Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will endorse Rep. Michael E. Capuano in the Massachusetts Senate special election.

"Whether taking on the CEOs of the financial services industry, supporting marriage equality, or voting against the Iraq War because he didn't believe Bush Administration made the case to take military action, Mike Capuano has a proven record of standing up for progressive values and what he believes is right. I am proud to endorse Mike Capuano for U.S. Senate," Pelosi said in a statement. The formal endorsement will come Friday in Boston, Mass.

Capuano, the only member of Congress in the race, has already received the endorsements of five out of the nine other members of the all-Democrat Massachusetts House delegation. Kitty Dukakis, wife of former governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, also voiced her support for Capuano earlier this week.

However, the six-term Boston-area congressman continues to trail well behind frontrunner Martha Coakley, the state attorney general, according to a new Suffolk University poll.

The anti-tax group Club for Growth released their 2009 "RePork Card" rating House members' efforts to rein in public spending, and by the Club's standards, the Democrats failed miserably.

The one exception: Idaho freshman Rep. Walt Minnick, who along with 21 Republicans earned a perfect 100 percent score from the Club. That means he voted for all 68 amendments proposed in the House to strip out earmarked spending projects, or "pork," from the 12 annual spending bills. The average Democratic score, in contrast, was 3 percent, with a median of zero.

Republicans averaged 57 percent, with a median score of 69 percent.

The next-highest scores for Democrats were Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper with 97 percent and Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama with 61 percent.

The campaign arm of Republicans in the U.S. House is using this week's legislative recess to criticize some Democrats who backed a climate change bill the House narrowly passed last week.

The National Republican Congressional Committee's advertising campaign consists mainly of low-cost radio advertisements and telephone calls against 14 Democrats, most of them from conservative-leaning districts, who helped provide the winning 219-212 margin in the June 26 vote. Eight Republicans also backed the climate change bill, which most Republicans described as a massive "national energy tax" on consumers.

A top target of the NRCC campaign is first-term Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello, who broke with most politically vulnerable Democratic freshmen in backing the bill. The NRCC is airing a television ad in Perriello's south-central Virginia district that urges viewers to "tell him he was wrong to vote for the [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi energy tax."

Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt announced Monday he is running a statewide campaign commercial in Kansas' U.S. Senate race. The ad puts him up on the air more than a year out from the potentially contentious August 2010 primary race.

The commercial focuses criticism on President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for supporting a stimulus plan that hasn't improved the economy, job losses or home foreclosure rates, the ad argues.

"Todd Tiahrt said the bailouts and stimulus were wrong from the start. Now Tiahrt's fighting to stop it," a voiceover states in the ad.