Lee Rogers

Last night, in her brilliant essay on the political dilemma facing the Republican Party over immigration reform (above), Rachel Maddow never mentioned California GOP congressman Jeff Denham, who represents the 10th congressional district, part for the Central Valley, including Modesto, Manteca and Tracy. The backward-looking Cook Report still claims the district has a PVI of R+1, even though President Obama's 50-48% win over McCain in 2008 grew to a 51-47% win over Romney in 2012.

Last night I interviewed Lee Rogers on KPFK, the Los Angeles Pacifica station. The show will run tomorrow evening. As you probably know, unless this is the first time you've ever read DWT, Rogers is a progressive Democrat running for Congress in the northwest corner of L.A. County-- Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley and Simi Valley.

Lee Rogers, surgeon, progressiveThis morning's NY Times looked at medical doctors in Congress-- although the post is mostly a puff piece about a naive right-wing pediatric neurosurgeon in Oregon who's running against Jeff Merkley.

The DCCC claims they're recruiting "problem solvers" as candidates this cycle. That's a nice phrase with a focus group-tested appeal but, alas, it isn't true. Unlike Steve Israel, however, Alan Grayson has been helping candidates who actually know something.

For the past several years, we've been pointing out how Buck McKeon has a bunch of worthless relatives who work as lobbyists, where they can trade on his name for their personal enrichment. This week Legistorm.com released a list of congressmembers whose direct relatives are also lobbyists-- and McKeon was only the second worst.

At noon today (Pacific Time, so 3pm on the East Coast), Blue America will randomly select 4 "winners" of our Joni Mitchell drawing. It's been a fun little "contest" and we managed to raise around $11,000 for Congress' most essential Member, Alan Grayson, and another $8,000 for California congressional candidate with a similar progressive perspective, Lee Rogers.

Strickland (R) and Khanna (D)-- 2 crooked politiciansLast week 2 of the biggest names among Los Angeles Democratic Party donors told me why they have such antipathy towards Wendy Greuel-- and it has nothing to do with her platform, her policies or even with the fact that she's one of those "ex"-Republicans who now populates the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Nope, each had contributed substantially to her political career-- one massively.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Koch brothers are already pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads meant to demonize Alan Grayson and defeat him in November.

You're probably aware that crooked multimillionaire Darrell Issa (R-CA)-- a car thief, street thug and arsonist-for-profit-- has been working on a plan to abolish the post office on behalf of his allies at for-profit delivery systems at FedEx and UPS.

Boehner and Cantor have a song they want to sing you about jobsThis week, a slightly inebriated Boehner was whining about some hostage crisis he's cooking up-- for the national debut, if I remember correctly-- and demanded the price of not driving the U.S. government into default on the debts Congress had run up would be… job creation. Job creation? Everyone likes job creation, right? Well, no, actually.