* Author and political commentator David Horowitz has called Barbara Lee “an anti-American communist who supports America’s enemies and has actively collaborated with them in their war against America.”

* Lee has supported Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s proposal to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace (DOP) in the executive branch of the federal government. Kucinich envisions the DOP dealing with such disparate matters as weapons reduction, nuclear disarmament, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, criminal rehabilitation, violence against animals, gun violence, gang and school violence, hate crimes, and the establishment of a “peace curriculum” in the schools.

* In her youth, Lee was a single, teenage mother who relied on food stamps. During her years in Congress, she has fought to expand food stamp coverage. In April 2008 she introduced legislation to reverse a provision in the 1996 welfare-reform bill that barred ex-convicts from receiving food stamps.

* In April 1998, Lee was a guest speaker at a Berkeley, California event titled “Making Trouble: Building a Radical Youth Movement.” Other speakers included Angela Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, Tom Hayden, Dolores Huerta, and Cornel West.

* Lee once told The Progressive magazine that her life was influenced greatly by the late Carlton Goodlett, a dedicated Stalinist who served as a leader of the World Peace Council and used a newspaper that he owned to spread Soviet disinformation and promote KGB forgeries.

* On September 3, 2003, Lee introduced H.R. 3000, the United States Universal Health Service Act, which called for governmental provision of healthcare coverage for all Americans. “The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide universal health care,” said Lee. “We must become a health care provider, not a denier of this fundamental right.”

* One of Lee’s staunchest supporters is Barbara Lubin, founder of the Middle East Children’s Alliance.