yeah, one of the leaders of more traditional Medicare thinking (for "more traditional" read "sensible"). 80 years old, California had a strange redistricting that put him in a district where a younger Dem challenged him. Doesn't much matter with GOP controlling the Ways and Means committee anyway. A colleague says Stark was the only avowed atheist in Congress. And didn't avow it until he'd been in a couple of decades. Atheists are a core Democratic constituency - or at least the unchurched are - but Dems don't dare say that.