Progress Illinois

Democratic Reps. Melissa Bean and Jesse Jackson Jr. both hit the airwaves today, adding their two cents to the ongoing conversation about a proposed Wall Street bailout. While the pair cast diametrical votes on the House floor yesterday -- Bean supported the plan, Jackson rejected it -- they each say they're looking for the same thing in an economic recovery package: A good deal for the average American.

But clearly, the "average Joe" isn't the same guy in Illinois' 2nd and 8th congressional districts.

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This morning, the House passed The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 by a vote of 293-129. Authored by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, it was billed as a bipartisan compromise. The Media Consortium's Brian Beutler writes that while it certainly did garner support from both sides of the aisle, calling it a compromise "is a total farce." Salon's Glenn Greenwald agrees. Mark Agrast at the Center for American Progress has more:

Nevertheless, despite these welcome improvements, the bill fails at the most fundamental level to restore the independent judicial check on executive power that the Bush administration has done so much to undermine. Now, instead of determining whether probable cause exists for the issuance of a surveillance order, the FISA Court will be reduced to reviewing the adequacy of the surveillance procedures established by the Bush administration. Instead of evaluating the sufficiency of the assurances that were given to telecommunications companies to obtain their cooperation, the federal district courts in which the lawsuits against the companies have been filed will be authorized to do little more than determine whether such assurances were in fact provided.

Unfortunately, four members of Illinois' Democratic congressional delegation voted in favor of the measure -- Melissa Bean (8th), Rahm Emanuel (5th), Dan Lipinski (3rd), and Luis Gutierrez (4th).

But praise is in order for Democrats Phil Hare (17th), Jesse Jackson Jr. (2nd), Jan Schakowsky (9th), Danny Davis (7th), Jerry Costello (12th), and newcomer Bill Foster (14th), all of whom voted to ensure the civil liberties of Illinoisans.

Today, The Politico published an interview with 8th District Democratic Rep. Melissa Bean. When asked how long she's known Barack Obama, she offered up these memories:

Bean: For years. He and I were on the campaign trail together because we came to Congress together. In fact, we were the two who “couldn’t win.” But we were both sworn in on the same day, both were elected on the same night. [...]

I remember he used to pull his tie when the press would ignore us. We would be in the back of the room at some event of Chicago, but because we weren’t the favored candidates early on, we couldn’t’ get the time of day.

Politico: He’d pull his tie?

Bean: We would do this Rodney Dangerfield thing, like, “We’re getting no respect. What are we, chopped liver?” And we’d laugh about it in the back of the room.

From "chopped liver" to a crowd of 17,000 on Tuesday night in St. Paul, MN (with an additional 15,000 congregating outside the stadium there). Not too shabby.

Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) is one of the Obama campaign's congressional whips, meaning that she's in charge of counting and coralling those undeclared or wavering superdelegates on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Talking Point Memo's Greg Sargent asked Bean: "How often do super-dels raise concerns about Reverend Wright, or about Hillary's claim that Obama struggles with blue collar whites?" Here's her response:

"I have not heard that as a reservation from anybody. I only heard about Reverend Wright in the context of people saying it made them decide to step forward sooner to declare their support for Senator Obama."

If this is true, than the congressional superdelegates are quite a bit more shrewd than the media has given them credit for. For weeks and weeks, the talking heads have been telling us that the Wright controversy would cause superdelegates to second-guess Obama (while ignoring that his skillful handling of the matter might, to the contrary, encourage them). Media figures have also propped up the flawed narrative -- advanced by the Clinton campaign -- that Obama's relative lack of support among working-class whites in the Democratic primaries spelled doom for his general election prospects.

Well, if Bean's account is accurate, the congressional superdelegates didn't bite. Good for them.

In a post this morning on Illinois GOP Network, conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston really outdid himself: comparing Rep. Melissa Bean to African tyrant Robert Mugabe. To make sure readers don't get lost in the nuance of his vile argument, Huston even says it twice: "US Congressman Melissa Bean is beginning to act like the murdering tyrant, Robert Mugabe."

And what did Bean (or in Huston's words, "Beangabe") do to earn this comparison? Well, she introduced a bill this week to prohibit annoying political robocalls during dinner time. The Daily Herald offers a concise summary of what HR 5747 would accomplish:

- Prohibit such calls between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m.

- Ban more than two calls per day to the same phone number from the same candidate, party or interest group.

- Require the sponsor of the call to be clearly identified at the beginning of the call.

- Require the caller's phone number be displayed on the voter's caller ID system.

Huston posits that if the Founding Fathers were alive today to see Bean's legislation, they might "even have a hankering to tar and feather her as a tyrant. And I can’t say as I’d blame them."

Huston -- or whomever runs Illinois GOP Network -- probably should have checked on HR 5747's co-sponsors before running his inane, offensive diatribe. If they'd done so, they might have noticed that rank-and-file California Republican Rep. John Campbell has also thrown his support behind the bill. Somehow I doubt Campbell's going to get the same treatment anytime soon.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has released its list of targeted congressional races for 2008 and there are six in Illinois:

- IL-6: Incumbent Peter Roskam is one of the DCCC's "Targeted Republicans"

- IL-8: Incumbent Melissa Bean is one of the DCCC's "Frontline Democrats"

- IL-10: Incumbent Mark Kirk is a "Targeted Republican." Meanwhile, challenger Dan Seals is part of the DCCC's "Red to Blue" program.

- IL-11: Democratic candidate and State Sen. Debbie Halvorson is also on the "Red to Blue" list.

- IL-14: Bill Foster, who is filling out the rest of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's term after winning a March 8 special election, is one of the DCCC's "Frontline Democrats"

- IL-18: The DCCC describes this as a "competitive open seat" (current Rep. Ray Lahood is retiring). The Democratic candidate is Colleen Callahan.