IT'S OFFICIAL-- CHARLIE BROWN IS RUNNING AGAIN-- AND SO IS DOOLITTLE!!

Charlie Brown makes it official today: he's running against whoever the Republicans will pick to replace incumbent criminal John Doolittle when he's carted off to prison in handcuffs. Although CA-04 was specifically designed to be a safe haven for a Republican, residents flocked to Charlie's positive message of commonsense hopefulness in such great numbers last year that he came within 3% of beating Doolittle. Doolittle, who was still pulling the wool over the eyes of his constituents about his long record of criminal behavior and corruption, got less than 50% of the vote. Since then, his home was raided by the FBI and a Grand Jury has been questioning his staffers and associates. The latest poll shows that Charlie would beat Doolittle with a 20% margin.

Charlie was one of Blue America's most admired candidates in 2006 and he was one of the first candidates we re-endorsed this year. This year readers of this blog and our pals at Firedoglake and Crooks & Liars have raised over $5,000 so far in 2007. Charlie has been donating 5% of his donations to charities serving local veterans and victims of the recent Angora Fire in Lake Tahoe, something he plans to do for the rest of the campaign.

I spoke with Charlie on the phone yesterday and he is actively hammering out a blueprint for a new approach to political leadership, an approach that is about serving, not self-serving. Charlie's campaign is more a grassroots campaign than a partisan campaign. People of all political stripes like his sincere, commonsense approach, especially to solving the situation in Iraq. He is a national security "hawk" which has opposed Bush's agenda in Iraq. Two days ago Charlie-- himself a 26 year Air Force vet who retired as a Lt. Colonel, picked up his son at the airport, after completing his fourth rotation in Iraq.

Charlie told me his son is worried about the state of American equipment which is so run down that even planes that are being flown in missions have cracks. Both of them are also worried that the political establishment has never been straight forward with the troops about in defining a mission. "The Bush Regime," Charlie told me, "has plans to syphon money out of every pot of military funding to keep the war going rather than for the purposes it was approved for." He says money that was allocated for, example, running schools on bases could easily be used to hire mercenaries from Bush cronies Blackwater.

Charlie thinks Congress has let us down by not challenging Bush on his constitutional deprecations. He'd like to see a congressional court case on his signing statements. "Congress pass laws and the president enforces them-- not changes them with signing statements." His feeling is that Bush's refusal to comply with the intent of the law is nothing short of dishonorable. Unlike Doolittle, Charlie says he would have voted against Bush's FISA legislation that allows his regime to wiretap and eavesdrop on Americans. He says he would vote against any of Bush's supplemental financing bills that didn't include clearly-defined benchmarks.

The best thing that could happen to Charlie is if, by some miracle, he gets to run against Doolittle again. It isn't likely but at least Doolittle says he intends to run. "Rep. John Doolittle defiantly declared Friday that he will not retire from Congress despite increasing Republican concern that if he runs for a 10th term next year, the seat could fall to Democratic challenger Charlie Brown. 'I will not step aside,' Doolittle said in a telephone news conference. 'I am running again. Period.'"

Let's help put a period on Doolittle's disgraceful career over at Blue America.