Progressive New York City Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08) introduced the "Respect for Marriage Act," in the House today.

If you've been following the news, you'll know that the insurance industry, aided by Republicans, has been orchestrating protestors at health care forums all across the country. In addition to ripping up posters of Rosa Parks, these protestors have been spreading fear and lies about the health care reform and Oregon is no exception.

Here's a nifty little site that calculates how progressive each member of Congress voted overall and in terms of particular issues:

ProgressivePunch is a non-partisan searchable database of Congressional voting records from a Progressive perspective. But we're convinced it's extremely useful irrespective of anyone's political positions. We show the performance of members within 160 different issue categories, and detailed vote descriptions, thereby empowering you to zero in on what matters to you.

The scorecard gives a lot of details, including the breakdown between "crucial" and "overall" votes, as well as votes by lifetime and in the current session. They also include the states general political tilt and a good breakdown of how they came up with their scores. The reason this list is so important is because we need to identify who are the true movement progressives so we can promote them as our leading voices. Let's make sure we turn to them as our spokespeople on key issues. Let's make sure that the ones who score highly are featured on the networks and in the media. Let's support them financially when we can. (Note: From a quick and completely unscientific glance, it seems like it's a lot of the moderates and conservatives who I tend to see on the TV.) Anyway, go check out where you Congresscritter is ranked. In terms of AAPI's, here are the lifetime scores of our two AAPI Senators on crucial and overall votes: 23 Akaka, Daniel (D-HI) 87.48 91.98 45 Inouye, Daniel (D-HI) 75.45 85.63 To check out our House members, join us on the other side: