Evan Byer News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Harris: the top box, keeping an eye on that the news, friends, family and colleagues remember congressman john murtha at this hour, the pennsylvania democrat died at the age of 77 after complications from gallbladder surgery. >> benjamin nath yahoo in glasco, meeting with prime minister putin. he's pushing for tougher sanctions against iran. the final frontier, space shuttle endeavor, astronauts gearing up for the third and final space walk later today. jon? jon: a stunning development shakes up the u.s. senate and it is still reverberating today, 24 hours after we first found out about t. d...

bill: that's in malibu and up the coast, several hundred miles you have the man who fell in the crater in mount st. helens. we'll wch that throughout the day. "happening now" starts right now. jon: this is "happening now", good morning, i'm jon scott. harris: i'm harris faulkner in for jane skinner. jon: take a look at fox news room where breaking shows are coming in from across the country and around the world, big ones today, the top stories we're following, "happening now" in the top box, the battle for marjah in the heart of the taliban territory in southern afghanistan, u.s. for...

Pronounced. whether or not there are additional reasons, we'll find out at 2:00. but this was a democrat who was finding it difficult to fit with his party on capitol hill in recent weeks. his departure is going to be a body blow for democratic leaders in washington. they've surely been told this was coming in the last 24 hours, clearly they weren't prepared to talk about it themselves on president's day. this is a stunner for democrats and a sign that there's trouble, particularly because evan byer as a centrist from indiana, a very red state, a place where democrats had trouble getting elect...

Frontrunner? >> he had been the senator from indiana before so this is him returning to the field and there was a suggestion that his immediate suck of -- success and name recognition and unpopularity of the democratic agenda made him a real viable contender. there's a dispute over polls. most of the polls have shown that evan bayh, the incumbent, was fairly well ahead and in fact some of the internal polls in the byer reelection campaign such as it was said that they saw -- they saw themselves double digits ahead and more, but every single democrat across the country has to recognize the scot...

Being sold a bill of goods and they want it to stop and that's why you see independents going 62 percent in virginia, to the republicans. 62 percent. in new jersey, to the republicans. and 69 percent in massachusetts to the republicans. i think indiana is more than up for grabs, the filing deadline is this friday, that's going to hurt the democrats severely. jon: let's take a look at one of the quotes that is attributed to the now retiring senator bye this morning, he -- bayh this morning, he says after all these years my passion is indiminished but my desire to do so by serveing in come has w...