This sounds like the right course of action to me:

Senator Arlen Specter, the newly minted Democrat from Pennsylvania, is officially one of the most junior members of the five Senate committees he sits on, even though he’s a million and a half years old and has spent a million of those years as a senator. The Senate voted unanimously to strip him of his 30 years of seniority accumulated as a Republican because, ha, he is not a Republican anymore…

Now he chairs nothing and will be among the last to ask questions in committee hearings. This not only sucks for Specter, but also for his re-election chances, as one of his big aces in the hole with Pennsylvanians was that he was old and powerful enough to secure lots of goodies for his beloved state…

So why would the Democrats be such dicks? Coupla things: Number one, there’s no way of knowing if the people who “guaranteed” Specter continued seniority if he switched sides were actually the people who would later vote on this decision (i.e. Biden vs. Senate Democrats); number two, Specter already pissed off his new colleagues by saying he wouldn’t be “a loyal Democrat” and declaring that Republican Norm Coleman should return to the Senate; and number three, if you were a Senate Democrat sitting on a committee with Specter, would you really want to give up your own seniority so that ol’ Douchey McTurncoat could have a fancier seat at the table?

Well played.