First the happy news:
To replace Senator Jim DeMint, who announced his intention to resign from the Senate and become the leader of the Heritage Foundation, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has appointed Tim Scott, currently one of their state's representatives in the House. He will become the first black Republican senator in over 30 years, and first ever black senator from South Carolina. Because there are four years left in DeMint's term, Scott will serve for two years before facing a special election in 2014, to determine who serves the last two years. Read more at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Yahoo News, Newsmax, the Christian Science Monitor and Time.
Now the sad news:
Senator Daniel Inouye, who had represented the state of Hawaii in the Senate since 1963, becoming the second longest serving senator in U.S. history, died earlier today of a respiratory ailment, at age 88. The son of immigrants from Japan and first Japanese American to serve in Congress when he was elected to the House in 1959, Inouye also won the Medal of Honor in World War II. While fighting in Italy, Inouye destroyed two machine gun nests after being shot in the stomach while leading an assault against the Germans, after which he was again wounded, losing his right arm. Inouye died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The last thing he reportedly said was "Aloha". Hawaii governor Neil Abercrombie will name a successor to serve the remaining two years of Inouye's term. Read more at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, Slate, the New York Daily News and the Hawaii Reporter.
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