WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, one of the nation's most durable political figures who was known for his command of constitutional law, died of cancer on Sunday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 82.
Specter was a voice of Republican moderation, but he handed Democrats a supermajority in the Senate by switching parties in 2009. He lost the Democratic primary the next year in an anti-incumbency movement that swept many veteran politicians from office.
As a young Philadelphia prosecutor, he first gained national attention as assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, which investigated the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Specter parlayed the exposure he received on the commission into a political career, first as a combative and outspoken Philadelphia district attorney and then as a five-term U.S. senator.
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"Arlen Specter was always a fighter," President Obama said in a statement Sunday. "From his days stamping out corruption as a prosecutor in Philadelphia to his three decades of service in the Senate, Arlen was fiercely independent - never putting party or ideology ahead of the people he was chosen to serve."
Specter was respected for his well-prepared and persuasive arguments that were rooted in the law rather than in political expediency. He sided with liberals on some divisive issues and with conservatives on others, leaving him with little support on either end of the spectrum.
Specter was one of Congress's leading champions of medical research. Together with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, he helped double the National Institutes of Health budget from 1999 to 2004.
He was a vocal supporter of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which is opposed by many conservatives because it uses excess human embryos from in-vitro fertilization.
Specter also supported abortion rights and was a steady backer of Obama's health-care overhaul agenda.
