This just ruined my day.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said Monday he will not be seeking re-election.

“I have no intention of letting up in the fight for my beliefs,” Shadegg said in an e-mail. “I simply believe it is time for me to do so in some other capacity.”

Shadegg, a seven-term Republican, becomes the 29th House Republican in the past 13 months to either leave or decline to seek re-election at the end of this term.

Shadegg, 58, said he believes a Republican will win his seat in November.

He is best known for his unsuccessful challenge to House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., for the top GOP position after Texas Rep. Tom DeLay’s resignation.

“He was a smart, honest and honorable rival during the race to be Republican majority leader in 2006, and has continued to be a valued part of our Republican team since,” Boehner said. “I will be sorry to see him go.”

The Arizona congressman said he is in good health, and raised more than $1 million last year that could be used to defend his seat in the November elections.

“The bottom line is that this is a personal decision between my family and me, about our dreams, goals and ambitions,” Shadegg said. “We have concluded that it is time for me to seek a new challenge in a different venue to advance the cause of freedom.”

AP

Start with headlines like this one:

DeLay Rips McCain for Opposing Medicare Drug Plan

Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, died today at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

Lantos, 80, was the only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in congress, and had served in the US House of Representatives since 1981. He had announced last month that he would not run for reelection this fall after having been diagnosed with cancer.

Born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1928, Lantos became part of the resistance movement against the Nazis despite being only 16 when Hungary was invaded in 1944. Only a quarter of Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust, and Lantos lived largely due to the efforts of Rauol Wallenberg, whose actions closely resembled those of Oskar Schindler, but is less well known because he was murdered by the Soviets shortly after the war ended.

Lantos came to the US in 1947, and earned a PhD from Berkeley in 1953.

If we should remember him for anything, it is this: Tom Lantos loved America. And his long memory of the horrors of the past century gave him a unique view of the raging anti-Americanism that has become so popular throughout much of western Europe in the last several years.

Last June, at the dedication ceremony for the Victims of Communism Memorial, Lantos called out both Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder for their failure to support the United States on the invasion of Iraq:

“[Chirac] should go down to the Normandy beaches. He should see those endless rows of white marble crosses and stars of David representing young Americans who gave their lives for the freedom of France.”

In October, when Dutch parliament members came to Washington to complain to congress about Guantanamo Bay, Lantos reminded them that if not for the United States, they would be a province of Nazi Germany. He also added that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

Lantos himself was an opponent of the Bush administration on the prosecution of the war, on Guantanamo, and on most other issues. But he never balked at an opportunity to defend the United States against those that would denigrate it. He recognized that politics stops at the waters edge. He was a great man, and he will be missed in Washington.

MORE: Michelle Malkin has the statement Lantos issued when he announced his retirement from congress:

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress,” Lantos said in a statement. “I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.”

Rest in peace.

President Bush called Sen. McCain a “true conservative“, highlighting McCain’s fiscal responsibility and pro-life position.  The truth in the statement aside, I can’t help but laugh at such a statement coming from this President.  The President has signed the largest government entitlement program since the Johnson administration, nominated Hariet Miers to the Supreme Court, supported forgiveness of those who have entered the country illegally, and signed an unconstitutional campaign finance reform act.  To be generous, he doesn’t have all that much street cred with conservatives.  If the President wants to help McCain mend fences with the right, he would probably be better served doing so behind the scenes and with select audiences.