Steve Poizner is prepared to hold his fire against Meg Whitman, his opponent for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, until the final month of the primary campaign, according to wavering supporters who were told of the strategy in an appeal for them to stay with him.

In conversations with top officials in the Poizner campaign, his top political backers have been asked to remain patient as Poizner waits until the final weeks of the June 8 primary before he starts pummeling Whitman on the airwaves with an $18 million on-air assault, the backers told the Bay Area News Group. They spoke on condition of anonymity about the sensitive strategy they said was relayed to them. They haven't officially declared their switch to Whitman, but some have brought the strategic intelligence to Whitman's campaign team.
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A negative campaign that late in the game is gambling. Is it over for Poizner now?

In another surprising step forward for the public option, Senator Harry Reid’s office says that if a final decision is made to pass health reform via reconciliation, the Majority Leader would support holding a reconciliation vote on the public option.

With more and more Senators signing on to the letter urging Reid to hold an up or down vote on the public option under reconciliation rules, Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau sends over a statement signaling Reid’s qualified support for the move:

Senator Reid has always and continues to support the public option as a way to drive down costs and create competition. That is why he included the measure in his original health care proposal.

If a decision is made to use reconciliation to advance health care, Senator Reid will work with the White House, the House, and members of his caucus in an effort to craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstacles and secure enough votes.
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Obama is flirting with losing it all

Attorneys for Republican Meg Whitman's gubernatorial campaign have filed a complaint with state election officials against a group of Democrats who launched radio ads this week attacking Whitman.
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Why, of course, big Labor is paying for the ads – gotta have disclosure. And, shckingly they support Jerry Brown
The filing marks the increased gamesmanship between Whitman's campaign and Democrats supporting Jerry Brown as the race for California governor officially gets underway.

The seven-page complaint, filed Thursday with the Fair Political Practices Commission by Whitman attorney Tom Hiltachk, alleges that Level the Playing Field 2010 is violating state election law by not disclosing the name of it major contributors in ads. The complaint calls Level the Playing Field "a labor union front group," and alleges collusion between the committee and Jerry Brown, the likely Democratic candidate for governor.

President Barack Obama is expected to publish his healthcare plan as early as Sunday or Monday, combining features of the two Democratic bills passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, congressional aides and healthcare advocates said on Friday.

The administration's bill will aim to jump-start the stalled healthcare overhaul and comes just days ahead of a planned televised White House summit with congressional Republicans, who are calling on Democrats to scrap the bills and start over with a far less sweeping proposal.

Democrats are struggling to push healthcare legislation over the finish line in the face of sagging public support and solid Republican opposition bolstered by recent election victories in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey.
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If the Dems try to RAM this through, they will lose the House and Senate in November.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog for the first time Thursday explicitly voiced concern that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb, amid signs of fraying relations between the agency's inspectors and authorities in the Islamic Republic.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran last week produced its first batch of 20% enriched uranium, based on scientific data it was given by Iranian officials who plan to use the more highly purified nuclear fuel at a Tehran medical reactor.

The IAEA also said it had not yet resolved questions about documents that suggest Iran was engaged in experiments consistent with a clandestine nuclear program. Iran has called the documents forgeries.

"The information . . . raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," the report said.
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Well, no shit Sherlock – Iran ha been developing a nuclear weapon for years

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina may now be running against a former congressman in the California Senate GOP primary, but she's still the one receiving the active backing of some high-powered Republicans back in Washington.

Fiorina is heading back to D.C. for a Feb. 25 fundraiser hosted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Assistant Minority Leader Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), according to an invitation obtained by CQ-Roll Call. Also on the host committee for the cocktail reception at Johnny's Half Shell are longtime GOP strategist and lobbyist Charlie Black and wife Judy; and leading Washington lobbyists Kirk Blalock, Phil Anderson and Wayne Berman.

A welter of Bay Area lawmakers led by Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, and others from Oregon and Washington state wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein today to urge her to back off her controversial plan to increase water deliveries to farms in the San Joaquin Valley, citing plummeting salmon populations.

"The Feinstein plan will put thousands of families out of work from the fishing industry and local economies of the Pacific Coast," Miller charged. He accused Feinstein of trying to "legislatively override" endangered species protections and "legislate the salmon into extinction."

The Sacramento River's Chinook salmon population has dropped from 750,000 in 2002 to 40,000 last year and North Coast commercial fishing has been shut down for three years.

Bay Area Democrats arrayed against Feinstein are: Napa's Mike Thompson, San Jose's Zoe Lofgren, Marin's Lynn Woolsey, and Walnut Creek's John Garamendi.

Rasmussen
2/16-17/10; 500 likely voters, 4.5% margin of error
Mode: Automated phone
(Rasmussen release)

Indiana

2010 Senate
48% Coats (R). 32% Hill (D)
49% Hostettler (R), 31% Hill (D)
41% Stutzman (R), 33% Hill (D)
46% Coats (R), 32% Ellsworth (D)
46% Hostettler (R), 27% Ellsworth (D)
40% Stutzman (R), 30% Ellsworth (D)

Favorable / Unfavorable
Dan Coats: 54 / 27
Baron Hill: 39 / 35
Marlin Stutzman: 35 / 25
John Hostettler: 48 / 22
Brad Ellsworth: 35 / 29
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Dan Coats should be able to handle any Dem candidates

Fourteen and counting.

Senators Barbara Boxer, Jack Reed and Tom Udall have all now signed the letter pushing for a reconcilation vote on the public option, the group organizing the push confirms, bringing the total of Senators now pushing for the vote to roughly a fourth of the Dem caucus.

That means the number of signatories to the letter, which calls on Harry Reid to allow a vote on the public option under reconcilation rules, has more than tripled in two days.

“Going from 0 to 4 to 14 senators on the record in 2 days?” Adam Green, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, emails. “This is what momentum looks like.”
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Jam it through…….

The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
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Read it all.
CPAC should NOT have allowed a remade JBS to be a co-sponsor.

Since Richard Nixon was president, the Conservative Political Action Conference has provided the American Right with an annual occasion for self-evaluation. On Thursday, when some 10,000 activists gather in Washington for this year’s conference, they will find themselves part of a conservative movement significantly different than it was during the Bush administration, or even in 2009.

A jolt of anti-Obama populist energy has upended the movement’s traditional hierarchy, lifting some new or previously low profile groups to unprecedented heights while leaving traditional powers struggling to adapt.

Seizing on a roiling national security debate, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina on Tuesday called on the Obama administration to try suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

At a news conference at San Francisco International Airport, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO appeared with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has spearheaded a Republican effort to bar terrorism suspects from federal courts, where they generally are afforded more legal rights than before military commissions.

Attorney General Eric Holder had proposed trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the alleged co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks, in federal court in Manhattan.

But President Barack Obama is now looking for another trial venue after facing resistance from New York City officials and Republican critics.

Graham in November proposed a measure to bar federal funding for civilian trials of Sept. 11 terror suspects, but it was shelved by Dems