Yesterday, Congressman Lloyd Doggett held a breakfast fundraiser to benefit his own re-election campaign. The location of the fundraiser was 138 D Street SE in Washington D.C.

That’s the Washington D.C. home of Congressman Doggett. But then, Doggett represents the 25th congressional district of Texas, and is legally required to reside in that district.

So, which place is Doggett’s real home? For yesterday’s breakfast fundraiser, Doggett requested that political action committees send people carrying checks for $2,000 each. that suggests to me that Doggett has become a real Washington D.C. native.

Two Democratic voices, speaking about the leak of a huge number of documents, showing profound corruption in the Afghanistan war:

Barack Obama: “I’m concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations.”

Dennis Kucinich: “We can no longer look the other way, or pretend that the war is something that is it not. Occupying Afghanistan does not help further the freedom of the Afghan people. It is not the leak of documents that endangers the lives of American troops and our allies, it is the belief that occupying Afghanistan will make us safer. Congress must say no to war funding, bring our troops home, and invest in the American recovery.”

Should we have worked to elect Dennis Kucinich President in 2008? Should we work to encourage him to challenge Barack Obama in 2012?

President Barack Obama made a speech today — July 24, 2010 — to the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. A video of that speech (with a recorded intercession by Rachel Maddow) has helpfully been made available by Netroots Nation but apparently without a transcript, and the White House has not (yet) posted either video or text of President Obama’s remarks on the whitehouse.gov website. To get President Obama’s appeal on the record for discussion, here’s a transcription of the remarks by Obama and Maddow:

President Barack Obama: I’m grateful for the chance to talk with all of you, because we meet at a difficult moment for America. Over the last 18 months we’ve been working to put our country back on the right path, to dig our way out of this recession, and begin building an economy that makes America more competitive and our middle class more secure. And while we’ve got a long way to go, I’m confident that America is once again moving forward.

Still, change has not come fast enough for too many Americans. I know that. It hasn’t come fast enough for me either. And I know it hasn’t come fast enough for many of you who fought so hard during the election. The fact is, it took years to get here. It’ll take time to get us out. We’ve known that since the beginning of our campaign. But I hope you take a moment to consider all we’ve accomplished so far.

[Rachel Maddow, recorded narration:

"Turns out that a lot of things that have happened in the last two years of this administration are the biggest or first or most important in generations:

• Wall Street reform agreement
• Health reform
• The stimulus bill. It didn't just throw a lasso around our entire economy and yank it back from the brink; it also pumped about a $100,000,000,000 into the crumbling embarrassment of our national infrastructure and transportation system
• Tax incentives for renewable and clean energy
• Unheralded but giant investment in science and tech
• Also expanded state kids' health insurance to cover another 4 million kids.
• The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
• A nuclear arms deal with Russia that would reduce both countries' arsenals by a third. An international way forward on that radical left-wing proposition of Ronald Reagan: a world without nuclear weapons.
• The Hate Crimes prevention act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act
• Dismantled the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service
• Overhauled the astonishing stupidity of the student loan system

The last any president did this much in office, booze was illegal. If you believe in policy, if you believe in government that addresses problems, cheers to that."]

Barack Obama: So in ways large and small, we’ve begun to deliver on the change we’ve fought so hard for. But we’re not done. We’re working to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. We’re working to close Guantanamo in a responsible way. And thanks to the heroism of our troops, we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq by the end of August, completing a drawdown of more than 90,000 troops since I took office.

We’re moving America forward, and when we’ve come this far, we can’t afford to slide backward. And that’s the choice America faces this November. Between going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess, and moving forward with policies that are leading us out.

I don’t need to tell you that. What I’m asking you is to keep making your voices heard. To keep holding me accountable. To keep up the fight. Change is hard, but if we’ve learned anything these past 18 months, it’s that change is possible. It’s possible when folks like you remember that fundamental truth of our democracy: that change doesn’t come from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. It comes from the netroots, the grassroots, from every American who loves their country and believes they can make a difference.

We’ve done it before. We can do it again. Let’s finish what we’ve started. Thanks so much.

If you consider yourself a progressive American, Barack Obama is speaking to you. What’s your reaction?

Global temperature this year is the hottest ever recorded. The United States is suffering its worst oil spill ever. Still, the Democratic Party, which controls the White House and both houses of Congress, can’t summon the wherewithal to create law to deal with the climate and energy crisis.

Barack Obama hasn’t done much of anything to push for the legislation’s passage. Democrats in both houses of Congress have spent the last year and a half breaking promises, crafting bills that would do more to channel public money to oil and coal companies than to create energy reform.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now says that he’ll stop working on climate legislation, and just pass a little bill that might tweak liability caps for offshore drilling… unless the Republicans object too much, of course, in which case Reid will abandon that effort too.

Reid says that he isn’t really giving up completely on the effort to pass climate legislation. He says he’ll try again, with a completely new bill in the autumn… two months before Election Day… as he focuses on his campaign to keep his job.

Rumors are that, while the new bill won’t have a carbon tax, or cap-and-trade provisions, or anything else to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are actually causing global warming, it might include a half-million grant program to provide Americans with parasols that they could use to protect themselves from the hot sun as they walk from their front doors to their sport utility vehicles… or… not.

Republicans are poised to make significant gains in both houses of Congress this November. That makes this year the last chance for climate legislation for probably at least another decade. Our nation has been waiting for climate legislation since the 1980s.

We can’t afford another generation of inaction. The biosphere is cooking. But then, what’s the biosphere, when there are other legislative priorities to take care of?

After all, just yesterday, Congress passed a law which will give the post office at 100 Orndorf Drive in Brighton, Michigan a new name. Isn’t that what voters brought the Democrats into power for in 2008?

Yes we… sigh.

Rhetorically speaking, nobody can match the Republicans for sheer frequency in utterance of the words America, American, Americish, Americanicity and just plain ‘merica. Republican Party politicians publicly obsess over who is and who isn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin.

But this is talk. When it comes to action on America, where do the Republicans stand?

The Buy American Caucus in the House of Representatives and H.R. 4553, the Buy American Act, have been created to promote a policy by which the United States government would buy products made in the USA when possible in order to promote American industry and preserve American jobs.

These are the cosponsors of the Buy American Act:

Rep. Christopher Murphy (D-CT, District 5) — principal sponsor
Rep. Christopher Carney (D-PA, District 10)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT, District 3)
Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA, District 51)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC, District 3)
Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI, District 8 )
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL, District 3)
Rep. Dan Maffei (D-NY, District 25)
Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL, District 16)
Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME, District 2)
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA, District 8 )
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA, District 38)
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV, District 3)
Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI, District 7)
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI, District 1)
Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH, District 13)
Rep. Charles Wilson (D-OH, District 6)

Two Republicans, sixteen Democrats.

These are the members of the Buy American Caucus:

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK, District 2)
Rep. Christopher Carney (D-PA, District 10)
Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL, District 12)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT, District 3)
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD, District 4)
Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL, District 17)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC, District 3)
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL, District 3)
Rep. Christopher Murphy (D-CT, District 5)
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA, District 8 )
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV, District 3)
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH, District 17)
Rep. Mark Schauer (D-MI, District 7)
Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC, District 11)
Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH, District 13)
Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN, District 1
Rep. Charles Wilson (D-OH, District 6)
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA, District 6)

One Republican, seventeen Democrats.

If the Mellman Group’s recent poll is accurate when it indicates high levels of concern about keeping American manufacturing jobs among Tea Party supporters, then Tea Party organizations may want to think again about the party label of the politicians they support. If you want a government that issues contracts to American manufacturing, you’re more likely to get a politician who supports that goal if you vote “D.”

While most members of the House of Representatives used their summer vacation last week to meet with lobbyists and gather big amounts of money from the corporations and elite financial interests that those lobbyists represent, Representative William Lacy Clay did something with much more significant. Congressman Clay joined the coalition against the expansion of offshore drilling.

Clay signed his name as a co-sponsor of H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act. That legislation, if it becomes law, would ban the federal government from issuing new leases of offshore drilling for any form of mineral wealth, including crude oil and natural gas.

Thank you, Representative Clay, for your commitment to protecting America’s shores from an increased risk of another Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster.

On a website also used to demand that rank-and-file Republicans “must” send out verbatim copies of messages “Now!,” the Republican National Committee names 14 Democratic members of the House as “Pelosi’s Puppets.” These are, purportedly, her “liberal lieutenants,” members of Congress “who take marching orders from their Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.”

Observable reality diverges from the RNC’s claims. The purported source that the Republican Party cites for its claims about how these members vote with Nancy Pelosi does not actually provide that information. For some so-called puppets, the RNC’s website claims its voted-with-Pelosi statistics for the 111th Congress are “based on 1113 votes,” but Nancy Pelosi has only cast 83 votes in the 111th Congress (the Speaker of the House only votes on rare occasions). For another purported puppet, the RNC website declares that its voted-with-Pelosi statistic is “based on 97.4 votes.” There is no such thing as a fractional vote in the U.S. Congress. Congressman Earl Pomeroy and his colleague Christopher Carney are proclaimed by the Republican Party to be 2 of the 14 “Pelosi’s Puppets,” but both are ranked among the 10% most conservative Democrats in the House. If Nancy Pelosi is really their controller, then she can’t be the purveyor of an “ultra-liberal agenda” as the GOP claims elsewhere.

Here’s another question for the Republican Party: if these 14 members of the House really are “Pelosi’s Puppets” “who take marching orders from their Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,” and if Nancy Pelosi is such a flaming liberal, then why are 6 out of the 14 so-called “puppets” actually members of the Congressional Blue Dog Coalition? They are:

Allen Boyd
Chris Carney
Kathy Dahlkemper
Gabrielle Giffords
Earl Pomeroy
John Salazar

The Blue Dogs openly describe themselves as “conservative,” and these 6 Blue Dogs average a net congressional liberal score of only 12.8 out of a possible 100 for their legislative action in the 111th Congress. 4 out of the 6 voted to outlaw insurance coverage for abortion. All 6 voted this year to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

Do these members of Congress sound like ultra-liberal “Pelosi’s Puppets” to you?

The Republican National Committee needs to find a new summer intern.

Indication #97.4 that the Republican National Committee is inventing the statistics behind its “Pelosi’s Puppets” website:

The RNC accuses Rep. Earl Pomeroy (among the 10% most conservative of Democrats in the House) of being one of 14 of “Nancy Pelosi’s Puppets.”

In its documentation for the accusation, the Republican Party asserts that that its claim is:

It’s that last four-tenths of a vote that really pushed Pomeroy over the top.

Yesterday, I started looking into a new Republican National Committee website called “Pelosi’s Puppets.” The website purports to disclose the names of 14 members of the House of Representatives “who take marching orders from their Puppet Master, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.” In a perverse twist, we learned that the very website accusing Democrats of puppetry commands its Republican followers to send out a series of text messages verbatim from a list and sets out the technology for Republican rank-and-file to do so automatically. You know, kind of like puppets. It’s a testimony to either the fortitude or the lassitude of the Republican rank-and-file that to date none of them have actually done so.

Today, we’ll start looking into the substance of the claims made on the “Pelosi’s Puppets” website. By clicking on any of the face’s of the so-called “Pelosi’s Puppets” in the House, you’ll be taken to a web page purporting to dish out details on the nature of that Representative’s puppet-like obedience to Nancy Pelosi’s legislative whims. Take, for example, the “Puppet” page for Representative Thomas Perriello of the 5th Congressional District of Virginia. On that page, the Republican Party asserts that Rep. Perriello “Voted With Nancy Pelosi 89.8% Of The Time.” A sources page for this claim provides the following detail to supposedly back up the claim:

Voted With Nancy Pelosi 89.8% Of The Time. (U.S. Congress Votes Database, Washington Post, Accessed 3/25/10, Based On 1113 Votes)

Two pieces of information in this “sourcing” should give you pause.

First, a check of the Washington Post “Congress Votes” database shows that the database does not provide information on the extent to which a legislator votes with Nancy Pelosi. The Washington Post database provides information on the percentage of the time in which a legislator votes with a majority of other members of his or her party. This is not the same thing.

You should keep in mind that this includes procedural votes such as attendance rolls to open a session, pro-forma party votes such as the election of the Speaker (with one candidate per party), symbolic votes such those honoring Dr. Martin Luther King and congratulating the Navy for naming a ship after Medgar Evers, and functionally insignificant votes such as those naming a Post Office after former House member Jim Kolbe. Many of these votes are overwhelmingly positive that representatives not only end up voting with majorities of their own party, but also with majorities of the opposite party. Taken together, these sorts of votes make up a majority of House votes, and that’s why the Washington Post database reports such a high frequency of “votes with party” actions. On average, as of today, Democratic members of the House vote with their party 92.3% of the time. Rep. Tom Perriello has voted with his party 90.1% of the time, less than average. If one takes voting with one’s party as a sign of “puppetry,” then the data show that Tom Perriello is less of a “puppet” than most of his fellow Democrat.

But of course, the Republican Party website does not measure puppetry according to voting with party. The Republican Party website says that Tom Perriello is one of the 14 puppets of Nancy Pelosi because he “votes with Nancy Pelosi.” The website further declares that Perriello voted with Nancy Pelosi 89.8% of the time (it seems very real with the tenth-place digit, doesn’t it?) and that this figure is “Based On 1113 Votes.” This is the second piece of information that should give you pause. The Speaker of the House does not typically cast a roll-call vote on a measure at all unless the vote margin is expected to be very close. Indeed, a check of two distinct public sources of House roll call data for this 111th Congress (both current as of June 30, 2010) verifies that Nancy Pelosi has only cast 83 roll-call votes in the entire 111th Congress of 2009 and 2010 (71 “yea” votes, 9 “nay” votes, and 3 “present” votes). By simple mathematics, it is not at all possible for Tom Perriello to have voted with Nancy Pelosi 89.8% of the time “Based on 1113 Votes.” It’s simply impossible. It can’t have happened.

Let’s be generous with the Republican Party and assume that, in making their tabulations, the elephants in the room simply tossed out the 1,340 instances in the 111th Congress in which Nancy Pelosi did not cast a vote at all. That leaves 83 roll call votes, a very small and unrepresentative subset, from which to derive a “voted with Nancy Pelosi” percentage. Three of those votes were “present” votes on Nancy Pelosi’s part, and on each of these instances Tom Perriello also voted “present” (these were procedural votes). Do we count these as times in which “Tom Perriello voted with Nancy Pelosi,” even though they were meaningless votes? Even if we do, then Tom Perriello “voted with Nancy Pelosi” only 64 times out of 83 possible times, 77.1% of the time. If we don’t count those three meaningless “present” votes, then Tom Perriello “voted with Nancy Pelosi” only 61 times out of 80 possible times, 76.2% of the time.

Does a member of a political party voting with his party’s leader three out of four times, and against his party leader one of out four times, count as “puppetry,” or as pretty much what you’d expect considering that party members tend to agree with one another? The latter conclusion seems much more reasonable. And regardless of which conclusion you draw from these figures, they are quite a bit lower than the 89.8% claim made by the Republican National Committee.

In conclusion, in making its “puppetry” accusations the Republican National Committee draws up numbers that look like accurate statistics, but that are demonstrably incorrect by a variety of standards, creating the appearance of accuracy by citing sources that don’t actually provide the needed source information.

The “Pelosi’s Puppets” percentages are plainly puckey.

“36 hours. That’s all that’s left before the current fundraising quarter ends at midnight PDT on Wednesday, June 30 – and I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we finish strong,” writes Amalia Stott, the Finance Director for the Boxer for Senate re-election campaign in an email sent out today. She doesn’t need to tell us? No, Ms. Stott, when you ask for our money, you do have to tell us why it’s important that you have that money.

Whenever I hear people asking for donations in a hurry, and those people say that they don’t need to explain why giving the money matters, I take a big step back. When people argue that their reasons or asking for money can remain unstated, that’s exactly the time that those reasons need to be brought out into the open and examined.

Barbara Boxer’s campaign is not alone in this tactic. I just happened to look at the Boxer email. All across America, congressional campaigns are sending out alarmist messages, claiming that there’s a “midnight deadline” when June turns into July.

There is no midnight deadline. On July 1st, you can still make a donation to a congressional campaign, and the congressional campaign can still use it. The only thing that will be different is that the donation will be reported in a different quarter.

The supposed midnight deadline is nothing more than a prestige show. Campaign insiders want to use your dollars as a signal – of how many people they convince to give them money. Kind of circular, isn’t it?

The commoditization of citizen activism is not a pretty thing. If you get one of these messages, no matter who it comes from, I urge you to take a deep breath, stand at arm’s length from your computer, and click “Delete”.

Senator Robert Byrd is dead.

Was he a master of legislative procedure? Yes. Was he a war hawk? Yes. Did he vehemently oppose the war in Iraq? Yes. Was he a bigot? Yes. Did he oppose civil rights legislation? Yes. Did he support civil rights legislation? Yes. Did he deliver thundering speeches in defense of the U.S. Constitution? Yes. Did he oppose constitutional protections for people accused of crimes? Yes.

The career of Robert Byrd is a passing reminder to us that reflexively supporting members of a political party is no way to obtain a particular policy result. Even supporting a particular politician no matter what is likely to lead to inconsistent results — through his life, Byrd was all over the map (except when it came to the delivery of pork, which he diverted almost exclusively to West Virginia). The life of Robert Byrd teaches us that if we want to see a policy enacted, we should support that policy first. We should let our support for parties and politicians be contingent on their actions at a time and not stay consistent over time.

Last week, Congressman Frank Pallone stood before the House of Representatives and gave a speech designed to serve the political needs of the Democratic Party. Pallone stated:

“The gulf coast catastrophe underscores the need for comprehensive energy and climate reform to rein in Big Oil and reduce our reliance on dirty and foreign fuels. For too long under the Bush administration, Big Oil was able to operate with complete disregard for safety; and instead of standing up for the people, businesses and the environment, House Republicans continued to side with Big Oil.

The Democratic-led Congress is moving America in a new direction for energy independence, working to lower costs for consumers, making America more secure, and launching a cleaner, smarter, more cost-effective energy future that creates millions of clean energy jobs and reduces global warming.”

As inspiring as Pallone’s words may be to Democratic partisans, they ignored the legislative reality of the oil spill and climate bills moving through the U.S. Congress. The truth is that Democrats in both houses of Congress are maneuvering to protect the interests of Big Oil, rather than working for effective energy policy change.

Climate legislation currently being promoted in the U.S. Senate, which House Democrats would have to reconcile themselves to in order for any climate legislation to be passed at all, would not reduce the amount of offshore drilling currently taking place along America’s coasts. The Democratic climate bill would expand offshore drilling. That wouldn’t help America confront climate change, and it certainly wouldn’t make our nation safer from the oil industry’s risky adventures out on the Outer Continental Shelf.

In the House, Democrats have failed to move forward with strong legislation to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the few bills that would provide a reasonable degree of protection from a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon calamity is the No New Drilling Act, which would ban new offshore drilling leases. Yet, the House Democratic leadership has withheld its support from the No New Drilling Act. Frank Pallone surely knows this – he wrote the No New Drilling Act himself.

What a shame it is that the congressional Democratic reality does not match the fantasy of activism described in Frank Pallone’s speech.

Democrats disappoint us progressives,
voting in our Congress like regressives,
so we need to refocus,
from the Dems that provoke us,
independent action more impressive.

The Democratic Party has been a poor representative of American liberal values, but is there now sufficient energy among American liberals to support a politically viable alternative? After working hard to elect a Democratic Congress and President, who then turned out to support far too much of the Bush agenda, progressive activists seem sapped.

When electoral politics doesn’t meet our expectations, we can still work for the ideals that we believe in. We can withhold support from the Democratic Party and its elected officials, but support with renewed determination the politically-independent organizations that support our ideals. Or, we can look to our own lives for opportunities to demonstrate, through our individual choices, the values that we see lacking in politicians and partisan organizations.

Did you know that despite its record profits, Exxon Mobil didn’t actually pay any federal income tax last year?

Did you know that Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders introduced a legislative amendment that would have closed tax loopholes for big oil corporations like Exxon Mobil, required oil giants to pay income taxes like the American people do, dedicated $10 billion of the proceeds to retrofitting public structures for energy efficiency and dedicated a further $25 billion to deficit reduction?

Did you know that not one Senate Republican voted for Sanders’ amendment? Well, that goes without saying. But did you know that 21 Senate Democrats the Senate Republicans to vote down Sanders’ amendment?

The following are the 21 Senate Democrats who voted to keep the big oil corporations from paying income tax:

Daniel Akaka (HI)
Max Baucus (MT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Mark Begich (AK)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
John Kerry (MA)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Jon Tester (MT)
Mark Udall (CO)
Tom Udall (NM)
Mark Warner (VA)
James Webb (VA)