I know, I know, but we do need to reward good behavior.

A consortium led by the University of California and Bechtel has won the bid to oversee the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Kevin Lawlor, the press secretary for Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif, confirmed the bid and said that the congresswoman would be making a statement later today.

Back in the day, my great uncle worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs on nuclear research.  After the war he refused to do any more governmental research and instead lectured.  If this research is going to be done, it might as well be in CA.

Lest anybody think that we have forgotten about Ellen Tauscher, how about this little tidbit.  In 2005, Congress passed the “Class Action Fairness Act of 2005”, or as I like to call it “Thank you Big Business for our Awesome 04 Elections, Love the Republicans” Act. Or perhaps Edward Markey (D-MA) put it better:

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called the bill “the final payback to the tobacco industry, to the asbestos industry, to the oil industry, to the chemical industry at the expense of ordinary families who need to be able go to court to protect their loved ones when their health has been compromised.” (WaPo 1/17/05)

So, the best part of this story? Well, of course, you guessed it, Ms. Tauscher (D-Wall StreetCA) voted for this horrendous GOP giveaway to Big Business that hurts the consumer. But, wait, I’m not kidding, it gets better. John Doolittle voted against the bill.  Yes, the very same John Doolittle that had his house raided by the FBI voted for legislation that was described by then Minority Leader Pelosi as:

“When Americans are injured or even killed by Vioxx or Celebrex or discriminated against by Wal-Mart, they may never get their day in court,” Pelosi said. (WaPo 1/17/05)

So, does Ellen Tauscher care less about the American consumer than John Doolittle does? Ouch!  But, Thank you very much Ellen Tauscher.  Corporations over People, how very Not New Democrat of you. Oh, and for more on tort reform, check out tortdeform.com from the Drum Major Institute.

Cross posted from The Progressive Connection

Seems like it’s about time for Ellen Tauscher to check herself into Interfering Politician Rehab. You might have thought that after last year’s Steve Filson debacle in the CA-11 primary, she’d have gotten the message that Democratic voters are perfectly capable of choosing their own candidates. But nooooo, the woman is out of control.

With Guy Houston being termed out of his AD-15 seat, there are presently five Democrats vying to replace him:

• retired airline pilot Steve Filson
• electrician Steve Thomas
• retired entrepreneur Fred Klaske
• small businessman Davies Ononiwu and
• high school principal Chris Van Schaack

So you might look at this group and ask yourself, “Exactly what’s missing from the mix; what more do we need?” And the answer would be — why, it’s the Ellen Tauscher Seal of Approval™. Apparently, Filson has fallen out of favor; I’m guessing that Tauscher feels like he let her down in CA-11, rather than the more obvious alternative: that, just maybe, Democratic voters resent Tauscher’s interference in their elections.

So meet the new, sixth candidate in AD-15, Joan Buchanan. A 17-year member of the school board in San Ramon and generous contributor to Tauscher’s past campaigns, Buchanan appears poised to catapult to front-runner status based on her powerful political connections to Friends of Ellen and her prodigious fundraising potential. Sound eerily familiar?

What is Tauscher thinking? Isn’t there anybody who can stop her before she hurts someone? K-Fed? Anyone?

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

As we approach the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War, we progressive Democrats are becoming increasingly impatient with our elected officials and their reluctance to actively push for troop withdrawal.  Nowhere is this restlessness more apparent than in CA-10, the district represented by Ellen Tauscher.  Even though Democrats have a 12% registration advantage over Republicans and Barbara Boxer received 60% of the vote in 2004 (Kerry got 59%), Tauscher insists that she must pursue a “centrist” course of action to be in sync with her constituents.  So you might wonder what’s going on with those constituents in Tauscher Territory, as she so modestly refers to it. 

Well, today there was a march and rally to protest the Iraq occupation in the heart of Ellen Tauscher’s district, Walnut Creek.  Representatives were present from a local group called Resolution Peace, which bills itself as “A coalition of Democratic Clubs and progressive political organizations with common goals,” one of which is to “Promptly withdraw from Iraq.” Now, mind you, these folks are the members of the local Democratic clubs and the party activists who form the Democratic base in CA-10.  And they were busily handing out flyers and circulating petitions calling on Tauscher to back up her criticism of the Iraq war with action.  Apparently, her constituents have been paying attention to the fact that what Tauscher says and what she does are two very different things.

Check out the flyer for yourself.

So the next time you hear Ellen Tauscher try to claim that her refusal to take a strong stand for ending the war in Iraq is somehow in step with her “moderate” district, don’t fall for that story.  Tauscher has been spouting that line for so long that she’s apparently started to believe her own hpye.  But she’s the only one.  Her district is ready to move forward to end this war.  The only question now is whether Tauscher will move with them or they’ll simply leave her in the dust.

UPDATE: The 2006 GOP nominee was different than the 2004 nominee, who ran this ad. Darcy Linn spent $6716 in 2006, far less than Ketelson did in 2004. Thanks to Josh Richman in the comments. -Brian

Today, Ellen Tauscher said:

But I have a district that’s not a majority Democratic district, and I think that if you look at the last election results, which were just a few months ago, where I got 68 percent of the vote – that’s 110,000 votes – I think that I have a lot of support in my district, and those are the people that I work for, those are the people with whom I think I have a lot of common ground and a lot of support.

She is bragging about winning a race where she spent $830,579 and her opponent spent $6,716? She claims this proves she has a lot of support???

Well for your Friday Night Video, let’s look at the ad from the person who was the 2004 GOP nominee and ran again against her in 2006.

She is actually bragging that she did well against this?

(Josh Richman — who was the first reporter to get Tauscher on record about the netroots hatred of her — gets Tauscher Flack Kevin Lawlor to say that she is only taking a “leave” because she “wouldn’t be a valuable member.” — blogswarm

———
Now cross-posted to dKos and MyDD. – promoted by blogswarm)

I was reading a MyDD post by Chris Bowers on the Blue DOgs, and found myself at their current membership page.  And guess who is not on there? Why, Ms. Ellen Tauscher does not appear on the membership page at all. Funny thing about that…it’s really not very hard to find evidence that she was a Blue Dog in the past.  Examples? Well, try a Google search for “Tauscher Blue Dog, and you’ll find plenty of links, including some to her own site. And, of course, there’s the Internet Archive of the old member list.

Has Ms. Tauscher unceremoniously dumped the Blue Dogs?  As far as I can see, she didn’t issue a press release noting the exit from the hawkish group.  She tried to do it all quiet like, but as she knows from the “The Caress”, the internet has a long memory. It never forgets.

So why would Ellen Tauscher leave the Blue Dogs? Could it be because they enable the President’s disastrous occupation of Iraq.  Why just today, they were trumpeting their success in enabling this disaster of a president:

With Democrats in charge again, the Blue Dogs have played a key role in halting an emerging plan to place strict conditions on war funding. Their revolt helped beat back that proposal, by Pelosi ally John Murtha, D-Pa. Leaders are now considering a watered-down version. (AP 3/7/07)

Wow, that’s some great work.  And as Chris pointed out, 58% of the nation supports such a plan.  Wow! It’s a great thing the Blue Dogs were able to moderate us! Phew, otherwise we would have gone and done something that the people supported.  Heaven forbid!

So, Ms. Tauscher, how do you feel about the Blue Dogs victory? How are you working to get the troops out of Iraq within 120 days (of 6 months ago)? How are you working to answer the questions that this Iraq War mother asked you in December?

Riffing off of today’s WaPo article, Joe Klein wades in with with his own deeply uninformed thoughts:

Atrios makes my point for me. If you want to tell me how you’re going to guarantee a left-wing challenger won’t weaken Tauscher, or perhaps see her replaced by a moderate Republican, I’m all ears.
As for Ezra, I disagree with Tauscher on the estate tax and bankruptcy, but once again–you think a Republican would vote differently? And I very much liked Jane Harman, before she was mau-maued, and wish she were the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee now. Unlike the current Pelosi-selected chairman, she knows the difference between a sunni and shi’ite.

Umm Joe, listen close:

There is virtually NO chance CA-10 is going to elect a Republican. Will. Not. Happen.

As Atrios so ably responds:

But as for the second part, it’s very simple Joe. Ellen Tauscher’s congressional district is not Pennsylvania. John Kerry got 59% of the vote in 2004 in her district (51% in Pennsylvania). It’s a safe Democratic seat, unlikely to go Republican absent scandal or a truly awful candidate. Pennsylvania is a barely blue leaning state which likes moderate Republicans in general, and Arlen Specter specifically.

I think we can go further.

Klein looks at a moderate Dem and thinks “oh my god, if you attack her you’re just gonna get a Republican!” Even beyond citing the 2004 presidential numbers, most of us know from experience that CA-10 is not country friendly to Republicans. The last Republican to represent any part of CA-10 was, to my knowledge, Tauscher’s predecessor, Bill Baker.

The SF Bay Area has been steadily trending Democratic since the 1970s. Beginning in SF, with the end of moderate Republicans like Milton Marks, the movement has spread across the region, Republicans being replaced with Dems. What used to be a fairly competitive region between the parties 30-40 years ago has become solidly and deeply blue. Folks like Pete McCloskey and Tom Campbell, decent Republicans, would likely not get elected today (though either of them would likely be an improvement over Tauscher).

And we know that like the rest of the Bay Area, voters in CA-10 have rejected this present form of Republicanism. The only kind of Republican that could get elected there would be a liberal Republican of the McCloskey mold – and none of them exist any longer.

But in fact we don’t need to look at the history and the trends (though of course those are important).

Instead we just ask simple, logical questions.

If we put up a primary challenger against Tauscher in ’08, it would have to be someone who could speak well to the voters of that district. A Jerry McNerney type – not in terms of race and gender, but politics, someone who is a solid liberal but not by any means an out and out leftist (much as I’d like that) would be our best shot.

So either we get someone like that, or we have Tauscher again. If we get the McNerney type, does anyone truly think CA-10 will choose a Republican over that?

I think the only way CA-10 goes for a Republican is if we nominate someone to Barbara Lee’s left. And since I strongly doubt that will be the case…I think we can conclude Joe Klein is just popping off about subjects he has absolutely zero knowledge about.

Today’s Washington Post has a 2,700 word, above the fold, front-page story examining what is one of the most important debates concerning the future of the Democratic Party. Ground zero is the Bay Area, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the San Francisco Chronicle. In contrast, on the front page of today’s Chron was a story on how daylight savings time is coming in a few weeks.

Despite it being more than two months since the Washington DC press noticed this primary (1, 2, 3), Phil Bronstein’s political team has not printed a single word on the race. There was one blog post, but it was mocked for not following the most basic rules for online publishing by refusing to link to the primary source material that was quoted verbatim.

Sure, today’s story has problems, but at least the Post is paying close enough attention to fly reporters into the Bay Area to cover what the Chronicle is missing.

In 2008, the Bay Area is going to have multiple, exciting primaries that deserve thorough coverage. These are exciting times. With 17 writers able to post on the SFGate Politics Blog and also able to write things for the paper, the Chronicle is well positioned to provide top-notch coverage. Let’s hope they decide to.