This, the 2008 election year one marked on the premise of change, new ideas, etc.  Maryland Eighth District Congressman Chris Van Hollen seems unwilling to debate.  

Steve Hudson, a Republican candidate for Maryland's 8th District, kicked off his campaign with praise for the bipartisan efforts of the Speaker and the Majority Leader of the House. Subject: FISA. Target: Representative Chris van Hollen.

There have been a number of diaries by kimw, and most recently by dengre making the case why Florida Congressman John Mica must go. I will often be adding to the many reasons we need John Mica out of power.

This diary isn't about that, or even about all the reasons I decided to run for US Congress myself.

Instead, I want to share with my supporters, and anyone else reading this diary, one issue that's really got me fired up right now. An issue that's been a cornerstone of my campaign all along, and an issue that's about to get some major national attention today: Single-Payer National Health Insurance, also referred to as an improved and expanded Medicare for All health care system.

See how my authenticity in supporting Single-payer National Health Insurance ( HR 676) was clear, long before I decided to run for US Congress.

While celebrating Fathers Day this Sunday, please take time to remember all of the fathers who won’t be able to spend time with their families. They are the fathers who are deployed in Iraq. Some haven’t seen their children for months or more. Some have children whom they’ve only seen via photos.

Florida needs help in many ways. We have a legislature that wants to destroy education. They don't believe in evolution, sex education and they are even suspect on that whole math thing.

Our Govenor, George Hamilton, er.. Charlie Crist, who attacked his opponent by portraying him as an empty chair, is never here. He is on tv and the campaign trail telling people how wonderful it is here and waiting to get the nod from John McCain, so that he can get a quickie wedding and get on the ticket. But I digress. There is another issue we need to address.

The DCCC has targeted several districts for this year's election. They have not targeted FL-07, John Mica's district. Since the Democratic Party is winning all special elections, why not target an important district like ours? The I-4 corridor is especially important in the Presidential election, as we all are TOO familiar with! (Did someone say "16,000 votes for Gore just disappeared."?

Why John Mica needs to go.

This is a pretty striking indication that the race is really in its last phase.  When the sitting DCCC Chairman, whose certainly impartial as they come, gives such a strong statement about Unity, Unity can't be far behind.  And I think besides this, he really hits the nail on the Head.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of House Democrats' campaign arm, said Tuesday that if Hillary Rodham Clinton comes up short in her bid for the party's presidential nomination, she must do more than just "give lip service" in support of Barack Obama in the general election.

"She's going to have to get in there and work hard, tell her supporters how important it is, how high the stakes are here," Van Hollen said.

Don't forget to Donate to the DCCC

I'm shocked. Depressed. The second week of February, Congresswoman Darlene Hooley announces she will not seen reelection. It has now been two months. It took four weeks after that for Kurt Schroeder to enter the race. He was quickly followed by Steve Marks.

The Oregonian today reported this disappointing news:

The race to replace retiring Rep. Darlene Hooley, a Democrat, in the U.S. House of Representatives also is attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Republicans Mike Erickson of Lake Oswego and Kevin Mannix of Salem have collected the most. Erickson... raised $118,157 in the first quarter, not counting an additional $340,000 he lent to the campaign. Mannix... raised $109,445.

Democrats trying for Hooley's 5th District seat have raised far less money. Steve Marks... has raised $26,783 this year. That's similar to the $26,245 donated to Kurt Schrader...

(Disclosure: I removed reference to candidates' professions)

The fact that the media is able to continue covering and repeating Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz's excuses rationale for not performing her duties as a member of the Red-to-Blue program, is absolutely frustrating. It is not the message I enjoy reading seeing in the media in Florida (especially in Florida) or anywhere else. It is not as frustrating as seeing our Democratic candidates in Florida having to put up with lukewarm assistance from our establishment Democratic leaders, but it is frustrating nonetheless.

2008 needs an all-hands-on-deck effort and GOP enabling is an inexcusable act by anyone, most of all a member of the DCCC's Red to Blue team. I rarely contact members of Congress outside of my own state, but the composition of the United States Congress is a national issue affecting all of us regardless of where we live.

Dear Congresswoman Schultz, please throw your three GOP colleagues overboard and go below to read my correspondence to your Democratic colleague, Congressman Van Hollen . .

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D?) has been busy kneecapping some of our best challengers this cycle. Amazingly, she is part of the DCCC leadership  - she's currently co-chair of the Red to Blue program, which is tasked with helping our most promising challengers. But this isn't the first time we've seen something like this. From Naftali Bendavid's The Thumpin' (p. 78-79):

"I've got hundreds of examples of members screwing us. I've got members telling our challengers, 'I won't help you to challenge that X Republican.'" Emanuel continued, "I did say to one colleague once, 'You have an interesting concept of the word team. But when they come after you, I'll remind you of what you said to me. Because they will come after you.' I can give you chapter and verse of people acting like knuckleheads."

In one example, Congressman Adam Schiff of California, who served on the DCCC's recruitment committee, declined to recruit a challenger to a California Republican congressman. Schiff explained that he was seen as a bipartisan type and wanted to keep it that way. "I thought Rahm was going to strangle him," said the staffer who recounted the story. "I'm sure you've seen that look before." (Emphasis added.)

It's pretty stunning to me that anyone who would take on a leadership role in the DCCC would be so willing to undermine the cause. Yet where we had Adam Schiff dragging his feet last cycle, we now have Debbie Wasserman Schultz doing the same - if not worse - this time out.

This job is not for the faint of heart. Rahm Emanuel knew that. As Larry Sabato said of Rahm in The Thumpin', "You need someone whose favorite word is not a or the but fuck." In other words, we needed a hardass - and we got one, and we won. Rahm did not tolerate sandbagging, whether from Adam Schiff or Alcee Hastings or anyone else.

And we need Chris Van Hollen, the current DCCC chair, to have the same zero-tolerance policy. We know that he has a very different approach from Rahm, but being a hardass isn't about cursing, or withering glares, or high-decibel rants. It's about not accepting bullshit from people who want to call themselves your fellow Democrats, whether backbenchers or leaders.

By whatever methods he chooses, Van Hollen needs to make Debbie Wasserman Schultz fall in line. If we want to expand our majorities this fall, we can't have party leaders holding us back. Health insurance, stem cell research, global warming, the war in Iraq - these are all issues which Democrats are champing at the bit to address. Surely Chris Van Hollen can't let Debbie's personal friendships with the likes of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen stand in the way.

Chris Van Hollen (MD-08) is the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I just phoned his office to leave the following message with one of his aides:

"If the House grants retroactive immunity to phone companies, at the Bush administration's request, I will be unable to donate any money to the Campaign Committee this year."

I figure one way to get across the idea that we're serious about this as an issue is to actually threaten what matters to them: their campaign funds. Threatening the DCCC specifically indicates that we're holding not just the Bush Dogs responsible but also the leadership for letting it get this far. If you think this is a good idea, give Van Hollen's office a call yourself: (202) 225-5341.

So yesterday I joined in a conference call that was billed as a strategy call for the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hosted by Chairman Chris Van Hollen.  It was an interesting idea, but there were over 500 people on the call, so they could only get to a select amount of callers, and I had some suspicions they were playing it safe by taking calls that were going to be non-confrontational.

I had planned to talk about the FISA vote the day before, and whether they planned to encourage the Democrats in the Senate to show the same gumption that the House Dems showed by refusing to back down on the telco amnesty issue.  I was so thrilled that FINALLY they did what we elected them to do, and really took a stand.

It appears that at this point the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) plans on ignoring Steve Sarvi's run against John Kline in the MN-02 race.  Unfortunately, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Chair of the DCCC, is short-sighted and unimaginative.  The lefty blogosphere and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have a 50-state strategy in which they want to challenge every single Republican with quality candidates.  We'll have to help out Sarvi and force Van Hollen to reconsider.

Donate to Steve Sarvi

We must make sure the Democrats' Iraq funding sellout is their last.

So far 6,389 Democrats have joined our Democratic Donor Strike against the DSCC and the DCCC. Please join us:

http://www.democrats.com/...

We will contribute only to individual candidates who firmly support the values of the Democratic Party and the American people, as certified by BlueAmerica (http://www.actblue.com/page/bluemajority) and Progressive Challenge 2008 (http://www.progressive2008.org/index.html)

At first I hesitated to write about this, but then thought perhaps I should put it out in case someone can either confirm or knock down something I heard yesterday.   My source is a person with a personal connection with Gov. Martin O'Malley.   The person asked me if I had heard anything about Sen. Barbara Milkusko possibly stepping down from the Senate with health problems, and siad this was based on a recent conversation with the Governorl   S/he (the source) then began speculating on possible replacements that O'Malley could appoint.

I have seen nothing in local press (Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, or smaller papers) that would confirm this, but I am not alone in haing noted that Mikulski has not been as visible in recent months as she has been in the past.

More below.

Finally! After more capitualation from the Dems on the Moveon Ad "controversy" in the form of a "sense of senate" resolution, Rush Limbaugh hands them an opening with another of his ridiculous statements. And it looks like the Dems are gonna fire back.

If the drunken pro-Iraq war ravings of Christoper Hitchens irk you, I have a suggestion on how to get some payback on the only  known surviving Trotskyite basher of Mother Teresa.

Tonight six members of the Democratic House leadership (Reps Hoyer, Emanuel, Van Hollen, Davis, Mollohan, and Rahall) are hosting a fundraiser (event info) for the candidate they have personally recruited to flip WV-02 from Red to Blue: WV State Senator John Unger (ungerforconress.org)

Why will this drive a pill up Hitch's wazoo? Not only is John Unger an anti-war progressive with a real shot at winning this historically Democratic district; as a college student Unger spent a year working for Mother Teresa.

I kid you not! Check out the picture at start of main body of text.

Annoy Hitch! Donate here (actblue link) then read on for more info on Unger's great takeover opportunity.

House Republican leader John Boehner thinks 4,000 dead and 30,000 wounded is "a small price" to pay for whatever it is we're doing in Iraq. Today, Democrats are hitting back hard. The latest is DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen:

To belittle the sacrifice of more than 30,000 brave Americans killed or injured in Iraq as a ‘small price’ is reprehensible. Clearly, Minority Leader John Boehner will say anything to justify George Bush’s stay the course approach, but this damaging rhetoric has no place in the debate about the new direction needed in Iraq. Minority Leader Boehner owes our military and their families an apology for his hurtful comments that minimize their tragic loss.

I see campaign ads in the future.

A recent article in Rolling Stone (link) added new infuriating information to a theme already advanced by Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale.  The article stopped short of telling us something that Greenwald concluded: Cheney is behind most if not all of the war profiteering.  Even before Greenwald advanced this theme, Jane Mayer, who recently exposed a network of secret CIA prisons (link) had written in the New Yorker about  Cheney’s background and history and had one quote that seems to sum it all up: ‘One businessman with close ties to the Bush Administration told me, "Anything that has to do with Iraq policy, Cheney’s the man to see. He’s running it, the way that L.B.J. ran the space program." ’