one member country against another as its leaders seek a way out.

The nod to the EU's historic accomplishments—accompanied with a prize worth $1.2 million—is being viewed as a reminder of how the continent rebuilt and rebounded after two devastating world wars while it now works to balance competing visions on how to address economic strains throughout the bloc.