Tea parties, town hall meetings, and other organized rejection of Obama's plans

Tea parties, town hall meetings

and other organized rejection of Obama's plans

It's comforting to see the people of the United States standing up to the socialists who have taken over Washington. When President Obama started tossing around a trillion dollars at a time, it was an order of magnitude too far, and the rebellion began to show up on street corners on April 15, 2009.

More recently, the politicians are getting an earful from a spate of increasingly rowdy "town hall" meetings around the country. This has the radicals on the far left very concerned. So much, in fact, that there is apparently a new Snitch on Your Neighbor program brewing at the White House.

More recently, the Left has given us a sample of the upcoming Obama thugocracy at the town hall meetings.

The town hall meetings are primarily about public opposition to socialized medicine, also known as Obamacare.

Subsections on this page:

Tea parties

The Tea Party Convention, Nashville, February 6, 2010.

Subsections on nearby pages:

Comparison of Tea Party activists to the Oklahoma City bombers

Accusations of Racism

The NAACP vs the Tea Party Movement

Biased news coverage of tea parties

The Tea Party gets the blame for unrelated events

One Nation: the anti-Tea Party rally

Town hall meetings

A taste of the Obama thugocracy

Tea Party Crashers and Imposters: Infiltration and sabotage.

Which side is using "astroturf"?

Who is behind the "Coffee Party"?

"Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations

Town hall meetings by phone

General overviews of the Tea Party concept:

The Consequences Of The Capitol Assault. Around the same time, there was another form of protest, something very different, which emerged. It was called the Tea Party. It was, unlike the anti-war, anti-globalist, anti-Wall Street folks, a fundamentally dangerous and racist entity, bent on destruction and violence, that threatened the very foundations of representative government and only existed because people couldn't accept a black president. They were basically the Klan. Alan Grayson said it. It was odd. In all my years of covering the Tea Party, I never saw them be rude to a cop, even by accident. They were upper-middle-class people who drove up in SUVs. They had no designs on destruction or occupation. Their taxes paid for that park, so they would clean up after themselves. They took pride in it — that they weren't like the dirty, filthy leftists who left graffiti and literal [feces] on the ground. Of course, it was these people who were absolutely marauded by the media. Their shouting at politicians — confined of course to town halls — was an act of political sabotage that threatened everything we hold dear. They were basically terrorists. Mediocre politician Joe Biden literally called them "terrorists."

You're It. The problem with patriots is their sense of fair play and duty. They are easily backed down from taking a stance by the propaganda machine branding them with one detestable attribute or another. In this case, they are described as members of the Trump cult. If there is a cult at all, it is the American cult, something the left can't abide. The same thing happened to the Tea Party that started out as a multi-racial, multi-generational movement in the wake of the banking crisis of 2008, when individuals were bankrupted to save the banking system that had caused the crisis to begin with; the crisis that wiped out citizen's savings and businesses. (Sound familiar?) I've written about that instance many, many times and it surely is not as simple as it sounds, but that is the gist of it. The Tea Party was branded as aged, social security recipients disgruntled by "modern society" passing them by and in fear of other races making them irrelevant. In fact, it had many constitutional issues that drove it, including the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the nearly trillion dollar "stimulus bill" that would eventually be distributed out to Obama supporters in unions like SEIU, the Teamsters and others who supported his campaign and provided counter protestors against the Tea Party. [...] The Tea Party went so far as to rise up and challenge the entirety of government representatives. They elected a whole new set of congressmen and senators, purged the softer elements out of the GOP, for a time, and nothing changed. NOTHING. Except, that it got worse.

Time for a New Declaration? Ten years ago, millions of furious Americans began protesting the federal government's suicide pact forced upon the states in the forms of our untenable national debt and the Democrats' insistence on burdening future generations with even more unfunded liabilities arising from government-run health care and other new entitlements. "Tea Parties" sprang up across the country to draw attention to the ticking financial time bomb hanging over us all. Obama mocked them. The media pretended they were dangerous. Nobody listened to their pleas. So they set to work flipping first the House and then the Senate for the Republicans. When that didn't work, they voted in an "outsider" president who took both parties by surprise.

Obama Stole an Election, Not Trump. [Scroll down] It's long been noted that anytime Democrats accuse Trump or Republicans of something, it's the Democrats who are actually guilty of it. A scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama's IRS helped him get reelected. [...] The effectiveness of the Tea Party, combined with Obama's relatively small margin of victory in key swing states, suggests that the IRS's suppression of the Tea Party movement likely tipped the scales in favor of Obama. "Had the Tea Party repeated and built on their activism of 2009 and 2010 in 2011 and 2012, Obama would have lost the election. What happened to the Tea Party boost? It didn't grow from 2010. It appeared to weaken," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform wrote in his book, End The IRS Before It Ends Us. "The Tea Party didn't fall down the stairs. It was pushed."

A Citizen of the Republic. The Tea Party, inspired by the economic collapse of 2008, sought to hold their representatives accountable for the excesses of the banking system that simultaneously caused the meltdown and was the greatest beneficiary of it. The further unconstitutional acts of the Obama Administration only infuriated the Tea Party. But, where the Tea Party failed was in a single question: What if replacing representatives, even on a wholesale scale, does nothing to redress the grievances? The federal government of the United States operates largely on the efforts of non-elected bureaucrats contemptuous of the people and their representatives. Changing a few figureheads through elections does nothing to restore liberty, or restrain the excesses of government.

The Tea Party dead? Don't even consider it. No matter how hard the pundits try to make it about the Tea Party, the Democrats are confronting a shocking reality — this is the generation, the moment, when liberal socialist policies have finally run out of someone else's money.

25 Examples of What America Would Be Like if We Were All Christian Conservative Tea Partiers:
[#4] We'd have a much flatter, simpler tax code that you could fill out on a single sheet of paper.
[#5] Welfare and food stamps would still exist, but there wouldn't be as much need for them, it would be considered shameful to take either, and you can be sure that people would have to work for every hand-out they receive.
[#6] Social Security would be privatized and invested. That means the people who put nothing in would have nothing to take out, but the people who do pay in would have a lot more money to withdraw.

Taxpayer dollars used to fund study tying Tea Party to tobacco lobby. Taxpayer dollars were used to fund a study that painted the Tea Party movement as the spawn of the tobacco lobby — a premise that Tea Party leaders say is absurd.

The Tea Party Lives... in Maryland?! The loud Tea Party summer of 2009 was the visible, audible manifestation of a seismic event: the birth pangs of a huge network of grassroots activists from coast to coast. It was the sound of unconscionable government growth and spending careening out of control, crashing against the consciences of stalwart citizens. It was the sound of a multitude of Americans suddenly and unexpectedly experiencing in unison an "Aha!" moment, as they finally began to grasp in a very real and experiential way what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, "No government can continue good, but under the control of the people."

Still Clueless: What Is the Tea Party? Resentment against the corrupt modus operandi of both political parties has been festering in the hearts of the American people for years. We have silently tolerated their governing against our will and best interest — spending to win votes and seeking power via ever-increasing intrusive government controls over our lives. Obama in his unprecedented arrogance and lawlessness was the straw that broke the camel's back — thus birthing the Tea Party.

Andrew Jackson: Tea Party President. [Scroll down] Indeed, conservative populism is the essence of the Tea Party — opposed to big, intrusive government; angry about the corporate bailouts of the late Bush and early Obama administrations; fearful of the consequences of fiscal incontinence; suspicious of governmental favoritism; wary of excessive global ambition. These concerns and fears were Jackson's concerns and fears 180 years ago when he became president, and his greatest legacy is his constant warning that governmental encroachments would lead to precisely the kinds of problems that are today besieging the country — and roiling the Tea Party.

This Is What a Mob Looks Like. [Scroll down] The tea partiers didn't arrogantly claim to be drafting a new Declaration of Independence. They're perfectly happy with the original. Tea partiers didn't block traffic, sleep on sidewalks, wear ski masks, fight with the police or urinate in public. They read the Constitution, made serious policy arguments, and petitioned the government against Obama's unconstitutional big government policies, especially the stimulus bill and Obamacare. Then they picked up their own trash and quietly went home. Apparently, a lot of them had to be at work in the morning.

Athena is a fitting symbol for Tea Party. Where did the Tea Party come from? ... First in April and then on July 4 of 2009, there were spontaneous uprisings throughout not just the small towns of America, but also in the major cities. The Town Hall Offensive in the summer of '09 caught politicians by surprise, as more and more they were being held accountable by the voters who had given them power in the first place. There were also huge, peaceful rallies involving hundreds of thousands of people which drew the derision of the media and the celebrity left, but through it all there was a steadfastness of purpose and clarity of vision that ultimately led to the mid-term election victories of 2010.

How to Think About the Tea Party: On February 19, 2009, when the finance commentator Rick Santelli indulged in a rant against the newly unveiled "stimulus" bill on the CNBC cable network and called for a demonstration in Chicago modeled on the Boston Tea Party, he fired a shot heard round the country. Santelli's diatribe was focused on the fact that Americans who had played by the rules, had saved much of what they had earned, and had paid their bills on time were being required to bail out fellow citizens who had gotten caught short in purchasing a domicile they could not afford or while speculating in real estate. In the weeks that followed, ordinary citizens spontaneously gathered in towns and cities across the continent to organize Tea Parties in protest against what they took to be an unjust redistribution of wealth from the industrious and the rational to the greedy and improvident.

The Tea Party Movement: How We Got Here. Something curious happened during the summer of 2008. Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shut down the House and C-SPAN cameras with a resolution that passed by just one vote, smack in the middle of an energy crisis. Afterwards, Madame Speaker jetted off on a week-long book tour while gas prices soared. The Republicans stood in the dark and refused to leave.

Will the GOP Wake Up and Smell the Tea? The Tea Parties were well named. Like the Committees of Correspondence of the 1770s, they are the leading edge of a revolutionary change in American politics, one that has been gathering force for decades. This is the third wave foreshadowed by the Reagan Revolution of the 80s and the Gingrich Revolution of the mid-90s. It is a widespread national revolt against managerialism, administrative government, liberal paternalism, and the policies they embody.

Trump and Obama's Brittle Narrative: [Scroll down] I truly believe that it is insane to continue to pursue the same policies which have literally destroyed the once-great Western European democracies. The Tea Party movement, in my opinion, is merely the long-awaited response by true Americans to the 60s radical-communist takeover of the Democratic Party, which began in the late 60s (with the McGovern commission primary rules changes), and which has seen its culmination in the election of Barack Obama. Any Republican who does not understand this reality is, in my opinion, not only ignorant, but willfully blind.

What is the Tea Party? A loose network of groups mainly organised at the state level, it has resisted creating a leadership structure or becoming a third political party. Instead the movement supports Republican candidates considered politically palatable on a case-by-case basis. Its activists are mostly conservative Republican voters who support smaller government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and individual freedoms.

The Tea Party Movement: There is no political party called "The Tea Party." But the media is acting, understandably as if there were, because this movement, spontaneous, unorganized, coming out of nowhere, is shaping the entire election and political debate. What is the nature of this movement? It is a rebellion by middle-class, working Americans against statism — a term that this very movement has made mainstream. Most importantly, it is an intellectualy active movement, the most informed, historically aware mass political movement that I have seen in my (long) lifetime. The Tea Partiers are reading the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, and ... Atlas Shrugged.

We are all Tea Partiers now. The Tea Party is the leading edge of a "Great Awakening" in America. In many ways, it appears to have the force and vitality of one of the religious awakenings that have occurred throughout our nation's history. It is more than a populist movement. It is more than a reactionary group expressing voter dissatisfaction and anger. It can't be boiled down to election results. It will not be co-opted neatly by the Republican Party. It is something much, much bigger.

Why The Silent Majority Is Finally Speaking Out. The mainstream media doesn't seem to get it. Congress doesn't get it and certainly the current administration doesn't get it. Why on earth, they wonder, should they pay any attention to those rabblerousing Tea Party extremists?

Tea Party is expression of 'general will' of the people. Whether the country can be saved from ruin at this late juncture is not yet known, but the Tea Party movement is proof that the the "general will" is no longer mute. And this party is just getting started.

The American Idea and the Tea Party Movement. The Left has no idea who these people are and what is happening. The Left refers to them as "crazies" and "astroturf." But these people are neither crazy nor astroturf. They are the millions of Americans who have awakened to and embraced the American idea. They are the Tea Party.

"Violent," "angry," "fear-mongering" Tea Party narrative debunked in one night. The Tea Party movement, at its very inception, has focused on the rule of law and limited government as reasons for its existence. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, originally passed so that the government could remove toxic assets from the ballot sheets of banks to prevent huge bank failures, had become a bank bailout outside the scope of what was originally intended. Then came the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan to provide aid to homeowners delinquent on their mortgages. This led to the famous Rick Santelli rant on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange.

Defense of Property & Revival of Virtues Equals Liberty. It's obvious that a society highlighting freedom must also honor virtue. For without the cooperation of law-abiding citizens, government devolves into a police state or anarchy. As virtue ebbs across America at every level, from kindergarten to the Oval Office; from pulpit to boardroom, an uprising demands an American revival. This is the Tea Party, a spontaneous lawful revolt demanding a return to our ancestral ideals and constitutional freedoms. This group represents a reformation of the quintessential American virtues: a defense of life, liberty and property. That these intrepid patriots arose without central planning or a galvanizing leader remains one of the astounding occurrences in US political history.

The Tea Party. The surprising thing about the Tea Party movement is how many experts were surprised by it. The U.S. has always been home to a large group of people who think the government is too big and spends too much. Why wouldn't those people rise up when the already gargantuan federal deficit more than tripled seemingly overnight?

The Tea Party and its impending dilemma. It is called the Tea Party movement and it was started on December 16, 2007 ... by Ron Paul supporters. Widely unrecognized in Republican enclaves as the founding event of the movement, the Ron Paul candidacy is inarguably the precursor to the current Tea Party species. Following the trail of its origin provides a fascinating illustration of how a movement, and hence culture, evolves. And it is within these roots that one can find the promise, and impending dilemma, of this young movement as it grows and changes the political landscape.

The Real Movement. The media seem intent on anointing a national leader of the Tea Party, no doubt for convenience's sake. But despite what people might see on TV or read in various media outlets, the Tea Party movement is not about national groups based in Washington, D.C., or those who have arbitrarily asserted themselves as national leaders. The movement and its impact on the American political scene always has been and always will be about the local organizers. The national groups could go away and the movement would be fine. However, if the local leaders go away the movement dies.

Reagan was the tea party. Ronald Reagan was the personification of American exceptionalism. He understood that the concept of self-rule — a government of the people, by the people and for the people, as Lincoln put it — was the secret behind this nation's astonishing progress from a loose confederation of almost-primitive states to becoming the mightiest nation in the world, all in a mere 200 years. Ronald Reagan believed in the American people. Unlike today's liberal elite he was convinced they have the wisdom to chart the nation's future, and he insisted that the government get out of their way and allow them to chart their own futures and the future of the United States.

Three Things Government Cannot Do. Every time a politician claims that the government is going to increase production, create wealth, or provide jobs... grab your wallet.

Realism, Not Ideology, Driving Tea Partiers. Those who dismiss or disparage Tea Party candidates as ideologues really miss the point of what is driving this movement. An ideologue is someone motivated primarily by a set of ideas and clings to them despite facts and experience. The Tea Party movement was not launched by and is not driven by theory but by a healthy sense of realism fueled by practical experience.

Tea party movement is not about Obama, but about freedom. [Scroll down] For 100 years, the progressive strategy and tactics have penetrated our political system by transforming our country into a more centrally controlled government. The people are responding all over the country against the ruling elite's destroying our free market economy and imposing their Marxist values on us.

Tea Party is not the Klan. The amorphous nature of the Tea Party movement is one of its greatest strengths. With no official national leader, no single spokesman, no party headquarters and no chairman, conventional wisdom should dictate no real measurable political impact. Yet the impact is undeniable. ... Regular folks became very active, starting about a year and a half ago, working to take back their country. Lacking faith in the leadership of both parties, and lacking the sophistication or budget of either the Republican or Democrat party, their message and tactics seemed crude to the Washington elite, in particular the national media.

The Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Tea Party patriots know that it is necessary to scale back government intervention in the lives of the American people in order for the people to enjoy the blessings of liberty, including the prosperity that liberty can produce and sustain. They understand that liberty is not received as a gift from government. It belongs to the people as a God-given right, and government cannot be allowed to ignore or diminish it.

Confront a Liberal Today. We're at a pivotal moment in American history. Never in our lifetimes have the consequences of liberal big government been on such ubiquitous display, not only here, but everywhere we look. The socialist democracies of Western Europe stand at the precipice of complete downfall. Many of our own liberal states are facing the same bankrupt status. Our own federal debt is choking the life out of any hope for quick recovery. A president in so far over his head that he is drowning in his own useless rhetoric has become an embarrassment to the nation.

Just like the Founding Fathers...
Tea Party Largely Older, Whiter, Male. The Tea Party movement is comprised of a coalition that is more likely to be male, older and GOPer, loosely united under the banner of economic conservatism, according to an analysis released yesterday by a right-leaning research firm.

Stating the obvious. The emergence and rapid growth of the Tea Party movement is due in large part to an increasing concern by taxpayers that our government has strayed too far from fiscal responsibility. ... A public that until a few years ago quietly trusted the job that its government has been doing in Washington is now focused like a laser beam on both the role of government and the careers of our leaders. Tea Partiers' deepest fears for the future of our nation are being realized in Greece.

Who Are the Tea Partiers? According to Gallup, tea partiers are no different from the rest of the country. In terms of age, employment status, and educational background, the tea partiers are virtually the same as a cross-section of all U.S. adults.

Survey: Four in 10 Tea Party members are Democrats or independents. Four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents, according to a new national survey. The findings provide one of the most detailed portraits to date of the grassroots movement that started last year.

Tea Party Vs. Obama. Notwithstanding constant attacks on the Tea Party movement by the press, most notably false imputations of racism, a plurality of voters believe the Tea Party represents their views better than President Obama.

More Than a Quarter of Americans Are Supporters of Tea Party Movement. More than a quarter of Americans describe themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, and the demographics of this group generally mirror the demographics of the national population, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll.

Why the 'Angry Mob' Is Angry. On election night, I grieved from knowing, knowing what was to come: something utterly unlike the America in which I grew up with such hope and patriotic pride. I wasn't alone in this, but at the time, I didn't know it. From day one of Obama's presidency, the dismantling commenced. ... On April 15, 2009, I joined thousands across the country in attending our first protest.

It's the Constitution, Stupid: What the Tea-Partiers Really Want. The Democrats and their activist old media are running in circles and working themselves into pretzels trying to define the "Tea Party" movement. It can be quite entertaining to watch. They really have no idea what is happening right in front of their eyes.

Tea Parties: Not Just For Scaring Democrats. If one needs further evidence that the tea party movement is not just opposed to Democrats but to establishment politicians in general, look no further than the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary, set for March 2. Tea party activist Debra Medina is surging, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey.

The Obama Problem: It's the People, Stupid! We-the-People have protested the increasingly apparent willful destruction of our economy, jobs and careers and liberties and freedoms by the Obama Administration for many months. We have told Obama & Co — in no uncertain terms — that we want neither his totalitarian ObamaCare Death Plan nor his Cap & Tax based upon the global warming hoax; a hoax established by the Marxist elite to steal even more power and resources from the American people and ultimately the people of the world.

The spark that has triggered rebellion. People are angry and frightened by the prospect of government running their health care system, but their anger goes far beyond a 1000 page health bill. Health care reform is merely the spark that has touched off a prairie fire of grassroots rebellion among a people who believe their representatives do not represent them, do not listen to them and do not care what they think.

The gathering revolt against government spending. What we are seeing is a spontaneous rush of previously inactive citizens into political activity, a movement symbolized but not limited to the Tea Party movement, in response to the vast increases in federal spending that began with the Troubled Asset Relief Program legislation in fall 2008 and accelerated with the Obama Democrats' stimulus package, budget and health care bills.

The Obama Resistance Grows. The April 15th Tea Parties, belittled by the legacy media, were collectively the coming-out event of a new American resistance. The cause then was out-of-control government spending. Today, it's shifted to a wider focus on Obama's brand of socialism for America.

States Rebellion Pending. Our constitutional ignorance — perhaps contempt, coupled with the fact that we've become a nation of wimps, sissies and supplicants — has made us easy prey for Washington's tyrannical forces. But that might be changing a bit. There are rumblings of a long overdue re-emergence of Americans' characteristic spirit of rebellion. Eight state legislatures have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Obamacare sparking 10th Amendment rebellion, action in seven states. Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina's attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader's office.

Kentucky's Answer to Unconstitutional Federal Actions. Over the course of the past two hundred and twenty-two years, we have forgotten many of the basic principles that were fresh in Thomas Jefferson's mind when he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. ... Foremost of the forgotten principles is the fact that the states were fully autonomous before uniting under a contract known as the Constitution. Each state voluntarily gave up a portion of its sovereignty, but never surrendered it completely, in joining the United States.

The backlash begins:
Eleven States Declare Sovereignty Over Obama's Action. State governors — looking down the gun barrel of long-term spending forced on them by the Obama "stimulus" plan — are saying they will refuse to take the money. This is a Constitutional confrontation between the federal government and the states unlike any in our time. In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of "hope" equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government's authority over the states.

Are the States About to Slap the Runaway Fed Down to Constitutional Size? On February 5, 2009, I released a column titled "New Hampshire Leads Next American Revolution!" At the time, only a handful of states had introduced legislative efforts to reclaim state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the US Constitution. ... Today, the number of states claiming state sovereignty, some outlining specific federal actions that have far more to do with usurping the US Constitution than upholding it, has grown to at least thirty two ...

Left ignores unprecedented federal power grab. Apparently, I'm not the only one disturbed by what's transpiring in Washington. Some 20 states have introduced "sovereignty bills" designed to reinforce their rights and remind those running the federal government that there's a little thing called the 10th Amendment. Tennessee is one of those states with a sovereignty bill pending. It was recently filed by state Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet. It simply states that the federal government cannot assume powers and impose mandates not constitutionally allowed.

Whatever Happened to States' Rights? On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement in support of a state resolution supporting states' rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state," Perry stated.

The Battle In The States: Freedom Vs Protection. Across the nation, state legislatures are struggling to take back their Constitutional rights as they also seek ways to protect us from outside threats. This has led to some near schizophrenic legislative sessions with laws swinging widely from left to right. ... Legislation dealing with protecting the integrity of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty has been introduced across the nation, passing in at least 21 states. The states are reacting to the frightening growth of the federal government through anti-terrorist legislation such as the Patriot Act and Real ID, as well as the outrageous spending included in the bailout and stimulus bills.

New Hampshire Leads Next American Revolution! Americans fed up with the unbridled endless federal assault on private earnings, assets and rights, and looking for what they can do to put a stop to the rush of socialist tyranny being fast-tracked through the leftist congress, or signed into law by Obamessiah executive order, should take a close look at what the New Hampshire legislature has already done! Four New Hampshire legislators introduced HCR-6 to re-invoke states rights enumerated in Jefferson's and Madison's Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

Tea Party Crowds Protest Federal Spending And Intervention. Critics dismiss the phenomenon as little more than a sharply partisan attack on President Barack Obama and the Democrats. But the protesters say their cause represents something bigger: a collective yell of "I'm not going to take it anymore" from the American taxpayer.

Tea party against Obama policies held in Cape Coral. Hundreds filled Jaycee Park on Wednesday for a tea-themed show of populist outrage. Holding banners decrying socialism, the prospect of government health care and Washington's massive stimulus spending, the group booed President Barack Obama, knocked local spending and read clips from the Constitution.

Take Your Money and Shove It, Governors Tell Obama. Tossing bags of billions of federal bucks at state and local governments desperately in need of cash hasn't everywhere elicited tears of gratitude or knees bent in thanksgiving to the Obama administration. In South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford says he is turning down $700 million in stimulus money for education. This ignited chaos among lawmakers, predictions of doom from educators, protests from the citizenry and a thicket of legal opinions about whether the state can get the money, anyway.

Here's the real story behind the Tea Party Protests. "Tea Party" protests have sprung up in multiple cities across the country since Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus bill into law as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. As much as I rejoice in the sight of legions of fed-up Americans taking to the streets to protest the central government's colossal waste of the first fruits of their labors, it is important that people The Problem With 'Nationalization' understand that the original Boston Tea Party was neither spontaneous nor a mere lark.

Hundreds of Iowans thrown out of public hearing. More than 500 people who are upset with a plan to change Iowa's tax laws were cleared from a hearing tonight [3/31/2009] at the Iowa House after they interrupted multiple times. House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, cleared the crowd at about 8:30 p.m. The decision brought about loud protests as the crowd was escorted from the chambers by Iowa State Patrol officers.

The Battle in the States: Freedom Vs Protection. Across the nation, state legislatures are struggling to take back their Constitutional rights as they also seek ways to protect us from outside threats. This has led to some near schizophrenic legislative sessions with laws swinging widely from left to right. Making it more difficult to get a handle on the situation is the fact that there has been an outgrowth of near "rabid" anti-immigration groups that have sprung up demanding near-Hitler-style tactics to "fix" the problem.

April 15th Tea Party Protests Must Demand Geithner Resignation. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner represents the worst of the government's current financial excesses. Considering Geithner cheated on his income taxes, April 15 would be an appropriate day to demand his resignation.

Ralliers in Quincy say they're 'taxed enough already'. Rep. Jil Tracy, R-Mount Sterling, repeated one of her favorite sayings, that federal and state governments do not have a revenue problem but an endless spending problem — and it's not unique to one party. "I see many people coming together today in a bipartisan fashion as American citizens united. We have to ask our public officials to be accountable, fiscally responsible and to use common sense as to how to solve problems," Tracy said. "This is the way we will change things. It can be done, and it will be done if you stay united, you get involved, you keep abreast of the issues. Don't trust we politicians to think for you. You have a voice, and you can think for yourself."

Quincy Tax Day Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, a group of Boston colonists angry over the British Parliament's tax policies and the British East India Co.'s tea monopoly, raided ships and dumped their tea shipments into the harbor. 236 years later, Quincy's riverfront was the site for a symbolic re-enactment of that well known protest on taxation, company bailouts, uncontrolled government spending and control by a far-away government.

Attacking the Tea Party Movement. Those on the left have spent so much time over the past eight years bashing George Bush that they are having trouble shifting gears. Instead of enjoying their big win in 2008 and going positive, following their leader Obama's "hope and change" message, they are still tearing down anyone who doesn't agree with them.

Patriots Understand More Than You Think. I don't know how [some people believe] that those against illegal immigration are willing to give up some of their liberties in order to stop the border invasion. Maybe those that believe what the federal government says and does is enough to allow our freedoms to erode[,] when in-fact, the border invasion is a military matter and should not be a civilian action requirement, but has to be, since the feds want it that way.

The Meaning of the Tax Day Tea Parties: A new grassroots phenomenon is sweeping the nation — Tax Day Tea Parties. One of the leading sponsoring organizations, the American Family Association (AFA), has announced on its website that AFA TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party Day rallies on April 15 are now scheduled in 1,837 cities.

Tea Party Poseurs Sent By Left Working To Undermine Big Day. "Just this morning, I received word that a new radical organization calling itself "A New Way Forward" has put together an underhanded sneak attack designed to undercut the popular uprising known as the Tea Party Movement," Bill Wilson, of Americans for Limited Government (ALG), warned mainstreet Americans yesterday. "Simply put, their idea is to stage phony rallies throughout the country on April 11 — made to look like they are part of the Tea Party movement — while actually opposing Tea Party principles and supporting the complete government takeover of our banking system."

Hundreds to gather for Tax Day protest. A national wave of populist unrest will crest on Tax Day this week as protesters gather in hundreds of cities around Michigan and across the country to express their opposition to taxes and increased government spending and intrusion. Organizers say 1,000 people could gather at noon Wednesday on the grounds of the State Capitol in Lansing for a Michigan Taxpayer Tea Party to register their displeasure with government.

Coast-to-coast tea parties put lawmakers on notice. Americans took to the streets to protest wasteful government spending today [4/15/2009] -- with estimated crowd sizes of 5,000 to 15,000 in Atlanta, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Olympia, Wash., Lansing, Mich., and Sacramento.

Obama's Recipe For Change Not My Cup of Tea. I had no idea how important this week's nationwide anti-tax tea parties were until hearing liberals denounce them with such ferocity. The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote a column attacking the tea parties, apologizing for making fun of "crazy people."

Tea Parties: Real Grassroots. Around America, taxpayers have had enough. Fed up with excessive spending, planned tax increases and a federal government that first caused the financial bubble through misregulation, and then grabbed power in order to "fix" it, they're hitting the streets to protest.

TARP the Life Insurers? This Is Nuts. The public is clamoring for and end to TARP and bailout nation. That's a key message coming from the heartland tea parties that are cropping up spontaneously around the country.

Taxpayers Get Really Tea-ed Off. The Boston Tea Party helped free us from an oppressive king. This week's nationwide anti-stimulus tea party demonstrations have a tougher goal: ending the tyranny of big-spending politicians.

Tea Parties about Far More than Taxes. Many writers have dubbed the Tax Day Tea Parties as inconsequential, a fad that will die quickly, and of foolish origins that have nothing to do with the American patriots of revolutionary days. Patriots dumped a ship full of tea into Boston Harbor, these folks contend, to protest one thing: taxation without representation. We modern patriots have representation and are therefore insane to protest, or so this line of argument goes.

Lefties to try and discredit tea parties. Liberals are making fun of conservative "paranoia" over attempts to discredit the tea parties by activists on the left but, as we know, they never let the facts stand in the way of a good fantasy. ... Sounds like the left may be a little worried about the tea party phenomenon.

The Tea Party Revolution: Because these events are highly decentralized, with no significant institutional organization or funding behind them, they represent a genuine outpouring of grassroots opinion with enormous political importance. For every person out in the streets today, there are undoubtedly many more who didn't make it who share the same opinions.

Tax Day Becomes Protest Day. Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed "tea parties" — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org. So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize.

Republicans and the Tea Parties: Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill. If it has a father it is CNBC's Rick Santelli, who called for holding a tea party in Chicago on July 4. Yesterday's gatherings were made up of people who may never meet again (there's no central collection point for email addresses). But the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril.

Rally 'round the bag: Thousands turn out for downtown Tea Party. No one could accuse East Texans of political apathy on Wednesday, when an estimated 2,000 protesters packed the downtown square in Nacogdoches to rally against big government, taxes and reckless spending. Wielding American flags and sporting signs written with both wit and anger, the crowds assembled on Pilar Street at the Plaza Principal stage to hear local speakers talk about responsible government and to hear musical acts in celebration of liberty and other political ideals.

The Tea Parties. They resemble nothing so much as the anti-war protests during Bush's first term. The claim that they don't have an organizing premise strikes me as obviously wrong: They're anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, anti-deficit, and anti- the tax increases that will eventually be required to pay for the current spending spree, and complaining that they don't also have a ten-point plan for reforming Medicare and Social Security reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of protest marches, I think.

Tea Party protests: Could they rally change in government? Two months ago, 300 people showed up in a cold, pouring rain at Georgia's State Capitol as part of the first stirrings of a modern-day Tea Party movement, protesting Washington's expanding reach and a ballooning federal deficit. Wednesday night, Edward Johnson, in a tricorn hat and Paul Revere coat, watched Act II: The capitol square here filled up with more than 10,000 protesters waving signs that said, among other things, "Welcome to Sweden" and "Don't tax me, bro!"

Tea Parties: What's Next? Most agree that that capitalizing upon the momentum generated by an estimated 2,500 tea parties nationwide on April 15 would be of great benefit to the GOP. But whether or not those efforts should be centrally coordinated — or if they are even able to be centrally coordinated — is a matter of hot debate.

Million Taxpayer March. Let's use liberal math to calculate attendance at this week's nationwide Tax Day Tea Party protests. When left-wing activists make crowd estimates, the algorithm is: six figures = one million. An incomplete survey of newspaper accounts and organizer estimates pegged the Tea Party protest population at a minimum of 250,000. We can now, therefore, officially call it the Million Taxpayer March.

Tea Party System. Less than three months after a landmark election, throngs of demonstrators everywhere gathered to object to the revolution that our new president is steamrolling into law. It was a landmark protest in the history of the republic. But how can the voices of tens if not hundreds of thousands of angry taxpayers be turned into concrete political action?

Liberal actress says tea parties were racist. Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance. ... [Keith] Olbermann did not once try to challenge her on those assertions.

Alamo Plaza filled with tea party crowd. The San Antonio Tea Party kicked off today with a live broadcast by Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck and a few thousand flag-waving, sign-holding supporters in front of the Alamo.

GOP govs: Tea parties naturally brewed. Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Haley Barbour of Mississippi insisted Thursday that the anti-tax tea party phenomenon dominating the news cycle represented a serious movement "bubbling up" around the country.

Thousands show up for Dallas 'tea party'; Rick Perry fires up rallies. At least eight North Texas municipalities, and about 1,000 municipalities nationwide, hosted tea party events. Police estimated several thousand people attended the Dallas event, with protesters waving yellow "don't tread on me" flags and a variety of signs alternately decrying taxes, panning a federal economic stimulus package and chiding Obama as a socialist/communist.

Thousands across U.S. let off steam at tax-day Tea. With The Alamo as a backdrop, thousands of Texans here joined demonstrators across the nation Wednesday to protest federal spending, corporate bailouts and taxes. "The Alamo is the perfect symbolic place to hold this rally," said Carl Benton, a Michigan native who moved to Texas a decade ago. "This is where people who had held deep convictions made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom."

Texas governor suggests ... secession? Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax "tea party" Wednesday [4/15/2009] with his stance against the federal government and for states' rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!" An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall — one of three tea parties he was attending across the state — that officials in Washington have abandoned the country's founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt.

Altered States: How to Succeed at Seceding. Long Island's latest quest to split from New York and become its own state had a promising start last year. [2009] ... Objections from the rest of New York effectively killed the idea, but attempts to make Long Island a state will almost certainly return. The proposal was just the most recent in a series of statehood crusades, usually arising from complaints of unfair taxation.

The Left Is Making a Mistake in Ridiculing the Tea Parties. The political Left in the United States is making a grave mistake in diminishing and dismissing the anger of the American people. Where it may be common place for liberals, Leftists, neo-Marxists and Progressive-Leftists to take to the streets over anything and everything, including a change of wind direction, it is entirely a different story with conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives and Republicans don't march in the streets for anything. The fact that they have now taken to the streets in protest of massive government spending and government's encroachment into our liberties speaks volumes to those who would listen.

Hail the tea bag, weapon of terror. "Tea-bag parties" erupted — and "erupted" is the correct verb — across the country on April 15, celebrated by joyous "progressive" taxpayers and loathed by everybody else as the day to report the intimate details of your life, along with cash, to the Internal Revenue Bureau (which the bureau insists that we call not a bureau but a "service"). Bureau or service, it's run by bureaucrats, not servants, and always the target of April ire.

A Very Polite Tea Party. The demonstrations drew more than 250,000 supporters and some openly hostile news coverage, as reporters painted the gatherings as rage-fests filled with antigovernment crackpots. Ben [Hobbs], who laid aside his tools to head to the tea party, was unsurprised by the tone of the coverage. After all, he said, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had just labeled small-government entrepreneurs like him potentialterrorist threats.

Government forgets its true duty. A TEA (Taxed Enough Already!) party was conducted in the city park in Chillicothe on Income Tax Day, Wednesday. Those of us who participated were there because we love our country; and because we love our country, we could not keep silent. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." So we were there to voice our protest of an out-ofcontrol government that is unable to put a rein on its irresponsible spending.

The truths behind the tea parties: [At the tea-party protests held on Tax Day], the message was one of great skepticism about the efficacy of the government's remedies and great apprehension about the expense (along with some of the extremist lunacy that accompanies any mass movement). The scale of the federal response to the crises has come as a frightening surprise to many Americans, who suspect the cure will be worse, and less transitory, than the disease.

CNN's Begala: Tea Party Goers 'Wimpy, Whiney, Weasels Who Don't Love Their Country'. On Friday's Hannity on FNC, host Sean Hannity played a clip of liberal CNN contributor Paul Begala as he was interviewed by Don Imus, in which Begala engaged in name-calling against Tax Day Tea Party participants.

Thou Shall Not Question Barack Obama. Perhaps they just don't want to think through the details. Then again — maybe some of them don't have the capacity to think through the details. I'm referring to the apparent plethora of partisan, passionate, "see-no-evil" Obama minions, who become outraged should any of the rest of us ask questions about the forty-fourth President.

Question Democratic authority? Not! The mainstream media and the Democratic Party —one and the same these days —spent much of the last week furiously attacking the grass-roots tea party protest movement as somehow illegitimate —or worse. Days before the uniformly peaceful and patriotic gatherings took place, Homeland Security czar Janet Napolitano conveniently issued a bizarre report slandering military veterans and assorted right-leaning groups as racist, homegrown terrorism threats. News anchors resorted to prime-time "tea-bagging" jokes in frequent attempts to mock the participants' grievances.

Shall We Texans Secede? With Fedzilla accelerating its gluttonous orgy of unaccountability and ramping up its wanton blow torching of our paychecks with blatant impunity, we the people are once again de-sheeping, stepping forward, and in the grand tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., peaceably marching in protest with the defiant Tea Party spirit of 1773.

America's Tea Parties. The crowd was energetic and well behaved. I got to talking to a few people. ACORN was nowhere near the area. I was told that public reaction to them was: "You know where you can put your acorns." Ah, so much for intimidating real Americans. They had two Obamatons there with a sign, "Give change a chance." Most of them were confronted by women who spoke their mind. For me, they can keep the change and pay for it, and leave me out of it!

I Attended a Tea Party. Even I, who try to avoid crowds, attended a gathering here in the San Fernando Valley. If you believe the creeps in the MSM — and why would you? — we were all dues-paying members of political fringe groups, and none of us would think about leaving the house without first donning our little aluminum hats. If you believe Janet Napolitano — and how could you? — we were not merely man-created disasters like Somali pirates and Islamic butchers, but full-fledged terrorists. Some among us even confessed to being military veterans. Well, either she is very wrong or I am.

Perception of Tea Parties was incorrect. I was at the Tea Party in St. Paul. I apparently hung out at the wrong end of the Capital grounds, though, because I missed all of those angry, extremist, Obama-haters who I'm told were there. Instead, at my end of the mall, I saw thousands of average, hard-working Minnesota taxpayers (many with family in tow) respectfully voicing deep concerns about the future of our country. Some were wearing suits. Most were wearing jeans or shorts. A few were in biker leathers. I missed all the folks in camo and face paint and saw no one brandishing their semiautomatic.

So what did we learn from tea parties? From White House officials to actors with time on their hands, it was not enough to simply disagree with the tea party cornerstone of lower taxes and spending. The Americans attending these events had to be eviscerated as mobs of evil, violent psychopaths.

Montana Fires a Warning Shot over States' Rights. Montana is trying to trigger a battle over gun control — and perhaps make a larger point about what many folks in this ruggedly independent state regard as a meddlesome federal government. In a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month, the state is asserting that guns manufactured in Montana and sold in Montana to people who intend to keep their weapons in Montana are exempt from federal gun registration, background check and dealer-licensing rules because no state lines are crossed.

The American People Deserve Better From Their Elected Representatives. Among the political class it has apparently become acceptable, and even fashionable, for American politicians from the President on down to mock the citizens they represent. In a development that can only further denigrate the discourse necessary to any effective democracy, politicians and the "serious" news media are now mocking citizens regularly and with impunity.

Tea partiers get riled up in Pasadena. Dozens of people gathered on the steps of Pasadena City Hall Friday [5/1/2009] to advocate for lower taxes, government spending, and stand up against what they view as a burgeoning socialist threat.

Arrogant politicians fuel Tea Party protests. Oppressive tax hikes, runaway federal spending, and a spiraling national debt that will burden generations to come were among the most frequently cited worries of the700,000 or more people who turned out April 15 for the Tea Party Protests held in more than 750 cities across the country. But as important as those three issues are, a statement published Friday [5/8/2009] by the Examiner from a national coordinating group of the nascent movement points to an even more fundamental concern.

More on Those Dangerous 'Right-Wing Extremists'. Our review and monitoring of public meetings and publications in Virginia have brought to our attention two individuals who fit these profiles and who, in our informed law enforcement opinion, are right-wing extremists who pose an imminent danger to the United States, particularly the federal government.

House bypasses governor's veto to claim Oklahoma's sovereignty. Although Gov. Brad Henry vetoed similar legislation 10 days earlier, House members Monday again approved a resolution claiming Oklahoma's sovereignty. Unlike House Joint Resolution 1003, House Concurrent Resolution 1028 does not need the governor's approval.

Rick Perry: States will 'assert their independence'. Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that he expects to see a number of states follow his home state of Texas in pushing resolutions that will "assert their independence from the federal government." "If this administration gets its way, we'll all be the same. We'll all be the way Washington wants us to be," Perry said on a call with Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and roughly 20,000 callers, which was sponsored by the Republican Governors Association and billed as Tea Party 2.0.

Can States Protect Themselves Against Massive Health Care Intrusion? Alabama State Rep. Mac Gipson, R-Prattville, will introduce in the 2010 session of the Legislature the Alabama Care Freedom Act constitutional amendment that will protect the rights of patients to make their own health care choices. Further, his measure prohibits penalties levied on patients for declining participation in any big government passed Pelosi/Obama health care plan. To date, 22 states have introduced similar initiatives.

Obama's vast agenda sparks concern. With a set of proposals that will increase federal spending to $3.7 trillion next year now on the table, policy analysts, including some Democrats, are asking whether President Obama is promising more than he can deliver and more than taxpayers can afford.

In California, Voters Stage Massive "Tea Party" at the Polls! Despite the threat of being dismissed as right wing extremists by left wing extremists, California voters staged a massive "tea party" at the polls on Tuesday [5/19/2009] to protest proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature (mostly Democrats) to raise taxes without derailing runaway spending.

Warning to Obama in California vote. California voters sent one heckuva message Tuesday [6/19/2009], as they unceremoniously shot down attempts by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders of both parties to raise their taxes, again. The politicos wanted the additional revenues to cover their $44 billion worth of over-spending, aka the state budget deficit. Voters said no, decisively...

Terminating illusions in California. California is the beta state, where everything new is tried and then exported, true or not. Rap, rock, lavender love, student riots, Arianna Huffington, hot rods and the Hula Hoop. Ronald Reagan and the tax revolt. The illusion that you can have it all, and somebody else will pay for it. This week California's voters offered a view of what happens when big government finally grinds to a noisy halt. Barack Obama could take note. The state of California, alas, is busted. Broke.

California Clarity. Californians' rejection of five tax-and-spend ballot measures on Tuesday's ballot was the first outcome of a national tea party movement that elitists can no longer dismiss.

What's coming up for future 'tea party' protests? It was somewhat surprising to hear from numerous folks that their beef wasn't just with Obama's economic policies. Time and again, people said they'd been just as upset with what they saw as profligate spending under Bush. Tim Lee was typical. A councilman from suburban Atlanta's Cobb County. "The Republicans," he said, "were doing just as bad for eight years."

The Editor says...
Republicans were bad about spending, but the Democrats in 2009 were four and a half times as bad.

Heads Up, Tea Party Patriots! Mired in red tape, the 4th Annual New Hampshire Live Free or Die Rally will be the testing ground on whether July 4th Tea Parties will be squashed throughout the United States of America. Suppressing dissent followed hard on the heels of state-wide April 15 Tea Parties when Department of Homeland Security head honcho Janet Napolitano fingered returning war veterans as right-wing "extremists".

Tenth Amendment Movement Aims to Give Power Back to the States. Fed up with Washington's involvement in everything from land use to gun control to education spending, states across the country are fighting back against what they say is the federal government's growing intrusion on their rights. At least 35 states have introduced legislation this year asserting their power under the Tenth Amendment to regulate all matters not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.

After Obama Fails. A failed presidency for Barack Obama could turn into liberalism's worst nightmare. Barely six months into his term, the 44th president has succeeded in generating the most widespread and serious discussion of secession since the Civil War. Despite what Newsweek's Evan Thomas may claim, Obama is not the "God" who will bring us together but the autocratic sponsor of an overbearing, oppressive leviathan from which a growing number of Americans are seeking refuge.

Large Democratic Donors Help Shut Down July 4 Atlanta Tea Party. A real estate company whose owners have contributed heavily to Democratic causes apparently used articles and content on conservative blogs to justify bringing about pressure to shut down an Atlanta tea party protest scheduled for the Fourth of July — an event that organizers estimated would attract 20,000 people. The apparent plot was uncovered when blogger and radio talk show host Andrea Shea King noticed an unusual amount of traffic coming to her site earlier this month.

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story. On Independence Day, nearly 1,500 or more protest rallies, "Tea parties," will be held in America from coast to coast. Their message will not be lost on Congress though you can be sure the slavish mainstream news media will do what they can to mislead the public into believing they were minor events. ... In October 2010, Americans will have an opportunity to neuter this narcissist, this pretender in the White House. It is time to prepare for the midterm elections. It is time to take America back from the liberals that are ruining it.

Tea Party's organizers hope to draw 50,000 to Southfork Ranch. Southfork Ranch, the symbol of Dallas and doing things big, is the stage Saturday for the largest tea party in the nation, aimed at attracting 50,000 folks for fireworks, both in the air and from the microphone.

Tea Party Protests Rally Against Taxes. There have been fireworks for a different sort this Independence Day. Thousands of protestors held rallies in cities across the country, protesting big government, and big government spending... "Letting Congress and the federal government know that we're displeased — we are very, very displeased with what they are doing to us and what they are doing to our future children," said Joe Stephanelli, from Morristown, Ohio.

Texas-size Tea Party. Brewing interest in The Woodlands Tea Party and its concerns with government came to a full head of steam Thursday [7/2/2009] evening at an event that brought thousands to Conroe's Lone Star Expo Center. Tea Party organizers began forming events following Tax Day in April, with momentum growing to draw participants from across the greater Houston area to hear Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who headlined the event.

Taxed Enough Already? Nationwide July 4 TEA Parties Scheduled . From the East to West Coasts and in the heartland in between, and to the wilds of Alaska, the Tea Party tax protests are enthusiastically continuing. Over the July 4 holiday, TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party rallies are already planned in 1,267 cities and towns across the nation, and the list grows longer as more volunteers who feel they have been taxed enough join the effort.

Schenley Park Tea Party rally blasts President Obama. National and local conservative activists rallying in Schenley Park Saturday [7/4/2009] said their organizational firepower is leagues ahead of where they were in 1994, when Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution picked up dozens of congressional seats. ... If so, President Obama and his allies in the House and Senate might want to pay attention to what happened yesterday morning on Flagstaff Hill.

Joe the Plumber joins Zilker 'tea party'. Wurzelbacher, wearing cowboy boots, jeans and a T-shirt, said that he's not going to change his mind over time on what he believes — and he believes that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong, that owning guns is an important right and that torturing terrorists isn't wrong.

Holiday marked by anti-tax Tea Parties. Fourth of July "Tea Party" rallies, picnics, marches and other demonstrations were scheduled across the country Saturday [7/4/2009] to protest what organizers say is record federal spending and taxes by the Obama administration that enlarges government and threatens the nation's prosperity.

Cincinnati Tea Party packs Bethel community center. When the Cincinnati Tea Party decided to hold a meeting in Bethel, organizers expected 15 to 20 people to attend. But Bethel residents surprised the group when more than 100 people packed the village's community center Monday, July 6, for the Cincinnati Tea Party's first meeting there.

Change is Coming, Brought to you by Socialism. Over the weekend hundreds and thousands of American citizens gathered at grassroots "Tea Parties" coast to coast to protest Barack Obama's massive expansion by government. During his campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly said he wanted to be a "transformational" President. Now, that transformation appears to be from a government "of... by... and for" to govern over the people. Lately, this has been in the form of "cap and trade," which will give government the ultimate power over the industrial sector of the economy.

A Constitution in Full Crisis II. More than 32 states are working to pass 10th Amendment resolutions aimed at reclaiming both state sovereignty and states rights. More than 40 states will complete that process in the coming months. ... The states MUST remind the Fed that it is NOT an oligarchy of unelected Czars free to run roughshod over the people and the states. Rather that the Fed exists and serves at the pleasure of the states and the people, and is limited in authority to ONLY those matters assigned it in the Constitution.

The Real Reason Americans are Angry: The message of the various Tea Party protests, which predated this summer's ahistorical media panic over town hall "lynch mobs," has been pretty simple, says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the nonprofit that has helped organize the protests, told Reason magazine this spring. "It was: stop spending so much money, stop borrowing so much money, and stop bailing out people who were irresponsible."

Locals heading to D.C. for another TEA party protest. The national organizers expect protesters to meet in D.C., lobby lawmakers and gather support against health care reform two days after President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress. Organizers quoted in the New York Times said the protest could be "the largest gathering of fiscal conservatives ever."

To cry of 'Nobama,' Morristown tea party urges government restraint. Labor Day barbecues took a back seat yesterday [9/7/2009] to a political "tea party" in Morristown that drew about 2,000 people who waved flags, hoisted placards and donned red-white-and-blue outfits to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the federal government.

A march on Washington. The armies of "tea party" conservatives who packed town-hall meetings last month to oppose President Obama's $1 trillion government health care plan bring their protest movement to the Capitol on Saturday [9/12/2009] to urge its defeat. Those who thought the hundreds of April 15 tax-day rallies across the country were a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon had better think again.

Tea Party Express roars to D.C. When the "tea party" movement kicked off in April to protest record federal spending bills, trillion-dollar deficits and higher tax burdens, its members were fiercely independent and opposed any suggestion that they bond with a larger umbrella group, preferring to work within their local communities. But that go-it-alone approach is changing as a result of the war over health care, and the Tea Party Express tour is leading the way.

Tea Party Patriots Cheer Congressman Joe Wilson vs. Obama. Fast forward to Friday morning in Hartford. An estimated 1,500 Tea Party Patriots had gathered outside the state Capitol to hear multiple speeches against the health care plan and in favor of freedom. During his remarks, national tea party organizer Mark Williams was cut off in mid-sentence by the roars from the crowd when he said, "Joe Wilson, the Congressman who stood up." He did not get to finish his sentence as the applause from the crowd drowned him out.

NRO at the 912 March. As a journalist who wears his cynicism like a badge of honor, to say that today's tea party protest wildly exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I've yet to see a reliable estimate of the crowd size and the cops seemed bound and determined to keep any photographers away from any high vantage points, but I'd be shocked if it wasn't well into six figures.

Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama's spending. Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending. The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.

Thousands of Anti-Obama Protestors March in D.C.. When organizers for the Taxpayer March on Washington said they expected tens of thousands of people Saturday, they weren't kidding. Tea Party protestors completely blocked Pennsylvania Ave. from 14th Street, NW, to the U.S. Capitol. The crowds were so dense that organizers for the event decided to start the speeches and march earlier than the scheduled 11:30 a.m. time.

March in September. The long-term consequences of this and the preceding populist gatherings are hard to predict. We may see a more libertarian Republican party. A huge turnout for 2010 may result. New, real outsiders may enter politics. And, of course, these protests may scare the dickens out of lawmakers.

Anti-Government Protests Draws Tens of Thousands to D.C.. Tens of thousands of conservative protesters crowded outside the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, a massive demonstration aimed at stopping what organizers called the over-expansion of the federal government under the Obama administration. "Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored," declared Andrew Moylan, head of government affairs for the National Taxpayer Union, urging protesters to call their representatives. "You're being ignored today by the media and some politicians."

Tea partiers march on U.S. Capitol. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers are now storming Washington, D.C., and taking their fight against excessive spending, bailouts, growth of big government and soaring deficits to the front door of the U.S. Capitol.

Obama's Titanic arrogance and the folly of ignoring the masses on 9/12. I was at the 9/12 Rally on the Capital Lawn. Like a lot of people I took the time, effort and expense to go to the seat of power and be counted with my fellow American Patriots. I have never seen so many people in one place in my life. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder all the way from the Capital Steps to the Washington Monument a MILE away, and also covered the side streets feeding into the area.

9/12 was a transformative event. Sometimes an event occurs which is transformative in a way that everyone who sees it or participates in it instantly is aware of. Yesterday's demonstration in Washington DC is one of those rare happenings in my opinion. The Daily Mail said 2 million Americans participated. My friend Charlie Martin extrapolated from the pictures an attendance figure of 2.3 million. ... Whatever the actual number it is sure to be seriously underestimated by the Obama-besotted members of the press corps who are also likely to misrepresent the participants and their views.

March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd? After the Million Man March in 1995, Congress restricted the National Park Service from even making estimates — a restriction that was maintained for 14 years and then quietly rescinded this January for the Obama inauguration. ... There have been a lot of estimates, from the "official" one of 60 to 70 thousand, up to the rumored 2 million.

9/12: The Revolution Has Begun. What began on the border in 2005 has spread to DC and every state in the union. The Revolution isn't coming, it is here. Call it the Constitution Revolution. The genie is out of the bottle and there will be no putting her back in.

Crowd estimates vary wildly for Capitol march. A sea of angry taxpayers marched on the Capitol on Saturday afternoon. That much is certain. But even before the march was over, the news media, bloggers and rally supporters were wrangling over the crowd count, with estimates ranging from 60,000 to 2 million.

Numbers Game: How Many REALLY Attended the Sep. 12 Rally. Based on photos and on-scene observation, the crowd on Saturday at its peak occupied ... a total area of densely populated grounds of about 930,000 square feet. ... [Assuming just under four square feet per person], 250,000 is a number I challenge anyone to best. And the precise number, should you need it, using Queueing Theory, Coefficients of Dispersion, and Poisson Distribution Variances, was exactly 239,863.

Rep. Joe Wilson, Tea Party Numbers, and Excited Utterances. Michael Laprarie of Wizbang writes, "We may never know a precise number, but reasonable estimates seem to put the 9/12 crowd at between 500,000 and one million." Personally, I'm "guesstimating" that at least a hundred thousand protesters attended the Tea Party in Washington, D.C. But I wouldn't be shocked at a 500,000 figure.

A Warning to Washington. Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of angry Americans stormed Washington last weekend to oppose ObamaCare and government spending. How'd Democrats react? By redoubling efforts to pass "health-care reform"...

What next for the Middle America Rebellion of 2009. A day before the event, organizers said a mere 20,000 or so folks had registered for Saturday's amazing 9/12 march on Washington to protest out-of-control government. What they got was hundreds of thousands of intensely patriotic people who came to the nation's capitol to yell "Stop!" Whatever the number of attendees, this was possibly the most significant Washington protest since the civil rights movement's epic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Debate rages over 'tea party' crowd size. A fierce numbers battle has erupted in the aftermath of Saturday's Capitol Hill rally by "tea party" conservatives that is not over the growth of government, the budget deficit or even the $1 trillion cost of President Obama's health care plan, but about the size of the crowd.

America Spoke. America spoke September 12th in Washington, DC. Real America. Not black America, not white America, not Hispanic or Asian America, not even conservative or liberal America. Real America. There were mothers, sons, fathers, daughters, newborn children and kids on the way up; there were many, many elderly and a lot of disabled folks, young and old, in wheelchairs. Many of these people had never been to a protest before in their lives.

Unexpected Outgrowths of the Tea Party Movement . The Tea Party Movement has awakened a powerful sleeping giant silent majority. Americans are starting to say, "no" to political correctness; "no" to banning God from the public square, "no" to politicians who ignore the Will of the people, "no" to secular progressives and "no" to dead beats who think they are entitled due to their skin color, sex, economic status or whatever. "Enough!" is the battle cry of millions of Tea Party protesters.

Tea Party insurgency marches into key states. Begun as a loosely affiliated groundswell of Constitution-waving protesters in tri-cornered hats, the Tea Party movement is now starting to rock the political establishment in key arenas.

America's Obama Obsession. [Scroll down slowly] As long as Obama was opposed by calcified Republicans in Congress, there was no real danger to him. But once the opposition proved populist, panicked liberal elites started demonizing populism — and Obama now finds himself opposed to the popular grievance-mongering that was once the mother's milk of our Chicago organizer's existence.

Making the Tea Party Tangible. Contrary to left-wing claims, not to mention left-wing tactics, the Tea Party - Town Hall - 912 folks are not paid or bused to events by labor unions, corporate sponsors or Chicago Cabal Community Organizers, in the same way that leftists mobilize their staged events. No, this is a real "grassroots" people's movement of folks taking personal time and resources to unite against an increasingly offensive federal scum-orgy going on in Washington DC, under the "transparent" Marxist agenda of the New World messiah and his many international scumbag buddies, aka Czars, puppet masters and supporters.

Not Ashamed to Love My Country. The Tea Party Movement has sparked a resurgence of patriotism. The movement itself was birthed out of fear of the far left agenda and radical changes being implemented by the Obama administration. Despite attempts by the liberal media and the Obama gang to convince us otherwise, we see and feel the threat of destruction of the traditions, values and institutions which we hold dear and have made America great.

What Is The Threshold For Revolution? Today, the American people are still capable of collective heroism and the challenge to abusive authority, just as they were during the birth of our freedom some 233 years ago. We see the growing signs of that emerging heroism almost every day now.

Who are the Tea Partyers? The 1992 exit polls told the tale. Perot voters were made up (in almost equal parts) of all ages, all races and both genders. Fifteen percent were Democrats and twenty-one percent were Republicans but — most importantly — thirty-three percent were independents. Twenty-six percent of them hadn't voted in the 1988 presidential election. They were angry, sufficiently so to vote against the status quo in Washington.

Crowd kicks off 'tea party' tour. A large, enthusiastic crowd of people carrying signs and waving flags in protest of a government they say is not representing them gathered downtown yesterday morning to kick off a cross-country tour to demand change.

Revolt on the Right. When taxpayers and conservative activists began holding tea parties to protest an out-of-control federal government's unsustainable growth, it was not entirely unreasonable to ask: Where were these people for the last eight years? George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress increased discretionary spending at twice the rate that prevailed under Bill Clinton.

Tangible Tea Party Tactics. I have only ONE goal, to stop and reverse the Obamanation of our country and return the USA to a constitutional status. The strategy for accomplishing this is to retake the GOP so that we have the power needed to accomplish that goal.

Hundreds rally for lower taxes as part of Tea Party Express. Hundreds rallied for lower taxes and an end to what they said was a socialist agenda in the Obama White House in a parking lot on Sandy Boulevard Friday [10/30/2009]. Leaders of the Tea Party Express came to Portland aboard two coaches and found a huge crowd eager to participate.

Houston Tea Party rally draws more than 10,000. More than 10,000 people turned out Monday night for a North Houston Tea Party Patriots gathering to protest proposed health care reform and what they called big government spending and overzealous government leadership, according to preliminary attendance figures.

The Permanent Tea Party. What was learned Tuesday [11/3/2009] is that the American voter is absolutely, totally, unremittingly disgusted with both political parties. More than anything, the American voter is desperate for political leadership.

Let states lead the way. Congress is on the verge of enacting the largest unfunded mandate in American history. At a time when most states are struggling with rising unemployment, declining tax revenue and the worst national economic climate in 30 years, Congress is demonstrating that it is more out of touch than ever.

Activists bring 'tea party' to Capitol Hill. With the stage set for a historic House vote on health-care reform this weekend, an estimated 10,000 conservative activists descended on Capitol Hill on Thursday [11/5/2009] for a campaign-style rally in a last-ditch effort to defeat a bill they demonized as "Pelosi-Care."

Tea Parties: Misunderstood and Vastly Underrated. Elected officials of every political stripe ought to be shaking down to their Gucci loafers and pumps. History is forming and firming up harder than the proverbial brick wall right outside their congressional glass house. Yet they seem utterly oblivious.

Patriots are asserting themselves. We The People have allowed a small group of radicals to hijack the reins of our government. The lack of our focus on civic duty, our adherence to political correctness and our silence on the blatant ignoring of our Constitution has brought us to the brink of losing our nation. There is no one to blame for these elites attempting to transform America but us. We have shown disunity and disinterest in protecting our freedoms while we ignorantly went along enjoying the fruits of our liberty.

Americans Are Messaging Each Other 'S.O.S.'. In many and varied ways, Americans are tapping out the international distress signal to each other since Washington, D.C. isn't listening. To all except the most zealous supporters of the Democratic Party, the intentions of the party in power have become clear in less than a year. It's also clear that there's not much we citizens can do about it until the 2010 elections. For now, we hunker down and watch the train wreck in slow motion.

All (opposition) politics is local. The intended consequence of the campaign for Democratic health reform has been to expand government into the most intimate, most consequential parts of our lives. But the unintended consequence has been to drive more Americans away from the idea of government-run health care and toward more personal responsibility.

Constitutionally, the next time. Thanks in great part to the new, alternative and social media, people are talking and writing about the Constitution — certainly more than I've seen in my lifetime.

The Art of Political War for Tea Parties. A specter is haunting America — the specter of a people rising. All across the nation Americans are waking up to the threat of a leftist elite determined to fundamentally change America, push through a socialist agenda, and make every citizen dependent on the state. The Obama machine is spending trillions of tax-payer dollars to finance their takeover of the American workplace and stifle the independence of the American people. But America is resilient nation, built on the principles of private property and individual freedom, and the resistance to their socialist plans has already begun.

Growing public backlash over Obamacare. Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning to feel a growing public backlash. ReversetheVote.org has already raised $123,105 that will be dedicated exclusively to defeating all 24, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in 2010 if they don't reject the final conference committee version of the bill.

Rise of an Epithet. EDITOR'S NOTE: "Teabagger" is a nasty and derisive term used by the left to mock conservative activists. If you really want to know what it means, and you aren't bothered by the vulgar details of deviant sexual practices, read this article. (Not recommended.)

The People Say No. The closer the Democratic Congress' radical health package gets to enactment, the less popular it becomes. The American people smell a rat.

Public Fears More Government Economic "Help". People are right to be fearful. We already have a $12 trillion national debt, are expected to run up at least another $10 trillion in red ink over the next decade, and face $107 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. That doesn't count the trillions that health care "reform" will cost us if it passes.

Corruption, contempt and arrogance. The American people consistently tell Congress and the administration they want the excessive spending to stop, government health care not to happen, listen to us, and corruption to be ferreted out. What we have received in return is proposed higher taxes, more corruption, we know better than you, and more spending. There is little doubt these people simply do not listen and could care less about listening to the voters.

Stand with our 9/11 Families at their Stop The Terror Trial rally in NYC Saturday at noon. If you are fed up with Barack Obama and Eric Holder's constant attacks on what is good and right about America come to New York City's Foley Square Federal Courthouse on this Saturday December 5, 2009 at 12 noon and let your voice be heard.

Jim DeMint: Tea parties can defeat Democrats. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a darling of the tea party crowd, credited that movement with blocking Democratic health care reform efforts and predicted the conservative activists behind the movement could ultimately thwart the passage of that bill and others.

Tea Partiers are mad ... and they're not going away. The growing grass-roots movement will indeed destroy the political careers of many politicians who fail to heed the warning it delivered Sept. 12, when 1.7 million angry voters (according to a crowd estimate by Zac Moilanen of Indiana University) descended on Washington to say they were totally fed up with bailouts and stimulus packages, and want the country to return to its constitutional, limited-government roots.

Why leaderless Tea Parties are beating the GOP. Rasmussen reports the Tea Party Movement, which percolated only months ago, is beating the Grand Old Party. ... Republican Party leaders should be embarrassed. Instead, the Republican establishment disdains this populist uprising. Rather than embracing this genuine movement, establishment politicians and consultants are calculating how to co-opt, sideline or even defeat the newest phenomenon in politics — tea partiers.

The Media's Top 10 Worst Economic Myths of 2009. 2009 was the year many ordinary Americans said "Enough, is enough" when it came to government bailouts and spending. CNBC's Rick Santelli called for a tea party in a rant Feb. 19. Thousands responded, rallying at hundreds of events around the country to protest on April 15 (and on a few later dates). But leading up to that day the networks were nearly silent, with only three passing mentions of the tea parties.

Republican votes bagged by Tea Party. When Stacy Mott, a stay-at-home mother of three children, started writing a blog after the election of President Barack Obama last year, she had no involvement in politics and simply wanted to vent her frustration at financial bailouts, healthcare reform and legislation to combat climate change. The former marketing executive at Toys R Us quickly found that she was not alone.

Tea Parties, Third Parties and the Republican Party. Worse than mere overexposure, according to Rasmussen polling, despite Obama's falling polls and Democrat divisions, the Republican Party would fare worse in an upcoming election than the Tea Party — a "Third Party" that, as of yet, does not exist. It is no minor issue because with the help of Tea Party activists, Republicans certainly can beat Democrats next year — without them they may not.

America's Party. For Democrats like Harry Reid, who called them "evil-mongers," and Nancy Pelosi, who called them "un-American," the NBC News poll must have hit like a sucker punch at a Georgetown wine-and-cheese. The Tea Party movement, those folks rallying against spending last spring and Obamacare in the summer town halls, are viewed more favorably than the Democratic Party.

Frontpage's Man of the Year: Glenn Beck. The year of Obamarific "change" quickly became the year of dissent as Americans grew disillusioned with the "trillion here and a trillion there" spending of President Barack Obama even as unemployment rose. ... Suddenly, the loudmouths of the Left and the poobahs of the Lame-Stream Media — who had deemed dissent to be "the highest form of patriotism" when George W. Bush occupied the White House — whistled another tune. They began savaging of opponents of the Obama regime as Nazis, racists and ignorant rubes. Their targets weren't just public figures who stood in the way of their agenda; rather, they viciously attacked ordinary Americans, the tea partiers, to whom they gave a sobriquet (tea-baggers) that no network censors would have allowed just a few years ago.

Tea Parties: The Biggest Mistake We Could Make in 2010. [Scroll down slowly] Tea Parties have been disparate, unfocused, leaderless, and might prove to be pointless in the end. There was no unifying single goal of the Tea Partiers and no agency or party directing them. This means that the raw power behind them just might go untapped because there will be no way to translate the passion to power.

For Tea Parties, Bigger Is Not Better. After reading Warner Todd Huston's article [immediately above]... I was incredulous. It seems misguided to suggest top down management in a time when big companies, big organizations, and big government have received bailouts after spending like drunken thieves or failing in the marketplace.

Black Conservatives Take Lead Role in Tea Party Movement. Though the tea party movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity, minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.

The Democrats' Political Death Wish: Harry Reid may well have given up serious hope of being re-elected in Nevada and is thus willing to go over the cliff with President Obama. The defeat of Nancy Pelosi is less likely than any of the Supreme Soviet losing one of their contests during the '70s. ... But even the modest assessments of the undertow threatening Democrats puts the loss of seats in the House nearing takeover land of 40, and as many as nine Senate seats now in play.

The Secessionist Campaign for the Republic of Vermont. On Jan. 15, in the state capital of Montpelier, nine candidates for statewide office gathered in a tiny room at the Capitol Plaza Hotel, to announce they wanted a divorce from the United States of America. ... According to a 2007 poll, they have support from at least 13% of state voters.

Kansas proclaims its sovereignty. Legislation giving Washington D.C. a firm tongue lashing was approved Thursday by the Kansas Senate. The resolution calls on the federal government to "cease and desist" from passing onerous mandates on the states. If passed by the House the resolution would be sent to the President and other federal leaders. It demands that Washington repeal existing mandates and respect Kansas' sovereignty under the 10th Amendment, which reserves for the states rights not delegated to the federal government.

Secession in the Air. [Scroll down] What called the Tea Party into existence? Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring minorities over them. What they agree upon, however, is that they have been treading water for a decade, working harder and harder with little or no improvement in their family standard of living. They see the government as taking more of their income in taxes, seeking more control over their institutions, creating entitlements for others not them, plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have saved.

We do get it, Mr. President; we just don't like it. It's a modern marvel how the increasing opposition of the American public to President Barack Obama's plans for us is explained away by administration officials and certain Democratic legislators — such as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — as a sign that the people just don't get it. A panel of pundits chatting with Charlie Rose on his talking-head fest the other evening came to the conclusion that Tea Partiers and their ilk are too stupid to know what's good for them.

At one year, a mass political movement, not a conspiracy. The tea parties are the success of everyday citizens clamoring to protect something they feel is endangered by the growth of government. These are not political mavens — they're better at running a business and a family than they are at developing talking points for prime time.

At one year, a mass political movement, not a conspiracy. One year later, the tea party protests are still the subject of much debate. The labels have shifted over time from "racist Astroturfers" and "disenchanted Republicans" to "angry mob" and now, following Sen.-elect Scott Brown's Massachusetts victory, "voting bloc." How things have changed.

For GOP, No Experience Is No Problem. Scott Rigell is best known around Virginia Beach as a car dealer. Come January, he is hoping to be known by another title: congressman. Seeking to tap into growing anti-establishment discord among voters, the Republican Party is actively seeking candidates who have never before held elected office.

Anti-Tea Party Web Site Part of Scheme to Funnel Funds. A new Web site targeting the tea parties is a part of a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country's biggest labor unions and trickling slowly into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

With absolute power, Team Obama grows stupid. [Scroll down] Team Obama overestimated the stimulative effect of the stimulus package and underestimated the strength of the spontaneous Tea Party movement that flared up in protest of this expansion of government. They underestimated as well the opposition to expanding government control over health care and, through the cap-and-trade bill, to the energy sector. And the disgust over conspicuous vote-buying on health care — the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Labor Loophole.

Sometimes "No" Is More Than a One Syllable Word. Since the election of Scott Brown to the Senate, the Democrats have once again begun to sing in unison that the Republicans are the "Party of No." ... In responding to Mr. Obama's political hocus-pocus, the Republicans would do well to remember that when it is a response to tyranny, the word "no" is a declaration of liberation.

The Re-Establishment of America: America is on the verge of something unprecedented in history: the peaceful, Constitutional replacement of our country's entire political establishment. This is what lies behind the decisions of so many elected officials, at every level, to step aside rather than fight for re-election. And it explains how the Tea Party movement can exert so much political leverage without nominating its own candidates or even without formally choosing its own leaders.

The Sliming Of The Tea Party: As the grass-roots activists meet with the Republican National Committee, the New York Times takes a look at them, deciding they are bitter people clinging to their guns. Meanwhile, leading Democrats plot their destruction.

A Green Tea Party: A revolt against economic hardship imposed by unelected bureaucrats based on junk science is brewing. This Tea Party movement wants the faulty finding on carbon dioxide to be reviewed and dumped.

Health Backlash in the States. The backlash against ObamaCare is moving beyond the Tea Parties and has now arrived in state capitals. In more than 30 states, legislators are proceeding to pass statutes or ballot initiatives that would guarantee the right to choose medical services and insurance.

States to Congress: 'Don't tread on me.'. On Wednesday [2/17/2010], the Tennessee Senate voted 26-1 to order that state's attorney general to file a constitutional challenge against any federal legislation that mandates the purchase of health insurance. Since forcing citizens to buy insurance is at the heart of the so-called "health-care reform" effort, this kind of challenge could represent a crippling blow to the Obama administration's plans.

36 States Aim to Preempt Federal Health Care Plan. The success of national health care reform legislation is still an uncertainty, but some states are already taking measures to keep federal hands off their citizens. Thursday [3/4/2010], Virginia became the first state to enact a law exempting its residents from any health insurance mandates. It's one of 36 states where lawmakers are trying to head off potential federal legislation.

Lightbulb bill aimed at asserting state rights. Frank Antenori's idea is as bright as a 100-watt lightbulb. And it's lighting up conversations at the Capitol over states' rights and the role of the federal government.

Worse than Awful. Newbies to this history-making movement may assume that they are the first Americans to ever have this anti-Washington outrage. Our schools and media certainly have not emphasized these traditions. It is somewhat analogous to Obama thinking American history started at his birth and American greatness started at his inauguration.

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday [2/26/2010] say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

Hey, Congress: You're Fired! How would Democratic and Republican leaders fare on the basic performance review that most workers encounter annually? When graded on a scale of "exceeds expectations," "meets expectations" or "fails to meet expectations," what grade would they get on improving health care? Or focusing on the economy? Or teamwork?

Change, loose change, spare change, and crooks: It's hard to fathom, but 10 percent of Americans believe Congress is doing a good or excellent job. That high, eh? The recent Rasmussen Reports survey also reveals that 71 percent of us rate Congress's job performance as poor. Additionally, the firm's polling found that only 9 percent of us think "most members of Congress are sincerely interested in helping people," while 81 percent feel they are "more interested in their own careers."

'Seditious' Conservatives Attacked in Marin County. Tea Parties have been popping up across the land to protest an ever-expanding government that is taxing more, spending more and intruding more on individual liberties. The Tea Party movement is not about subverting the Constitution but restoring constitutional governance.

Obama's Government without Love: [Scroll down] This is a government that believes it has outgrown the vision of Jefferson and Madison and the other founders of a nation based upon a love of individuals "endowed by their Creator." It is a government of privilege, bolstered by media elites — on both the right and left — convinced that the average American is "Too Dumb to Thrive," as the Time headline put it. The New York Times puts it this way: "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?" And then its reporter answered, of course — citizens "are ignorant." Tea party, anyone?

The Battle for California. [Scroll down] I estimate that there are about 350,000 to 400,000 Tea Party members and supporters in California, out of roughly 5.4 million Republican voters. That means that between 8 and 12 percent of GOP primary voters would be comfortable being identified as Tea Partiers. What's certain is that they will bring a lot of enthusiasm to the nomination. Whenever I speak at a Tea Party rally, I always ask how many people are active in politics for the first time in their lives. Typically, between 80 to 90 percent raise their hands. As someone who's been active in politics since 1981, when I was 19, I see this as an amazing phenomenon.

Tea Party Amendment. Tea Partyers have made it clear they don't trust politicians — Democrat or Republican. Their historic uprising may now have a surefire way to stop politicians from spending us into the abyss.

Tea Party Identity Theft? Trouble is simmering in the Tea Party movement over a struggle with identity theft. In Connecticut, Florida and Nevada, the Tea Party has been registered as a third political party for the 2010 election. All three parties are already involved in either recruiting candidates or preparing their campaigns for statewide races in November. The problem? In Florida and Nevada, the newly formed third parties appear to have little or no connection to the actual Tea Party movement.

Time to Stop Lying to Ourselves. The tea party grassroots revolt that has sprouted across our country is a basic expression of recognition that we have lost control of our own government and that if we are going to be a free and prosperous people, this can't go on. This year some 45 percent of our GDP, the economic production of the American people, will be taken by local, state, and federal government. Since 1970, federal government spending, adjusted for inflation, has increased by 221 percent compared to a 32-percent increase in median household income.

Weak Tea or Strong Tea? [Scroll down] Polls taken in February 2010 indicate that a little more than a third of the American population views the Tea Party movement favorably, while a bit more than 20 percent view it unfavorably. Furthermore, polls also indicate that supporters of the Tea Party movement are "more energized" than their political rivals, and such energy invariably translates into political momentum. About 40 percent of Americans neither oppose nor support the Tea Party movement — roughly half because they haven't made up their minds and half because they have not yet heard of the movement.

6,000 cheer Palin, Beck. Conservative superstars Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck called for Americans to demand a smaller government that adheres to the principles of its founding fathers during a rally in downtown Tulsa on Saturday [3/13/2010].

Let the Recalls Begin. A New Jersey state appellate court yesterday [3/16/2010] gave the green light for approval of the circulation of petitions in that state asking for a recall election to remove Democrat U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. State law in 9 states counting New Jersey specifically provides for the recall of members of Congress ... Those 9 states are represented by 12 incumbent Democratic Senators who are not otherwise up for reelection this year, potentially putting majority control of the Senate even more in play.

Are Tea Party Activists Suffering from ObamaCare Burnout? The fight against ObamaCare is a landmark in the short history of the tea party movement. It could have a profound effect on the movement's future. The tea party movement must realize effectiveness comes less from rallies and more from getting fiscal conservatives into office.

The Nation's Imminent Debt Crisis Is A Matter Of Choice — Obama's. President Obama doesn't need the recently announced National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to figure out how to prevent the debt from rising to apocalyptic proportions and ruining America for generations to come. It's not rocket science; it's a matter of presidential priorities and choices.

Harry's Easter Egg Attack. It's Halloween again in Searchlight, Nevada, where at about 3 p.m. (EST) today [3/27/2010], supporters of Harry Reid blasted eggs at the Tea Party Express bus caravan.

Is the tea party movement being hoodwinked by the establishment? It's early in the game yet, and the whole idea behind the Tea Party movement was to objectively review all of our potential choices, so we would never be led down the path again. At least that's what I thought. After today, I'll never again look at the Tea Party movement as one made up of Constitutional Conservatives. They may be Conservative, but sadly, not my brand of Conservatism. ... Sarah Palin spent Friday [3/26/2010] campaigning for John McCain against the true conservative and former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth who has a true conservative record, and is campaigning on true constitutional values.

Projection. The types of folks coming to these gatherings, the group as a whole is respectful of the hallowed place they are in and few leave trash. There have been no arrests of Tea Partiers, at least at the hands of the Park Service, indeed the Park Service has commented that at these gathering, protestors have been well behaved, mannerly, and left little trash. It is doubtful that any other group coming to protest has ever been so well mannered.

The United States Has Been Sold Out And The International Police Have Arrived. The Tea Party, Patriot and 9/12 movements are supporters of Liberty and the Constitution. They struggle against Progressive, Social Justice and left-wing ideologues. They want less government and more individual responsibility without being handicapped by government. Underlying the Tea Party and Patriot protests is anger against unchecked, corrupt, back-room secret double-dealing government. Hiding his values and agenda Mr. Obama stealthily campaigned from the center, but he's a full-throated Progressive. His acolyte Ms. Pelosi mastered triple-speak, a perverse, double-cross form of propaganda.

So all Tea Party members are racists? When you have absolutely no argument to advance, what's the easiest thing to do? Denounce your opponents as racist. ... The trouble with playing the racism card is that is an attempt to stifle dissent — what you are saying is illegitimate because your real rationale is that you hate blacks. Understandably, it drives people crazy. And just who is being racist by looking at a predominantly white crowd and leaping to the conclusion that they are all motivated by racial hatred?

America's Quiet Anger. There is a quiet anger boiling in America. It is the anger of millions of hard-working citizens who pay their bills, send in their income taxes, maintain their homes and repay their mortgage loans — and see their government reward those who do not. It is the anger of small town and Middle American folks who have never been to Manhattan...

Obama says he can't win over people 'on the fringe'. President Barack Obama stepped carefully when talking for the first time about the conservative tea party movement, acknowledging it has legitimate concerns about federal reach and spending, but he contended the core of the loose anti-government network is "on the fringe."

Do Democrats commit hate crimes against black Republicans? Given the Democratic Party's 150-year record of racist rhetoric and racial violence — from the days of slavery until today — it is astonishing to see Democrats sanctimoniously playing the race card. A display of unmitigated gall describes how Democrats are falsely comparing anti-ObamaCare protesters to the anti-civil rights racists of the 1960's who were Democrats.

Welcome to the Real Revolution, Alinsky Fans: It Ain't For Wimps Or Sissies. How far will Democrats go to ensure that their revolution against American liberty succeeds? As for me, I put nothing past them now. Will Collier has just explained in exacting detail the most probable explanation for how Nancy Pelosi (along with Axelrod and Emanuel) could have staged their "confrontation" with Tea Partiers outside the capitol on March 20. Claims that the N-word and spit were employed as weapons by Tea Partiers have yet to be corroborated by a single witness or video recording.

Tea Parties just getting started. The Tea Party movement is a healthy reminder that the United States began as a tax revolt.

Is this Kristallnacht or the Reichstag Fire? The hysteria over the "violent" right wing is just that — hysteria. The true danger here comes not from the grassroots right, but from the Astroturfed left, which is being orchestrated and trained by the Obama administration and its media minions to attack Americans who still believe in America's founding principles.

Anecdotal evidence of leftist violence in America:
The Left's Ludicrous Accusations against Tea Partiers. Every day, the Left shows us with their own actions that they are exactly what they accuse conservatives and tea partiers of being. It is astonishing that they have the gall to accuse anyone of anything.
[Italics in original.]

Tea-Party Movement: Driven by Concerns about the Economy. There has been no shortage of articles and news segments speculating on the nature of the tea partiers. Who are they? ... Some four out of ten tea-party members aren't Republican, and a third aren't conservative, painting a picture of a movement that is hardly monolithic. There's quite a bit of data to sift through, but the critical storyline that emerges is this: The tea-party movement is driven by concern about the economy and jobs.

As Peaceful as a Tea Party. Perhaps a measure of its threat to the liberal agenda, the tea party movement is being accused — with little or no supporting evidence — of using threats, insults and violence to intimidate the political process.

Enemies of the state. Over the past week, a parade of Democrats have accused members of the Tea Party movement and other opponents of Obamacare of threatening them. ... If this sounds familiar, it's because the Democrats have shown a disturbing pattern of demonizing those who disagree with them. ... If you go to church, believe in protecting innocent life, own a gun or defend your country, the Democrats consider you a potential enemy of the state. It was no coincidence that the Homeland Security report was issued just as the Tea Party movement was gaining real national traction.

Sick Thinking From 'Mainstream' Leftists. The Obama left, realizing it has really stepped in it with the American people by cramming Obamacare down our throats, has decided to blunt the backlash against it by tarring, yet again, mainstream conservatives as racists, bigots, homophobes and violent. Its tactics are objectively despicable.

Enemies of the state. During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason. When the left agitates over government policies, it's considered righteous anger. When the right -- and much of the center -- agitate, it's painted as the rantings of the criminally and violently insane.

Tea Partiers Embrace Liberty, Not Big Government. Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

Would the Founders Love ObamaCare? Powerful political forces suddenly seem to be in motion across the U.S. What they have in common is anxiety over what government has become in the first decade of the 21st century. The tea party movement is getting the most attention because it is the most vulnerable to the standard tool kit of mockery and ridicule.

Tea Party Going Mainstream? Polls Suggest Movement Gaining in Popularity. Tea Partiers have been dismissed as a fringe, but two new polls suggest the conservative movement might be going mainstream. A Rasmussen poll released Monday [4/5/2010] found more Americans identify with the Tea Party groups than with President Obama.

Where are the black tea partiers? Keith Olbermann has famously asked where the Black tea-partiers are. The Associated Press writes that they are indeed out there. They are brave to participate, too, given the hateful, racist rhetoric they report from liberals who want them to shut up and go away.

Tea Party Movement Mirrors a Deeply Divided America. US President Barack Obama came to power promising to unite the nation. Now he has divided it even more than his predecessor George W. Bush. The burgeoning conservative Tea Party movement is calling for Obama to be removed from office.

Establishment Terrified by Tea Party Movement. In talking to various Washington insiders over the last few days, I've noticed a predominant theme: The GOP establishment hasn't a clue how to manage the so-called Tea Party movement. And the Democrats are equally clueless as they try to profile and pigeonhole these new activists.

"Tea party" anti-tax rally draws 1,200 to Michigan Capitol. Approximately 1,200 people showed up at the Capitol today [4/15/2010] to protest taxes and the direction of state and federal government.

Paranoia strikes deep.
N.C. Says Tea Party Flags Are Weapons? Organizers of a tea party event planned for Thursday at the state Capitol are unhappy they can't carry flags on poles because of state officials' fears that they could be used as weapons.

Obama skips out on boisterous rally. Among the thousands of "tea party" protesters that gathered Thursday at Freedom Plaza, a [short distance] from the White House, were dozens of signs directed at President Obama, some demanding "Listen To Me!" others asking "Why Can't You Hear Us?" But the president never heard a peep from the mob of boisterous Americans, most of whom deplore the spending binge he and the Democratic Congress have been on of late.

Immigrant groups try to steal thunder from tea party. Immigrant-rights groups sought to tap some of the "tea party" thunder Thursday [4/15/2010] by using the anti-tax-and-spending movement's nationwide protests to argue illegal immigrants must be legalized because they are eager to pay their full taxes. But tea partiers, rallying on the day federal income-tax returns were due, didn't buy it.

A Heartfelt Hymn of American Redemption. Defending the Tea Party to its opponents is like explaining Bob Dylan to his critics: their ears don't hear what your heart understands. For a year now, Tea Partiers have peaceably assembled and petitioned government for the redress of grievances; and, for a year now, the political class has feared, reviled and defied them.

Reasonable Men. There is a concerted effort afoot on the part of big-state socialists to paint the Tea Party as a bunch of dangerous, hate-filled radicals with a bunch of crazy new ideas that go far beyond the pale of the traditional American political mainstream. Let's ask some reasonable men — because the Founding Fathers were surely the largest collection of reasonable men ever gathered in one place at one time in history — what they thought about the issues raised by the Tea Party movement.

Tea Partiers Epitomize the Tension Between the Individual and the State. Regardless of what you think of the tea party people and movement, it should be recognized as being part of the classic American push-pull between the rights of the individual and the purported needs of the state. Tea partiers are giving much thought to the notion that the rights of the individual supersede the rights of the state to act on behalf of everyone in the "community." This, of course, is the essence of the health care bill and its individual mandate.

America's Constitutional Revolt: So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying. ... What's so significant to me about this tea-party Contract from America is the strong emphasis on constitutional limits and restraints on legislation, spending, taxing, and government control of the economy. Undoubtedly, the emphasis is there because no one trusts Washington.

The tea partyers: It's about liberty. Truth be told, these modern-day Sons and Daughters of Liberty are wealthier than the general public and better educated. That is, they are industrious — they actually work and pay taxes — and know that tickling sensation at their knees is not someone getting fresh but the hands of Leviathan administering a continual fleecing through the hole torn in their pockets.

Poll Finds a 'Perfect Storm' of Voter Distrust in Government. Only about one in five registered voters believe they can trust the government in Washington to do the right thing "just about always" or most of the time, while an overwhelming majority say it will do the right thing only some of the time or never, according a Pew Research Center poll conducted March 11-21.

Losing faith in government. Data continues to pour in from a variety of sources indicating that faith in government is at a record low. Pew Research Center's latest survey found that only 22 percent of those polled trust the federal government "almost always or most of the time." In the Harris Poll's long-running measure of public attitudes, only 8 percent have confidence in Congress.

Grayson: Tea Partiers need mental help. Congressman Alan Grayson was in Ocala Monday [4/19/2010] ... And during a visit to the Ocala Star-Banner, the famously polarizing freshman Congressman bragged about his accomplishments and shared his views on politics, policy and the Tea Party.

Geico voice actor fired after insulting tea parties. Sometimes you have a headline that makes the rest of the story superfluous, but here's the background. Actor Lance Baxter, otherwise known as "D.C. Douglas," currently known as the man who informs you how much Geico can save you on car insurance, left a message last month with FreedomWorks in which he asked the group how many "mentally retarded" people it had on staff and what it would do when a tea partyer "killed someone."

Tea parties fight Obama's culture of dependence. [Scroll down] The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves. That is the culture of dependence. The tea partiers see things differently.

Tyranny May Be Closer than We Think. The left-wing lunatics realize that their days are numbered if they don't find a way to discredit the national movement that is poised for a landslide victory in November. They feel that the best way to accomplish that is to muzzle people by twisting their words until everything sounds racially motivated.

San Francisco Tea Party Out-Alinskys the Left. Although nearly 1,000 people filled San Francisco's Union Square for a Tax Day Tea Party, their voices reverberating off the canyon of skyscrapers, San Francisco's media elite was MIA. No surprise, San Francisco Chronicle blogger Harmon Leon was unable to shed his uber-left bias to do any objective reporting about the 2nd annual Tea Party organized by the Bay Area Patriots...

The Phantom Tea Party Threat. [T]here is no evidence that enthusiastic criticism of Obama administration policies will lead to violence. In fact, the Tea Party movement is a result — not a cause — of the frustration and anger many Americans feel today. The only threat it poses is to the status quo of big government activism.

Smearing the Tea Party: Liberals are portraying the Tea Party movement as fostering violence and sedition. During a recent appearance on NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein said that much of the heated political rhetoric, "especially the [statements] coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious." ... The charges against Tea Partiers are not only false, but brazenly hypocritical.

Big-government extremism. The rising wave of popular activism in the United States is ritually derided by liberal commentators, politicians and academics as fringe-movement politics. But recent polling reveals that skepticism about government is broad and deep. Discontent with Washington has become the mainstream position; those who defend big government are the real extremists.

Who is Really Motivated by Race? Although it is to the great credit of representatives and apologists for "the Tea Party" movement that they have (thus far) refused to be intimidated, unfortunately, they have gone to great lengths in adopting precisely that posture of defensiveness into which the Left unfailingly and, hence, artfully, manages to corner all of its opponents.

Festering for decades. The latest Pew Research Center survey of public opinion shows that Americans trust their government even less than they did before. Apparently, nearly half of us think "the federal government threatens" our "personal rights and freedoms," while almost a third considers the Feds a "major threat." The body designed to represent the views of the American people — the U.S. Congress — has the approval of less than one in five of us.

Obama's Amused. We Are Not. With casual derision, President Obama recently dismissed the people in the tea party movement and their little rallies as "amusing." It's a shame we can't find him amusing. Everybody needs to remember this coming November, and again in 2012, that Obama and his cronies are sitting around the castle they think of as theirs, laughing at the powerless fools and peasants who dare to question his messianic authority.

A Whiff of Revolution. There is a whiff of revolution in the air and that is why the White House and Far Left are leveling the bogus charge that the Tea Partiers are all violent neo-Nazi types. It is not beyond this White House to deliberately provoke violence. There have already been isolated incidents of Tea Partiers being attacked by union goons. Since the White House operates on the basis of one questionable "crisis" to another to impose unwanted laws, nothing can be ruled out by these community organizers.

The President's Permanent TARP Bailout Socialism Bill: The Tea Party, with overwhelming agreement from the America people, opposes any further TARP bank bailouts. But just as with the health care bill, Washington's ruling Democrats are laughing off the Tea Party, and ignoring the American people. President Obama's so-called Financial Regulatory Reform bill institutionalizes permanent TARP bailout authority across the entire financial sector, indeed, for any company that can be deemed involved in financial activity of any sort. Washington is operating today as if we have been conquered by a foreign power that has suspended our democracy and doesn't care what the American people think.

More about the stimulus bill a/k/a TARP.

When Will They Take Us Seriously? When voters attending a Tea Party are surveyed about their top concerns, the answers will be emphatic and varied: unemployment at almost ten percent with no decline in sight. An $800-billion-plus stimulus bill that has accomplished absolutely nothing. Iran well on its way to a nuclear bomb. Skyrocketing debt. A state immigration law which mirrors federal law, yet which President Obama says is "misguided" and threatens "basic notions of fairness."

Does Obama Have Something Against Cops? On his show Wednesday [4/28/2010], [Rush] Limbaugh pointed out that: [1] The mainstream media has been notably silent on the violent protests against the law — unlike their coverage of the tea party movement — ignoring incidents of vandalism and other attacks on supporters of the law. [2] President Obama and his administration has leaped to the conclusion that police would abuse the powers the law would give them while ignoring the fact that illegal immigrants are breaking the law. [3] The sheer cost to taxpayers of illegals using local, state and federal welfare systems has been utterly ignored in the debate.

Limited Government is Essential to Preserve Liberty. Since its conception, one principle essential to the United States of America has been limited government. It was for this concept that the Revolution was fought: the colonists' right to form their own government, small enough that individuals were in control of their own lives. When the British government began imposing heavy taxes on the American colonies, the forefathers fought for a government that allowed individuals to control their lives.

Obama takes direct aim at anti-government rhetoric. In a blunt caution to political friend and foe, President Barack Obama said Saturday [5/1/2010] that partisan rants and name-calling under the guise of legitimate discourse pose a serious danger to America's democracy, and may incite "extreme elements" to violence.

Obama all but accuses critics of stoking anti-government violence. [Scroll down] And by tut-tutting about violence on the heels of earlier comments trying to delegitimize critics of big government, the suggestion that people who criticize his government are stoking violence is pretty clearly telegraphed. Which is one heck of a charge coming from a guy who spent years working side-by-side with an actual, unrepentant anti-government terrorist, and has lied his head off about it ever since.

Hmmm... I think he's talking about Obama's old pal, Bill Ayers.

The Extreme Left: A Ticking Time Bomb. The Mainstream media (MSM) is currently peddling the Obama Administration myth that patriotic Americans, many of whom have served in our military or who otherwise have an American flag hanging proudly in their front yards, pose a grave threat to our nation's security. We have seen calls for Republican leaders to denounce Tea-Partiers and other activist groups opposed to Obama's agenda. We are currently seeing our nation's Department of Justice being hijacked to score political points for the Far-Left.

The Bully Party. Some liberals suffer from a pathological inability to refer to the Tea Party by its name, preferring a crude and infantile sexual epithet. The folks waving signs and holding peaceful rallies have been insulted as fakes, wackos, ignoramuses, racists, nihilists, and hicks suffering from status anxiety. But when a poll revealed the Tea Party movement is better educated and wealthier than the electorate at large, a prominent Washington Post columnist summarily dismissed the movement as the "populism of the privileged."

President Obama: GOP Opposition to Stimulus 'Helped to Create the Tea-Baggers'. Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.

Pro-immigration violence escalates. Compare the media's hostile treatment of peaceful Tea Party protests to the sometimes violent leftist demonstrations against Arizona's law. No Tea Party demonstrators have been arrested during anti-government gatherings, and none has thrown rocks or broken bottles at police.

Racial profiling: It's only cool if it DOESN'T save lives. Everyone knows that Islamic extremists have targeted the United States as well as other Western countries, yet the current administration and its allies have decided not to refer to Islamic terrorism because it might hurt someone's feelings. Thus, when the recent New York City car-bomb incident occurred, everyone from Mayor Bloomberg to Attorney General Eric Holder was holding out hope for the possibility that the culprit might have been white, middle-aged and angry about taxes — in other words, a stereotypical tea-party protester.

Tea Parties and Racism: Get used to it, Tea Partiers: You are going to be called racists. A Google search on "racism tea parties" gets 190,000 hits. Fortunately, I am a self-appointed one-man rescue squad to help beleaguered Tea Partiers fight back. Having written about "racism" for over two decades (this, for example) while being regularly vilified for my racial views, I can speak with some authority on being smeared. Fighting back begins with understanding how this accusation is manufactured — and "manufactured" is the correct word.

'Tea party' clout: What was learned from Sen. Robert Bennett loss. To be sure, the elimination of incumbent Senator Bennett in the race for the Republican nomination is the most concrete political accomplishment yet of the tea party movement, which opposed him.

The 'Tea Party' of the 1930s. President Obama's stimulus bill passed in February of last year is what ignited an initial storm of protest that has been followed by a growing wave of political activism. In 1937, the equivalent spark was newly reelected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's February 1937 proposal, buttressed by a March fireside chat, to pack the Supreme Court with six additional justices friendly to the New Deal's statism and hostile to the original intent of the Constitution.

The Way Back. Many of us can agree that the T.E.A. Party has not only served to raise awareness of a majority of the center-right constituents of this country, but at the same time has begun to accomplish two other things. First; [it] has made sufficient inroads as to cause a fearful reaction from the progressive left. Second; it has begun the process of pulling the Republican Party back to its conservative roots.

Another Very Bad Night for Obama, Democrats, and the Media. The very notion of Washington as a control center and hub of intellectual power and great solutions is by definition a liberal ideal. Washington is Mecca to the Democrat liberal base. By contrast, the city and all it represents are anathema to progress and prosperity for the Republican base voters... you know, the tea party types. Yesterday [5/18/2010] was another sound rebuke of Washington as defined by liberals and thus another big day for the mindset of the tea party movement.

King Street Patriots: King Street Patriots takes its name from the original group of patriots who demonstrated in the streets of Boston in 1770 in response to confiscatory British policies enacted against the colonists. King Street was known as the hub of historic and patriotic acts of community activism. The Boston Massacre, tar and featherings, marches of the Sons of Liberty, routings of the Tea Party, and the ride of Paul Revere all unfolded on this cobblestone road. The protestations of King Street's activists sparked rebellion among the colonies and eventually culminated in the American Revolution.

This is an anti-liberal — not an anti-incumbent — wave. The lesson thus far in the 2010 midterms: If you've supported Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in their quest to vastly expand the size of government, you're toast.

2010: Anti-Incumbent, Anti-Liberal, or Anti-Democrat? The historical record provides no support for 2010 being a generalized anti-incumbent year; the elections to date this cycle in major statewide races certainly don't support this scenario either.

The 'anti-incumbent' canard — 2010 is something else. My 11th grade American History teacher was a good teacher and a total liberal. The day after the 1994 elections, she mumbled something about "anti-incumbent fever." I went home and checked the newspaper, and confirmed that every single Republican senator and House member seeking reelection had won that day. The only Republican incumbent to lose in 1994 was liberal Republican David Levy who lost his primary to conservative Daniel Frisa.

Tea Parties vs. Unions in November. Elections this month have enhanced the political clout of two groups widely separated on the political spectrum. The tea party movement stands to play an outsize role in the fall elections now that outsider Rand Paul has swept Kentucky's GOP Senate primary, while unions provided the muscle for Democrats to win a key special election in Pennsylvania.

More about the role of labor unions as pawns of the Democrat Party.

The left's intolerance of tea. The left is aghast at today's Tea Party movement. How could Americans of any stripe be so appalled at the exercise of the constitutional right to speak out against big, intrusive — yet unresponsive — government? Our Founders would no doubt be amused at the irony. It was after all, those same issues that provoked them in the first place. Of course, today's liberals would have hated that Tea Party, too.

Is Tea Brewing In Colorado? Kentucky may not be the only state where a Tea Party candidate upsets the establishment GOP candidate. In Colorado straw polls held in March, Republican voters gave a narrow edge to Tea Party favorite and prosecutor Ken Buck over former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in the race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. Tea Partyers don't trust Norton because her brother-in-law, Charlie Black, advised the 2008 McCain campaign and is a powerful Washington lobbyist.

Constitution is this year's big best-seller. Demand for copies of the U.S. Constitution is skyrocketing. The increased interest comes amid the rise of the Tea Party movement and as both parties cite the Constitution to advance their agendas. The pocket edition of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence ranked 10th on the Government Printing Office's (GPO) best-seller list in March.

Once-sneering big shots must now give 'Tea' service. At first, they were ignored. Then they were mocked. Next, they were roundly smeared and scorned. Today, the Tea Party movement has in its grip the trembling attention of both Democrats and Republicans.

May Primaries and the Coming Electoral Tsunami. In the face of mocking media coverage wherein they were demeaned as "tea baggers," or castigated as "seditious" by the likes of Bill Clinton, the Tea Party supporters pressed forward. Assembling in vast numbers in major gatherings on April 15, July 4, and September 12 of 2009, they gathered to tell both the Federal Government and their less assertive fellow citizens of their abhorrence for the unconstitutional actions by which America is being transformed from its glorious founding.

In God We Trust... In Government? Not So Much. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 80% of Americans don't trust their own government. Could it really be that Americans actually do trust their government... to do the wrong thing with remarkable consistency? Trust is based on an assumption that the person or thing in whom one places trust will act predictably and responsibly. It appears from the poll results that came out in early April that the government does neither, at least in the minds of four out of five citizens.

Tea Parties A Hopeful Sign That We're Not All Brain-Dead. The only bright light on the horizon is coming from the fast growing Tea Parties that are unafraid of stepping on the toes of the multicultural advocates who care nothing about our national security. These grassroots groups are composed of Americans who have a finer sense of American history than those who've emerged from Ivy League academia totally brainwashed in Marxism.

Letting Rand Paul Twist in the Wind. How are we to get the country back on the course set by its Founders if we cannot stand with the Rand Pauls of the nation on the bedrock principle of maximum personal liberty?

How Did We Get There? [Scroll down] Today, it is estimated that two-thirds to three-fourths of federal government expenditures do not have a foundation in its enumerated powers, and nearly all of the regulatory agencies are without any Constitutional foundation. How did we get there? ... The Tea Party has made a start on the reclamation effort. It seems to recognize that every dollar spent by the federal government is extracted under threat of imprisonment from one of our fellow citizens. The journey back to liberty will be long, and it will be difficult.

Obama and Media Minions Inspire Violence. Most assuredly, the tea parties are not about racism or hate. The truth is quite the opposite. The tea parties are about love; love for the greatest nation on the planet and a fervent desire not to see it transformed into something unrecognizable. The Tea Party Movement is no more complicated than that. So where did the New Black Panther Party get the erroneous idea that the tea party patriots are, as Janeane Garofalo says, "a bunch of redneck racist against a black president"? The unfortunate answer is the Obama media machine.

Primary Lessons. [Scroll down] While primary challenges from the Left sputtered, Tea Party-backed conservatives scored several successes. Most prominently, Sharron Angle, until recently a relative unknown, rode the Tea Party movement's support to victory in a crowded field for Nevada's Republican nomination for the Senate. Although Tea Party spending to support Angle's candidacy was limited compared to Big Labor's efforts in Arkansas — the Tea Party political action committee spent just $550,000 to boost her name recognition — it was far more effective: From a 5 percent approval rating as recently as April, Angle went on to win the nomination. Tea Party-backed candidates also won in Georgia, Maine and South Carolina.

GOP picks NV tea party candidate in Reid battle. Nevada Republicans Tuesday [6/8/2010] picked tea party insurgent Sharron Angle to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, marking the start of an epic showdown between a king of Capitol Hill and a conservative renegade who wants to turn Washington on end.

Video: Tea Party participant stuns the crowd.

Wanting to Abolish the Department of Education Is Not Radical. Newly minted Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle is a kook: That's what Sen. Harry Reid's people are telling reporters. ABC, CNN, and other outlets seem to agree, noting that Mrs. Angle wants to shutter the federal Department of Education, get the U.S. out of the U.N., phase out Social Security, and eliminate the IRS.

Some Advice for the Tea Party: Take Your Time and Learn from Your Mistakes. [Scroll down] It is extraordinarily difficult to unseat an incumbent at the national level, and frankly, many of the Tea Party candidates have not been stellar political campaigners. Again, this is not surprising. Many of the challengers are running for public office for the first time. Some do not know how to run competent campaigns, many are woefully underfunded, and few know how to pick apart an incumbent's voting record and get that information to the voters.

Congressional brutality. Congressional Democrats went on a rampage three months ago to paint Tea Party activists as violent extremists, despite zero evidence that the movement's rallies have been anything but peaceful.

Tea Party Movement Is Also About Traditional Morality, Congressman Says. The Tea Party movement and its grassroots political activists are defined by loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, limited government and individual liberty — not social issues such as abortion. That's what one analyst argued at a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Wednesday [6/16/2010].

Obama is in over his head. [Scroll down] Thus do the Democrats steel themselves to face a furious electorate: "What deficit? We don't have no stinking deficit. We haven't even passed a budget yet." Democrats in the rank and file appear to understand that this will not work in the age of Tea Party activism.

Loss Of Faith. In a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 adults taken last Friday and Saturday, nearly half, or 48%, said they see government today as a threat to their rights. Just 37% disagreed. The poll also found that only one in five (21%) believe current government has the consent of the governed. In other words, people think much of what our government does today is illegitimate — possibly even illegal.

48% See Government Today As A Threat to Individual Rights. Nearly half of American Adults see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Adults see the government today as a threat to rights. Thirty-seven percent (37%) hold the opposite view. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Party Like It's 1773. Tea party activists are on a roll at the ballot box which bodes well for the election of responsible conservatives in November.

Where Did the Tea-Party Anger Come From? [Scroll down] After 18 months, the people feel they have been had -- in the way that a blow-dried mansion living, philandering John Edwards is hardly an advocate for the "other America", or green-scheming, instant multi-millionaire Al Gore is hardly a disinterested advocate for welcoming reasonable debate about a sustainable planet. Prophets fall harder, especially when "we are the ones we've been waiting for" prove to be a reflective of the Chicago way, the snooty ineptness of the Harvard lounge, and the shrill leftism of SEIU.

Tea Parties That Look Like America. This is from today's long (and on the whole not bad) USA Today article on the tea parties and tea partiers. But there's something a little odd about that term "scattering." That "scattering" is (as is suggested later in the same sentence) pretty hefty — 23 percent of tea partiers are, according to the survey, non-white Anglos. How does this compare to the nation's adults as a whole? They're 25 percent non-white Anglos. So tea partiers are — in this as in other respects — a startlingly representative demographic group.

Sour Grapes. The Left and the media have been exposed for the frauds they are, and they've spent too much time in the sunlight now to ever go back into hiding. They have shown themselves to be wolves in sheep's clothing, and they have no one's interest at heart save their own. They've proven repeatedly that party loyalty is more important to them than the prosperity of their own country.

Yes, We Can't! The Republicans cannot afford to lose both houses again, even by a nose. If Obama has Pelosi and Reid (or Schumer) as partners for 2011 and 2012, he can bury this country under layers of leftist legislation which no subsequent President could unravel. Anytime you must win at all costs, you are not likely to coast.

Had Enough "Hope and Change"? Tea Partiers are people who have a more sophisticated understanding of current events than those who describe themselves as anti-Tea Party. Anyone who doesn't realize that the exploding federal debt represents a serious threat to our future either is a fool, or doesn't have children. The responses on terrorism are interesting, too: there is evidently a common thread between obliviousness to the dangers of debts we can't pay and to the dangers of Islamic terrorism, but it is hard to see what that common thread might be, other than blind, stupid loyalty to the Democratic Party.

The Blood of the Tea Party. I've never participated in a Tea Party rally. My natural habitat is a classroom or behind a keyboard. That said, I've had a lot of contact with Tea Party people, and, of course, I hear the angry charges from those doing their worst to discredit the movement.

America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. [Scroll down] Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified. The polls tell us that only about a fifth of Americans trust the government to do the right thing. The rest expect that it will do more harm than good and are no longer afraid to say so.

Americans Say Government and Politicians Are Bigger Problems. Americans now believe that government and politicians are bigger problems for the country than illegal immigration, health care, disaster response or even the federal debt.

Scott Brown: Is He Stupid or Corrupt? In one of the greatest upsets in modern political history, the people of Massachusetts, sick and tired of the free spending, economy destroying ways of Obama and Democrats in Washington, came together to elect Republican Scott Brown to take over Ed Kennedy's old Senate seat with the intention of ushering in a new age of federal fiscal responsibility. But what a sorry joke that has turned out to be.

Lott confirms he's a paid tool of the Washington Establishment. Any possible shred of doubt remaining in anybody's mind about former Senate GOP leader Trent Lott's true allegiance have now been definitively removed: Lott is a paid tool of the Washington Establishment who hates the Tea Party and all other insurgents who have had it with politics-as-usual.

Barack Obama's Endless Crises: Even with a corrupt, compliant liberal media in the role of constant Obama booster, 62% of the country senses that we are headed in the wrong direction. The country has been driven to this opinion by Obama's flagrant ideological radicalism, which might have been forgiven had it not led to our most pernicious crisis, that of worsening joblessness. Only Obama and Joe Biden believe that the job trajectory in America is positive.

Bachmann: Why I Called for a Tea Party Caucus. I called for a Tea Party Caucus to bring members' attention to the cries of everyday Americans who are asking for a return to the fundamental principles contained within our nation's greatest document, the Constitution. Americans from all locations and backgrounds have united through Tea Parties to spread the timeless messages of fiscal responsibility and limited government.

Goading the tea parties. As the coordinator of the San Francisco Tea Party, I have considerable experience dealing with the conservative grassroots (yes, there are really conservatives in the Bay Area) and with a perpetually angry and emotionally driven leftwing. What the White House and its minions have done by wagging the racist finger at the tea parties is simply deplorable.

Confessions of a 'Right Wing Extremist'. I am unable to vote for a Presidential candidate, but instead I am forced to vote against the other candidate... holding my nose when I depress the lever to vote. I believe I am not alone in my thinking, and that a significant number of people either vote their conscience like I do or they don't vote at all. Perhaps the fact that less than a half the eligible voters in any given election bother to cast their votes is a reflection of this dissatisfaction. The days of a thought leader who inspired your vote are a distant memory.

Conservatives rally around the Tenth Amendment. It's only 28 words long: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is having a powerful effect on conservative ideology these days. Libertarian activists are citing the amendment with renewed fervor and many politicians have been heard reciting it recently as well.

Trusted Most — Men with Guns. Public confidence in Congress has plummeted to the lowest level of any institution since Gallup began asking the question in 1973. One-half of all Americans have little or no confidence in the Congress. Only 11 percent have a "great deal" or "a lot of" confidence in what is, given its place of primacy in the Constitution, the first branch of government and the branch most representative of the people.

Why Are We Beginning to Hate Congress? Lately, Congress seems not merely corrupt, but — far more worrisome — without apparent concern that it has become so unethical.

Our Patrick Henry Moment Is Here. Obama's election was supposed to transform America, at least in his mind. This country's first socialist president strode into office confident that he would remake this country. Fortunately for the country, the timing of his election was twenty, if not fifty, years too late. Socialism has failed in its pure form wherever it has been tried. Now it has failed in its modified form. While much of the world realizes this, President Obama is either ignorant or has more sinister plans for the country.

The Threat to Personal Liberty. The Tea Party defines itself as in favor of more limited government, but the progressives are slandering it as a racist movement. Given the media's acquiescence in the budding collective tyranny of the progressives' New Regime, the opposition message is distorted, muffled, and too often unclear.

Dems accused of tea party tampering. Nationally, Democrats say they intend to campaign against the tea party movement. But locally, Democratic officials and activists in at least four states now stand accused of collaborating with tea party candidates in an attempt to sabotage Republican challengers in some of the closest House races in the nation. The charges of dirty tricks are being leveled in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida — and they involve more than a half-dozen contests that could tip the balance of power in the House.

From Cordoba to Marbella. Last summer's town halls quickly morphed into the Tea Party movement and, in turn, into open rebellion by states and voters alike. Through all of this, the political class, locked in its parochial self-aggrandizing bubble, sees nothing amiss.

1913 Was a Very Bad Year. Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make. Almost a hundred years later, it's clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people stuff the Genie back in to the bottle?

Tea Party's inception a rebirth. The birth of the Tea Party movement is generally traced to February 2009, just a few weeks after President Obama's inauguration. While Rick Santelli's famous rant on CNBC was the spark that ignited Tea Party gatherings across the nation and gave it its name, the movement's genesis was in progress long before that fateful day.

The Tea Party and the Spider's Web. From its inception, the mission of the Tea Party has confounded liberals, Democrats, establishment Republicans, most of the news media — and just about everyone else whose positions and power rely on big government, or who consider The New York Times a reliable source of news.

A Tea Party Manifesto. On Feb. 9, 2009, Mary Rakovich, a recently laid-off automotive engineer, set out for a convention center in Fort Myers, Fla. with protest signs, a cooler of water and the courage of her convictions. She felt compelled to act, having grown increasingly alarmed at the explosion of earmarks, bailouts and government spending in the waning years of the Bush administration. President Barack Obama, joined by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, was in town promoting his plan to spend a trillion dollars in borrowed money to "stimulate" the economy. Mary didn't know it, but she was on the front lines of a grass-roots revolution that was brewing across the nation.

Shared Sacrifice in Obamaland. Over the last fifty years, the federal government has run budget deficits exactly 90 percent of the time. The American people, however, never seemed very concerned about it. But with the advent of the Great Recession and a quantum jump in the size of the deficits, folks have become truly alarmed. In fact, the federal deficit is one of the main concerns of the Tea Party movement.

America's Insurgent Pollster. You can tell it's a volatile political year when a balding, middle-aged pollster gets a standing ovation from hundreds of state legislators after delivering the news that only 23% of the people in this country believe today's federal government has the consent of the governed. "Americans don't want to be governed from the left or the right," Scott Rasmussen tells the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conference of 1,500 conservative and moderate legislators. "They want, like the Founding Fathers, to largely govern themselves with Washington in a supporting — but not dominant — role. The tea party movement is today's updated expression of that sentiment."

Obamacare could sink Obama.
The Tea Party rose in reaction to bad policy. Nikki Phelps struggled against kidney cancer for 10 years, depleting the life savings of her family and eventually causing them to sell their home in order to supply her with Sutent, a common treatment for cancer. Her insurance company refused to buy the drug. Her insurance company was the government of England, which through its National Health Service, refused to supply her with this drug. She died this spring.

More about socialized medicine in England.

The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated. Last August left little doubt that a conservative revival was underway. Constituents packed town-hall meetings across the country to confront Democratic House members and senators ill-prepared to explain why, in the teeth of a historic economic downturn and nearly 10% employment, President Obama and his party were pressing ahead with costly health-care legislation instead of reining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth. Still, whether that revival would have staying power was very much open to question.

Tea Party Turning Into A Tidal Wave. The defeat of Alaska's Lisa Murkowski by a little-known conservative lawyer is the latest evidence of a tidal wave building that may sweep aside an out-of-touch establishment. "We the people" won't be ignored.

It's another Tea Party win as Alaska's Murkowski concedes. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday night [8/31/2010] conceded the Republican primary election to Joe Miller, the tea party backed challenger who maintained his Election Day lead after thousands of additional absentee and other ballots were counted through the day.

The Righteous Tea Party Stampede Continues. The left wing kook fringe has issued a fatwa against Dick Armey, Chairman of FreedomWorks and one of the most recognizable promoters of the tea party crusade. Armey has recently called for a hostile tea party takeover of the Republican Party, and perhaps concerned that such a takeover might succeed, thereby completely transforming our decrepit two-party system, the left has decided to initiate hostilities of its own. FreedomWorks has determined that the threats issued against it are credible enough to justify a move to more secure headquarters.

The Legacy Will Not Be Betrayed. The Obama administration, the Democrats in Congress, the media, and the rest of the Progressive establishment are shocked and surprised by the depth of reaction the majority of the American people have displayed against their statist ideology, as personified by the "Restoring Honor" rally and the overwhelming success of the Tea Party movement. The left's lashing out on a personal level and reversion to playground name-calling exemplifies the depth of their astonishment.

Civic Engagement. Amidst panels and assorted conversations at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, I am struck by how the very people who claim to be most eager to see a revival of American civic engagement and citizen activism are also the ones who seem most hostile to the Tea Party movement. What do they think civic activism looks like? A Norman Rockwell painting of a New England town meeting? The fact is, the Tea Party movement is the best example of spontaneous, engaged, and constructive citizen activism we have seen since the civil rights movement.

Predatory Governance. The American federal government increasingly resembles a redistribution racket that is run by operatives who call themselves public servants. Many of us have been blind to this because we have been brainwashed by the decades of government propaganda dispensed through the public school system, universities, and the media. But the behavior of the political class has recently become so brazen and outrageous that scales are falling from people's eyes everywhere.

The Second Declaration Of Independence. The historic rebellion that is stirring the minds and moving the hearts of Americans is peaceful and high-minded. It is led by patriots and aimed at restoring America to its authentic condition of excellence and freedom. And it is as inevitable and welcome as the triumph of good over evil. Smart also always beats dumb.

We Are the Ones Who'll Show You the Door. [Scroll down] While "anger" is the template word popular among the legacy media, it doesn't fully capture the public mood. It misses the insult and offense we feel from a ruling class in Congress, led by the White House, who think it more effective to drive Americans like cattle than lead us as civil servants. We will follow, but we won't be herded. We've been irrevocably offended by their smug condescension and insulted by their collective arrogance — mostly by Democrats, but not solely so — and the Jeremiah Wright chickens are close to home.

Ohio Town Won't Allow Tea Party to Celebrate U.S. Constitution in Town Square. Local officials in Ohio's Andover Township have denied the use of their public square for a celebration of Constitution Day because of the "political affiliation" of its organizers.

Upset By the GOP Upsets? Them's the Breaks. Another week, another primary. What can last night's elections tell us about this year's midterms? If you're an incumbent, you're vulnerable. ... In election after election since 2008, and especially notable in the last two weeks, GOP incumbents have been beaten by conservative candidates backed by the Tea Party. The Tea Party hasn't won all the races it's fought for, but it's a force to be reckoned with.

Tea Party Protesters Put on Terror List. An activist who believes he was improperly included on a state terror threat list said this morning he is preparing a federal lawsuit. "When people's civil rights are trampled it's a federal issue," said Gene Stilp of Harrisburg, who holds a Virginia law license but does not practice as an attorney.

Party hacks need to taste the Tea or they're toast. No matter how many cups of tea get thrown in their faces, Republicans around here keep forgetting just how scalding hot it is. It is like they still don't get what this whole Tea Party movement is about.

Stop mocking the Tea Party: If anyone is nuts, it's the elites and incumbents. Tuesday night [9/14/2010] was a terrible evening for political operatives because people voted with their conscience, not along party lines. Elites aren't happy about it, and even the GOP is fuming. Meanwhile, Washington Democrats are trying desperately to paint anti-establishment candidates as a pack of crazies. They're hoping to distract the public from the more pressing issues that have their party's polls in the dumps. Sure, many that comprise this new wave of politics are atypical. They aren't polished. They're not carefully scripted, and they lack TelePrompTers, pedigree and cozy friendships with Karl Rove. Because of it, political consultants and "insiders" insist they're wacky. However, the popularity of their message shows that they're anything but.

A Great Awakening. Both the RINOS and their Democratic counterparts have been showing sneering contempt for the voters for a long time and they are about to pay dearly for it. ... The Republican party does not have a clear voice or message and they haven't had either for a long time. It is now the Tea Partiers who are speaking for the nation's Republican voters. And they are speaking on behalf of good old fashioned American values.

Honor the Constitution's limits. Today's 223rd anniversary of the promulgation of the U.S. Constitution occurs as Americans increasingly insist the federal government honor constitutional limits on federal power. The backlash against overweening government is boiling over in the Tea Party movement, town-hall meetings, demonstrations on the National Mall and in polling data.

10 most endangered incumbents in November 2010. If it's an anti-incumbent year, for example, both parties should be in equal jeopardy. One thing that's not in dispute is that an unusually large number of officeholders start the fall campaign season far behind their challengers.

It's time to stop mocking the Tea Party. Whether they are loons, principled conservatives, or a mix of both, they are a potent force that won't be intimidated off the national stage by snarky media coverage and clueless attacks from the establishment.

Why the Tea Parties Aren't a Third Party. The two-party system is a popular scapegoat among those who feel disenfranchised. Yet 2010 shows that our system works.

Barack Obama's planned assault on the Tea Party smacks of desperation. The New York Times has a major piece this morning [9/20/2010] outlining the White House's response to last week's dramatic surge in Republican primaries by Tea Party candidates. After months of mocking and sneering at the Tea Party movement and largely ignoring its rising success, Obama's advisers are now contemplating a major campaign against it.

Are social cons really being left behind by the tea party? So called Social Conservatives have an agenda, with which you may or may not agree, but until Obama-Reid-Pelosi and Co. declare it illegal and monitor the internet and other forms of mass media to insure it is never mentioned, it is a valid point of view. What is telling, however, is how the Tea Party Movement has grown exponentially over the past 19 months or so without needing any part of the Social Conservative agenda to help them along.

The Counter-Revolution Has Begun. The Tea Party victories of last week have clearly revealed the movement for what it actually is: not a tantrum, not a voter mutiny, not a short-term insurrection, but something never actually seen before in this country — it is a counter-revolution.

Social Conservatives Left Behind? [Scroll down] The real challenge in American politics today is to constrain and reverse the past decade's accumulation of money and power in Washington. And in that effort the tea party movement is on the front lines.

7 Things The Establishment Gets Wrong About The Tea Party. [#1] The Tea Partiers have a radical agenda! This oft made charge is extremely odd. After all, what are the issues that keep coming up over and over and over when you talk to Tea Partiers? They want to get spending under control, fear that the federal government is getting too big, and they want to stick to the Constitution. Not only are none of those radical beliefs, the overwhelming majority of politicians in BOTH parties would agree in principle with all 3 items.

Obama's Tea Party Attack. According to the New York Times, President Obama's political advisers are considering a national ad campaign which will attempt to convince Americans that Tea Party "radicals" are "taking over" the Republican Party. Such a strategy demonstrates two things: first, Democrat ideologues have bought into their own propaganda regarding the composition and objectives of the movement; second, as a result of those erroneous assumptions, Democrats are convinced that tying the Tea Party to Republicans would be detrimental to the GOP.

A wave of rage with no U-turn. Senior Democrats are reluctantly concluding that it's time to hit the panic button. They understand that it's not a characteristic of a tsunami to make a U-turn, and the hour is growing late. ... Suddenly it's fashionable in certain skeptical precincts to start being nicer about the "tea party."

The Organizational Secret of the Tea Parties. The Tea Parties comprise a distributed network — a non-hierarchical system of autonomous nodes with no central control point, and with all nodes possessing the same value and freedom to act independently. A distributed network can be compared to a beehive. All the bees know their particular task and complete it autonomously, without directions from a central authority. If a threat appears, the bees overwhelm it not by direct confrontation, but by swarming, driving it away with sheer force of numbers.

Tea Party Movement A Political Tsunami, Thanks To Internet. Type TeaPartyPatriots.org into your Web browser, and the roots of the upstart political movement are quickly exposed.

The big gov't crowd. The Tea Party movement may have arisen to protest rising deficits and increasing federal control of everything from health care to the auto industry — but the big-government coalition it's fighting wasn't born in Washington. The federal agenda that the movement is now battling to overturn originated in state capitals like Albany, Trenton and Sacramento. This agenda has been promoted with growing success in the last 50 years by a self-interested coalition of public-sector unions and social-advocacy groups that benefit from bigger government, higher taxes and more public control of the economy.

Gallup Poll Finds 30 Percent of Americans Now Support Tea Party. The number of Americans who say they identify with the Tea Party has remained remarkably consistent — and not declined as the liberal media had predicted. A recent Gallup Poll (taken Aug. 27-30), finds that 30 percent of Americans say they are supporters of the Tea Party movement, while 27 percent say they are opponents — a 2 percent increase in support since March. The remainder were neutral or did not have an opinion.

Tea-Party Movement Gathers Strength. The tea party has emerged as a potent force in American politics and a center of gravity within the Republican Party, with a large majority of Republicans showing an affinity for the movement that has repeatedly bucked the GOP leadership this year, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found. In the survey, 71% of Republicans described themselves as tea-party supporters, saying they had a favorable image of the movement or hoped tea- party candidates would do well in the Nov. 2 elections.

Tea-Party affiliated group seeks constitutional change. A Tea Party activist is working to get state backing for a constitutional convention to pass a constitutional amendment that would give two-thirds of the states the ability to repeal congressional acts, such as the new health care law. "It restores a lot of the sovereignty and a lot of the power that the states have lost," said Marianne Moran, executive director of RepealAmendment.org and *former executive director of Tea Party In Action.
[Inexplicable asterisk in original.]

Pat Boone talks about organizing the first Beverly Hills Tea Party. In 104-degree weather last weekend, legendary entertainer Pat Boone helped attract 600 Tea Partiers to a rally in Beverly Hills, Calif., the backyard of some of the country's most outspoken liberal celebrities.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, blasts Tea Party in op-ed. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, takes to the pages of USA Today to attack the Tea Party. Did anyone warn him that he might be inadvertently pumping up the wrong party's base?

Democrat Dirty Tricks: A Primer on Stealing Elections. [Scroll down] One of the most potent movements in modern American politics has been the breathtaking rise of the Tea Party and its focus on fiscal discipline and responsibility — traits antithetical to most Democratic politicians. The movement is gaining not just self-described adherents, but also large numbers of sympathizers. The Tea Party has focused attention on areas that make many Democrats vulnerable. Hence, the Tea Party has earned the wrath of Democrats.

Why I am a black Tea Party patriot opposed to Barack Obama. Obama was marketed as a "new" kind of politician. Hogwash! Black America has suffered the devastating consequences of numerous Obamas, mostly whites ones, for many years.

Jefferson and the roots of the 'liberty movement'. It may be the Tea Party movement which encapsulates Jefferson's philosophy best in the modern era. Like the Democrats, it sees itself as the advocate of the everyday American. Like the Republicans, it promotes individual rights above all. And unlike both of them, the Tea Party movement stands with Jefferson in opposition to big government and centralized control over individual decisions.

A Reform the Tea Party Should Embrace. Gerrymandering is a perfect example of bloated corruption in American government today. Ending gerrymandering is not hard. Congress could pass a very simple statute like this: "All legislative districts in the United States shall be drawn compact, contiguous, and as nearly as possible along existing county or parish borders."

Thousands gather for Tea Party rally at Sam Houston Race Park. Thousands of Tea Party supporters who rallied Saturday [10/16/2010] at Sam Houston Race Park say their focus was on the voters — not the candidates — in the upcoming election. "It's grassroots people speaking their minds and relieving their frustrations," said Tea Party supporter Bill Hughes.

There's No Avoiding 'Repeal and Replace'. Scores of House and Senate candidates are campaigning on a platform of reestablishing limited government. There could hardly be a more encouraging development for our republic. After decades of legislators' piling countless new programs on top of old ones, and two years of the most intense tax-and-spend binge ever conducted by an administration, government finances have reached the breaking point. Something is going to give, and probably sooner rather than later.

'Tea party' hopefuls target Education Department. Conservatives have talked wistfully for years about eliminating the Education Department, but a host of Republican "tea party" candidates this election year are saying it's time to move beyond talk and force Congress to vote. From West Virginia to Kentucky to Nevada, GOP Senate candidates have said they favor elimination of the Cabinet office, created as a separate department by President Carter in 1979 to elevate the federal government's profile on what had been considered a primarily local concern.

Sheila Jackson Lee wants DOJ to monitor tea partiers at polls. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether tea party groups are intimidating black and Hispanic voters in her district. Jackson Lee has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to send poll monitors to her district on Nov. 2 to make sure the King Street Patriots, a local conservative voter turnout and tea party group, aren't stopping people from voting.

More about leftist voter fraud.

Tea Party Could Put Record Number of Black Conservatives in Office. Despite allegations of racism in Tea Party organizations, the Republican Party, and conservative groups, 2010 has witnessed more black Republican activism than ever before. Thirty-seven African Americans in 16 states have been in contention for seats in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives this year. Fox News reports, "The Republican Party is hoping to put a record number of African Americans in Congress.

Constructing the Buzzword 'Extreme': Alinsky Rules 11 & 13. If you are paying attention to the politics surrounding the midterm elections — and, for the good of the country, you should be — then you have, no doubt, heard almost everyone from the Left side of the aisle using the word "extreme" where the Tea Party is concerned. To a lesser extent they use it to describe the Conservative movement as a whole but without doubt, it is the descriptor of choice when anyone of the Liberal or Progressive persuasion talks about the Tea Party. This tactic comes straight from the Progressive playbook.

Obama's Grand Strategic Error. Some day the president and his lefty friends are going to have to understand that, in a crisis, most people will not react like peasants with pitchforks, 1930s auto-workers in Detroit, or the laid-off steelworkers that the young Obama organized in South Chicago. Ordinary middle-class Americans do not sit around waiting for some radical suit to turn up and organize them into a "community." Ordinary middle-class Americans get on the Internet and start to organize on their own.

The Tea Party's Other Half. In our new survey, we found libertarians were 48 percent of Tea Partiers, versus 51 percent who held traditional conservative views. We defined traditional conservatives as agreeing that "the less government the better," and that "the free market can handle these problems without government being involved," but also believing that "the government should promote traditional values." Tea Party libertarians agreed that less government is better, and prefer free markets, but believe that "the government should not favor any particular set of values."

In the aftermath of the 2010 mid-term elections:

For tea party activists, battle has just begun. For voters and political activists who dictated the course of the 2010 elections with their cause of limited government and debt reduction, Tuesday's outcome doesn't signal the war has been won. The struggle, they say, now has entered a tougher phase.

The Biggest Winner: The Tea Party Movement. The American Tea Party Movement is the biggest winner of Tuesday's election. Not all Tea Party candidates needed to win to confirm that the movement is a powerful force forever changing the landscape of U.S. politics. No longer will Democrats and Republicans get away with conspiring together to make back room deals, governing against the will of the people. The new battle cry of the Tea Party Movement is "hold their feet to the fire".

Tuesday's Election Was a Vote to Bring the 19th Century to an End. Hope and Change is leading to the same results that anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the 20th century, with its New Deals, Five-Year Plans, Great Leaps Forward, and Great Societies, would have expected. The voters have seen two years of it, and they have had enough.

What President Obama Didn't Learn at Harvard. [Scroll down] Conservatives should heed the wisdom of the young Marco Rubio. He said his party had been given "a second chance." He understands that all power in this Great Republic is on loan. There should be no talk of permanent majorities or an electoral lock. Both parties have lost their way. By giving Republicans the House and Democrats the Senate, the voters sent a strong message: You answer to us.

The Public Is Watching. Removing the snake from the garden with a stick was a rejection of the snake, but should not be seen as particularly an endorsement of the stick — except as the closest available tool with which to eject the snake. The stick should not be seen as a substitute snake. That was the tone after the election in which there was a general agreement that the election was a broad and deep repudiation of the president's policies and administration, while also not being an endorsement of the GOP.

America Just Checked Into Rehab. On Tuesday [11/2/2010] voters rejected President Obama's attempt to remake America in the image of an imploding Europe — not just by overwhelmingly electing Republican candidates in the House, but by preferring dozens of maverick conservatives who ran against establishment Washington. Why the near-historic rebuke? Out-of-control spending, unchecked borrowing, vast new entitlements and unsustainable debt — all at a time of economic stagnation.

The Election's Done; What Now? The statist ideology of Progressivism first shaped federal law in 1890 and has moved forward for 120 years, reshaping the states and cities along the way. ... Most of the U.S. electorate comfortably accepted it all as time passed until Obamacrat overreaching outraged its sensibilities, resulting in the Tea Parties. That awakening would likely not have happened but for the widespread unemployment accompanying the 2008 bank collapse. Tea Parties are not National Review conservatives, standing before the Progressives yelling stop! Their general thrust is radical; they want Progressivism extirpated, gone; they want to restore the Constitution the Founders had in mind. Many of them maybe haven't thought about the details.

The fight is not over. Don't declare victory just because Republicans elected a few more senators and gained control of the House of Representatives on Tuesday. It's not about victory for Republicans; it's about preserving the Republic — and those are two very different things.

God Bless the Tea Party. What is most striking about this election is the rising up of a huge popular movement with virtually no visible national leader — a movement spontaneously arising out of the refusal to lose the country our Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the others) built solidly on certain fixed, eternal principles: firm principles about the dignity and responsibility before God of every woman and man, about the freedom of the economy from State management (but not from necessary State regulation), and about the universal opportunity of every citizen to rise as far as their talents and hard work will take them.

It's Not Political Correctness but Brutal Liberal McCarthyism. On Monday [10/25/2010], Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz proclaimed at a campaign rally that "unlike at a Tea Party, no swastikas are found at our [Democrat] rallies." At the same time, during a television interview, Rob Reiner, a well-known actor and film producer, screeched that "the Tea Party is made up of people who could fall prey to a charismatic leader such as Hitler." In effect, these and other liberals have painted regular, grassroots American citizens exercising their political rights as closet Nazis.

Police Chief, Sergeant Fired After Tea Party Involvement. The Tawakoni Area Tea Party is up in arms because the police chief and a sergeant at the West Tawakoni Police Department were fired after being involved in the Tea Party. Police Chief Jack Schultz and Sgt. Johnny Beckett were fired Oct. 20, according to internal documents obtained by [KXAS-TV] using the Texas Open Records Act.

God Bless Barack Obama. In literature, deus ex machina refers to a plot device which resolves what appears to pose an intractable problem. And, as I explain, I think Obama is ours — a character who appears out of nowhere with a cast of appointees so preposterous and an agenda so irrational and offensive to Americans that he has shocked us out of our torpor, inducing millions of us out of our comfy chairs and to the barricades.

Fighting the Progressive Takeover of State Courts. The demand for a return to constitutional limits on government power, exemplified by millions of citizens across the country joining in rallies, events, and civic groups loosely under the banner of the Tea Party movement, is not limited to the executive and legislative branches.

Leasing Your Life From The State. One of the many beneficial side effects of driving Democrats out of power is that they become more open about their beliefs when they're panicked. Such a moment came on Megyn Kelly's Fox News program on Wednesday [12/8/2010], when Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) freaked out over the estate tax. ... This is one of the purest expressions of reflexive Marxist impulse in recent memory. You don't own anything in the mind of the Democrat Party. It all belongs to the State, and it always did. You are allowed to keep what our wise and benevolent masters decide to let you keep, and when you die, they're entitled to take it all back.

Obama's Blind Spot. The public objects to having an ideology so far removed from middle-American thinking and policy proposals — which attendees at town hall meeting after town hall meeting expressly rejected — jammed down its throat, and the people fear for the future of America. Peter Heck, in American Thinker, argues that there is an electoral divide in the nation that clearly delineates the left from the right in terms of political philosophy and positions on contemporary issues.

Resolution to be introduced demanding all legislation cite Constitutional authorization. New Jersey Republican Rep. Scott Garrett plans to introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives Tuesday [12/7/2010] that would require all legislation to cite an enumerated power in the Constitution that grants authority for the bill's mandate. Garrett, founder and chairman of the House Constitution Caucus, told The Daily Caller that the resolution is the direct result of the American people's expressed desire for Congress to return to its Constitutional roots.

Why Constitutional Conservatism Is Ascending. If 2009 was the year of birth of the Tea Party movement, 2010 was the year of ascendancy of constitutional conservatism. In many ways, the movements are the same — except, perhaps, that the Tea Party is a movement of political activism by people who weren't traditionally activists, and constitutional conservatism represents an awakening about the way back to American exceptionalism.

Make Congress obey the Constitution. Congressional Democrats led by outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi are so intent on expanding government that they deny the Constitution imposes any limits on their power. Rep. Scott Garrett, New Jersey Republican, insists federal lawmakers be blocked from exceeding its authority. On Tuesday [12/7/2010], he offered a resolution that will serve as an acid test to see whether the incoming Congress is serious about limiting government.

The 'Unexpected' Consequences of Progressivism: The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, submitted his final budget in 2000 for the 2001 fiscal year. It was $1.9 trillion. The 2011 federal budget submitted by Barack Obama? $3.8 trillion. In other words, federal spending has doubled in ten years. Question for my fellow Americans: has your income doubled in the last ten years? Or perhaps more to the point, has everyone who pays taxes doubled their income?

Top Ten Tea Party Patriots of the Year. Number ten on my list are first-time candidates. Folks, do you have any idea the courage it took for these concerned citizens to step into the political arena? Talk about the Christians vs. the lions; the ruling class elites and their liberal media minions attempted to, without mercy, eat our first-time Tea Party candidates alive. Remarkably, several Tea Party candidates rose victorious. Kudos to these brave "true patriot" souls.

House GOP considers constitutional test for all new legislation. House GOP transition team leaders will recommend a change to the lower chamber's rules that would require all members to prove that their legislation is constitutional.

Omnibus crash: Another Tea Party win. The Tea Party movement did America another huge favor last week. The Democratic leadership in Congress had managed to go a whole year without passing a federal budget bill. As it did with the health care bill and others in the past two years, the party had manufactured a "crisis" with a sudden deadline (the government might shut down!) in hope of passing a humongous spending bill.

Now Is Obama Actually Saving Christmas? There have been numerous columns and essays theorizing that the Obama presidency saved the nation by waking up an apolitical and apathetic nation. Were it not for his aggressive left-wing, socialist agenda there would be no rise of a tea party electorate to steer the country in the right direction before it collapsed like other western governments in Europe.

Getting America Back On Track. [Scroll down] That the Tea Party candidates for election hitched themselves to the Republican wagon in 2010 was a gift, not a permanent condition. Steamroll them at your peril, and trust me when I tell you that America is a razor's edge away from establishing a viable third political party if the current two continue to insist on committing fiscal suicide. Millions of Americans will not go quietly toward impending Greece-hood.

Don't put a lot of trust in the Republican party.
Pitchforks and Torches. In the aftermath of an historic midterm election victory, Republicans allowed Obama to set the agenda, frame the issues, and spin the results of the 2010 lame duck session of Congress. Obama has managed to transform himself from a repudiated election-night loser into an action-oriented, take-charge leader pushing through controversial legislation with seconds on the clock as the Republican party of no seems only too eager to help in a misguided show of bipartisanship. Obama has managed to pass a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, secure ratification of the flawed START nuclear treaty, and pass legislation assisting 9/11 responders in a lame duck session. Where are the bold Republicans who proclaimed the end of Obama's agenda on election night?

Obama's Year-End Victory Lap. As the President crows about his accomplishments, a key Republican senator says the GOP has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in a Congress the voters repudiated.

Tea party activists seeing red over Delaware's green initiatives. They're not exactly money, and they're not a direct government handout. But they are seen as the state-backed boost that solar and wind energy need to compete with power generated from fossil fuels in the coming decade. Trouble is, they may be the next target for Delaware tea party activists, who see them as wasteful government intervention into the free market system that just end up costing consumers more for electricity.

More about wind and solar energy.

American Majority wants to infuse new Tea Party blood in system. The Ryun brothers want to infuse new Tea Party blood into the political system. So the veteran politicos behind the conservative American Majority organization are putting their energy into training novice Tea Party candidates running for a school board, city council or state senate seat in your town.

Tea Partiers and the Spirit of Giving. By now everyone knows that the dramatic November election was not an endorsement of Republicanism, but rather a rebellion against expansionist government and an attempt to re-establish America's culture of free enterprise. The tea party activists behind the wave — and more importantly, the nearly one-third of Americans who classify themselves as "supporters" of the movement, according to Gallup — endure endless abuse from the politicians they have dethroned and the pundits they have challenged.

The Four Questions Every Liberal Must Be Asked. [Scroll down] The America we've known up to now is over. And Republican 2010 campaign pledges to bring federal spending down to — wow! — 2008 levels simply doesn't cut it. Even a balanced budget is not enough. What we need is a Surplus Budget and we need it now, not next year, not in 5 years from now...even if it means financial pain, which it will. An ounce of hurt now is going to be a whole lot better than a pound of excruciating pain later.

The Top Three Tea Party Questions. If you are a part of the Tea Party movement, you might sometimes wonder, "What can I do?" Well, you can memorize, or print out and carry in your pocket, these three questions: 1. Which article of the Constitution gives government the authority to do this? 2. How does this help reduce the deficit and balance the budget? 3. Why does this have to be mandatory and not voluntary? It matters not what the topic may be; these three questions are fundamental.

Is the Republican Party Finished? The last two weeks ought to have sickened conservatives. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spectacularly failed to hold his caucus together to even delay ratification of the START treaty until the 112th Congress is seated in January. ... The Republicans do not pursue their agenda ruthlessly because they do not have one — at least not a conservative one that differs substantially from the Democratic agenda. The capitulation to the lame-duck Democrats is merely the latest in a decades-long series of episodes in which Republicans have actively colluded with Democrats to push the left-wing agenda of the 1960s forward.

Dear Congressman Boehner, It is time to end "business as usual." I am a life time conservative and a member of the Naples Tea Party in Naples, Florida. At last February's Conservative Political Action Conference, you were asked how you would handle the Tea Partiers if you became majority speaker. You promised to listen to us and said, "I'll pledge to you right here, right now, that we're going to run the House differently." We'll soon see if you are ready to keep that promise.

Sen. Lindsey Graham Changes His Tune On Tea Party, Now Likes It A Lot. Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Meet the Press [1/2/2011] and shared with host David Gregory his enthusiasm for welcoming new Tea Party influenced candidates to Washington.

Hoyer: Tea Party People Come From Unhappy Families. On the eve of his demotion by voters from House Majority Leader to House Minority Whip, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Hoyer offered this insight into the psychology of the Tea Party movement. ... The Tea Party movement is not motivated by, as its members claim, record-high levels of spending and debt by the federal government and the possible economic consequences of that. It is not upset by the various federal bailouts of recent years. It is not riled up by a stagnant economy with 9.8% unemployment. No, they go to rallies because it is easier than going home apparently.

The Problem with Printing Money: The Federal Reserve's dramatic new intervention into the U.S. economy — a $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds that was immediately branded with the nautical nickname of QE2 — had barely gotten underway in November 2010 before the Fed itself began sending signals that it had a public-relations disaster on its hands.

Three Gifts from the Tea Parties: The Tea Parties have given America three precious gifts. They haven't done a perfect job with any of their three political benefactions. But a blueprint for continuing political success has been drawn up and, at least during the first round of elections, has been semi-successfully implemented. I focus here on the positive nature of these gifts and offer some advice for how the Tea Parties can, and must, build upon their achievements to be even more effective in the future.

Tea Party vs. United Methodist Church. A prominent Tea Party activist recently called for shutting down the 7.8 million United Methodist Church, exciting the Huffington Post and various liberal bloggers. Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips last month saw and disliked a banner at the Methodist Building on Capitol Hill demanding: "Pass the DREAM Act." ... He recalled having left Methodism as a teenager because the denomination is "little more than the first Church of Karl Marx" and the "'religious arm' of socialism." ... The United Methodist Church's official support for "single-payer" health care prompted U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly to thank the denomination by name for helping to pass Obamacare, shocking many previously oblivious church members.

Reid: Tea Party Will 'Disappear' Once Economy Improves. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has a message for Tea Party activists who have upended the political landscape in the past two years: Don't quit your day job. The Nevada Democrat, who prevailed last November in a tough re-election race against Tea Party-backed candidate Sharron Angle, isn't convinced that the movement will be a lasting political force.

America's Wake-Up Call. I believe the Obama administration and Congress have greatly underestimated the shift to the right this country has taken. Certainly the Tea Party movement has been instrumental in highlighting this (not driving the shift, but highlighting the shift). America is divided right now. It is divided between the Producers and the Consumers.

What Our Constitution Permits: Here's the House of Representatives new rule: "A bill or joint resolution may not be introduced unless the sponsor has submitted for printing in the Congressional Record a statement citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or joint resolution." Unless a congressional bill or resolution meets this requirement, it cannot be introduced. If the House of Representatives had the courage to follow through on this rule, their ability to spend and confer legislative favors would be virtually eliminated. Also, if the rule were to be applied to existing law, they'd wind up repealing at least two-thirds to three-quarters of congressional spending.

Breitbart Speaks to Media at Tea Party Convention. Addressing the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, [Andrew] Breitbart accused the press of "contempt for the American people." "In order to create the perception that the minority is the majority and the majority is not just the minority, but a bad, racist, homophobic, all those buzzwords that they learned in the freshman orientation class at Wesleyan, are used as weapons to try to destroy you and intimidate you to not speak up and to speak your mind," said Breitbart to an enthusiastic crowd.

As counter-media fuels tea party movement, main stream media catches on. Recounting the exploits of two young reporters who went undercover to uncover the ACORN scandal, online publisher Andrew Breitbart on Saturday exhorted a widely held view among those in the tea party movement: Liberals and media organizations "can no longer control the narrative."

Sweet Tea for Convention Attendees. If you read any of the extensive coverage of the Tea Party Convention going on this weekend in Nashville, TN, be prepared for dramatic stories of rampant grassroots infighting, questionable convention finances, and radical convention-goers flocking after polarizing demagogues. The real story? Much different.

'Birther' Movement Rears Head in Nashville. [Joseph] Farah, a conservative newsman whose raison d'etre of late has been to challenge Obama's eligibility to be president, used the bulk of his remarks to hit that point — and got quite a welcome reception from the hundreds of tea partiers in the room. "Where's the birth certificate?" he asked, echoing the words from a controversial billboard campaign he started. "It's a simple question and it has not been answered."

Media descends on Nashville for first national Tea Party Convention. At Nashville's Gaylord Hotel, where grassroots activists paid more than $500 each to attend the first National Tea Party Convention, the national press has descended. This is despite initial reports that most media outlets would be barred from the Tennessee Ballroom. "Unlike the promises of this administration, we actually have C-SPAN covering our convention," convention spokesman Mark A. Skoda said.

The State of Sarah's Union. Sarah Palin's speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville showcased all of the former Alaska governor's strengths. She was confident, funny, down-to-earth, at times emotional — and she took a scalpel to the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. Ignore the critics who will say Palin spent too much time looking at her notes; her off-the-cuff approach and decision not to use a TelePrompTer was clearly calculated to highlight President Obama's reliance on scripted events and canned speeches.

Palin Brings Tea Party Convention To Its Feet. If Sarah Palin is the future of the conservative movement, then one thing can be certain: leadership isn't going to suffer from a lack of support. Her keynote speech at the Tea Party Convention brought the audience to their feet eight separate times, and every major point was followed with applause, whoops, and cheers.

Populist Constitutionalism and the Tea Party: The Tea Party is a unique populist movement and moment in American history. There is no charismatic leader of the party. The Tea Party has more grass roots movers, shakers, and members, than any populist movement ever seen in our country. So what makes it so different from previous populist political factions?

Nashville storyline: MSM at Tea Party. Distrust of the mainstream media has been among the strongest sentiments uniting philosophically diverse tea party activists, who almost universally believe the national media have purposefully underestimated their ranks, highlighted their extremes or portrayed them as racists, rednecks or worse — that is, when it wasn't ignoring them completely.

Bill Maher: Tea Party Protesters Just a Bunch of Stupid Cultists. The left's comedic mud-slingers have been working overtime lately. Bill Maher injected his latest bit of invective Friday [2/19/2010] when he labeled the Tea Party movement a "cult" and hurled epithets at major conservative figures. Angry that Americans would dare object to his particular brand of ultra-liberal politics, Maher has recieved a bit of press lately for his unending stream of hatred for anyone who disagrees with him.

Nashville Shows Tea Party Is America's Third Great Awakening. I attended this past weekend's National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important. The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger: America's Third Great Awakening.

Breitbart's Keynote Address To The First National Tea Party Convention. [This article includes] the entirety of Andrew Breitbart's remarks during his Keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend. During Breitbart's 33 minute long address, he threatens to upend the entire media establishment, calling them out on their hypocrisy while demanding they change their ways, or else.

Black Tea in Houston. It's a tea party unlike any Houston, and perhaps the entire country, has ever seen. The first Black Tea Party held its inaugural meeting Tuesday night [1/18/2011] in the Third Ward. Organizers of the Crispus Attucks Tea Party are quick to point out that anyone is welcome and it's not a political party.

Regarding The Black Tea Party. Daily, Obama-zilla is devouring our freedom, liberty and culture; destroying America as we know it. Desperate times require desperate measures. So, while the concept of blacks feeling the need to have separate conservative groups is not my cup of tea, I gladly welcome the fresh troops to join our team, expanding our ranks, to help defeat the vile beast.

Abortion as a Tea Party Issue. What do you do after a repeal — a repeal that is stalled in the obstinate Harry Reid-run Senate? Move on to HR-3, to do something that the old leadership claimed it had done: keep taxpayer money out of the business of funding abortion. As Boehner said while introducing HR-3: "A ban on taxpayer funding of abortion is the will of the people and ought to be the law of the land. But current law — particularly as enforced by this administration — does not reflect the will of the people."

More about taxpayer funded abortions.
More about Obama and abortion.

Why States Must Nullify Unconstitutional Acts of Congress. The U.S. Constitution, which created the federal government, permits Congress to make laws only on those few objects which are listed in the Constitution. The objects on which Congress has authority to make laws applicable throughout our Country are itemized at Art. I, Sec. 8, clauses 1-16 (and in a few of the Amendments). Since the Federalist Papers are the most authoritative commentary on the true meaning of the Constitution, let us see what those Papers say about the extent of Congress' legislative powers.

Republicans Fear Tea Party Will Be a Spoiler. I heard about a high school which never allowed a student to graduate on stage pregnant in its long history. A law suit filed by the ACLU on behalf of one student resulted in 23 students graduating on stage pregnant the following year. You get what you tolerate. ... On occasion, for the greater good, it may be wise to vote for the lesser of two evils. But in general, we will not continue to be enablers to those who betray us.

Cutting the Full $100 Billion: If there was ever any doubt about it, yesterday [2/9/2011] removed it — the Tea Party has arrived on Capitol Hill. The revolt of freshman and conservative Republicans over spending cuts for this fiscal year ended almost before it began, because it prevailed so rapidly. The rebellion started in rumblings back in the lawmakers' districts; gathered in the defiance of Republican dissenters on the appropriations committee; and reached full force at yesterday's conference meeting, knocking GOP leaders back on their heels and quickly convincing them to give in to the Tea Party's demands.

South Texas Tea Party regroups. Instead of seeking shelter during perhaps the worst ice storm in Corpus Christi history, about 70 local Tea Partiers met on North Padre Island. Settling in to the dining room of the Holiday Inn Sun Spree on Feb. 3, they pinned red, white and blue name tags to their parkas and sweaters, pledged allegiance to the U.S. flag, said a prayer and got under way.

Tea Party members should take a prayer in their hearts to Wisconsin. It will take as much common sense, as it will courage, to be a Tea Party protester in union-made-ugly Wisconsin today. Ditto for the rest of the states when President Obama gets to unleash his union thugs on the people he was purportedly elected to represent.

Tea Partiers strike back in Madison. Thousands of Tea Partiers gathered in Madison on Saturday [2/19/2011], in an effort to rally support for newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker's deficit reduction plan. Likely 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, local Madison and Milwaukee conservative radio host Vicki McKenna, Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoff, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher and conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart each took their shots at the union bosses who were gathering their supporters on the other side of the state capitol building.

More about the teachers' unions and the Wisconsin protests.

Union operative attempts to destroy Tea Party rally's speaker system. Police officers in Madison detained and subsequently released a labor union operative who attempted, somewhat successfully, to destroy the speaker system at the Tea Party counter rally Saturday. Police would not release the name of the man, or any more details, but eyewitnesses told The Daily Caller he ripped the wiring out of several different speaker systems. Part of the sound system went out for about five minutes.

More about strife and violence associated with organized labor.
and Which party promotes hate speech and violence?

Tepid Tea. [The House Republicans'] pathetic excuse for federal budget cuts betrays the 2010 electoral mandate of the American people ... If John Boehner's tears are shed only for his personal climb out of poverty into power, then he should retire from public service and go sit on his laurels somewhere. The American people are outraged at what the "elites" are doing to this country, and if John Boehner and his coterie of Republican followers haven't got the stomach to stand up to them, then they should get out of the way of people who do.

Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Get the Boot. Mayor Carlos Alvarez of Miami-Dade County Florida lost a recall election yesterday [3/15/2011], and it wasn't close. He lost his job with 88 percent of the voters against him.

Angry voters oust Miami-Dade mayor in special vote. Voters in Miami-Dade, one of the most populous U.S. counties, removed Mayor Carlos Alvarez from office in a special vote on Tuesday triggered by popular anger over a hike in property taxes.

The Tea Party's principled stand. After the midterm elections last fall, speculation mounted about the actual effect the newly elected Tea Party candidates would have in Washington. Would they remain loyal to the principles of fiscal discipline they preached on the campaign trail or would the election be a hollow victory lacking in substantive change? We received the first clue to the answer to that question this week when many of the Tea Party favorites expressed their opposition to voting for the continuing resolution. Despite the bill passing 271-158 in the House, 54 Republicans voted against it, the biggest GOP defection from a budget bill this year.

Electorate Energized in the Sunshine State. Politicians in both parties should cast their eyes towards Miami if they believe they can continue to ignore the will of the electorate. Republican Mayor Carlos Alvarez who was first elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2008, was given the boot in a recall election that was stunning in terms of percentages. With one hundred percent of the vote counted, 88% of Miami-Dade voters decided enough was enough. What did Alvarez in? Tax hikes, raises for members of his inner circle, and an ill-fated decision to have taxpayers underwrite a portion of the building costs for a new Florida Marlins baseball stadium.

Do Republicans Want the White House? The Tea Party Movement (TPM) emerged as a wrench, perhaps not unexpectedly but with unanticipated energy, tossed into the progressive machine. Consequently, über-progressive Democrats, like Senators Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, simply label the TPM based on their experience of it. Anyone, or anything, that gets in their way is, by definition, "extremist" — a label used by tyrants, big and small, throughout history to refer to their opponents.

48% Say Their Views Closer to Tea Party Than Congress. In the ongoing budget-cutting debate in Washington, some congressional Democrats have accused their Republican opponents of being held captive by the Tea Party movement, but voters like the Tea Party more than Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters say when it comes to the major issues facing the country, their views are closer to the average Tea Party member as opposed to the average member of Congress. Just 22% say their views are closest to those of the average congressman. Even more (30%) aren't sure.

Dictating is Easy; Leading is Hard. They were happier times. Headier times. President Barack Obama and his Democrats held strong majorities in both the House and Senate. Dreams of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" were at hand. Best of all, nobody could stop them, and they reveled in it. ... Fun times, fun times. But they're over now. The American people responded as Americans do, the Tea Party movement arose, and when November came they flipped the House to the GOP and left the Democrats barely hanging onto control in the Senate. It was just enough change in the overall power structure to quell the hijinks.

Canada Throws Its Own Tea Party. Canada's conservatives roll to victory on a platform of lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoiding climate-change legislation, promoting Arctic sovereignty and upping military spending. Is the GOP listening?

Use the Constitution to cut spending. The public debt now exceeds $14.3 trillion, the Treasury is empty, and after next week, it'll be nearly impossible to issue new debt without a vote of Congress. Such a vote ought not to happen unless major budget reforms put an end to the current, unsustainable spending spree in Washington. Fortunately, the Republican congressional leadership is looking for the best way to force Washington to spend only what it takes in from tax revenue over the long haul.

Throw out the bums before Election Day. In Wymore, Conn., voters got fed up with a councilman who kept leaving meetings. So, on Tuesday, they voted him out in a recall election. It's part of a nationwide pattern as people discover that they don't have to wait until the next election to throw the bums out. In Chattanooga, Tenn., a recall effort against Democratic Mayor Ron Littlefield has been tied up in court since September. Organizers who filed an appeal are not giving up, and they say they expect the case to go to the Tennessee Supreme Court. In Florida, tax-happy Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, a Republican, was recalled on March 15 when 88 percent of voters gave him the boot.

Tea Party Doctor Issues Obamacare Debate Challenge. If you were stuck reading just the mainstream media, you would probably have no idea that there is a growing movement among doctors to oppose President Barack Obama's health care plan. Dr. Adam Dorin, who practices medicine in southern California, has helped co-found an offshoot of the Tea Party known as The Doctors National TEA Party.

Government Won't Let Failure Stand In Way Of Its Expansion. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources and much more. There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. The idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering. Yet ... Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields.

Confession of a Reluctant Tea-Partier. My family came to the United States [from the Soviet Union] the day before the Thanksgiving of 1987. ... When candidate Obama showed up, I realized that I had heard his typical stump speech every single day of my old Soviet life from big and small Communist party bosses — the same structure, the same cadences, the same bogeymen, the same demagoguery, the same targets. The American people had no defense against this rhetoric. The result of the elections was totally predictable.

Obama will Resign and for Good Reason. It is now widely acknowledged that the mainstream media ran interference for him, ignoring or disparaging those who questioned his eligibility. After two and a half years in office, however, his arrogance and incompetence is so manifest that even they can no longer cover for him. Obama has single handedly generated a mass political movement called the Tea Party and election results for governors and members of Congress have put opposition candidates into office.

Residing In Speechworld Lets Obama Fake Reality. The Democrats seem to have given up on budgets. Hey, who can blame them? They've got a ballpark figure: Let's raise $2 trillion in revenue every year, and then spend $4 trillion. That seems to work pretty well, so why get hung up on a lot of fine print?

A Stealth Tax Hike. The White House wants Republicans to agree to tax increases that no one wants to call tax increases, and for an insight into this political method let's focus on one proposal in particular -- the phase-out of itemized deductions for upper-income taxpayers. We hope the tea party is paying attention, because this kind of maneuver is why people hate Washington.

No, Americans Don't Want Higher Taxes. Four of five Americans are "sold" on higher taxes to solve the deficit impasse, according to President Obama. Either he's deceiving himself or he completely misunderstands how the public really feels.

Blaming It All On the Tea Party. For two years now, "Blame the Tea Party First" has been the Democrats' favorite mantra. "Firsters" invoke the Tea Party to make sense — for themselves — of the otherwise inexplicable fact of large-scale public opposition to President Obama, and they hold the Tea Party responsible for many of the nation's deeper problems, from incivility in our discourse to an inability to set aside intransigent partisanship.

Blaming the Tea Party? Better Get Your Facts Straight. Fact One — Tea Partiers' opposition to tax hikes didn't bring us to this brink. Washington's indifference to spending did. Fact Two — Tea Partiers didn't create these deficits. Washington did. Fact Three — Tea Partiers didn't wreck the budget this year. Try Democrats, who had total control of Washington, not even offering a budget at all... last year. Fact Four — Tea Partiers aren't the reason we're up against another debt limit. Washington is.

The Tea Party, Right About Everything. Nothing Democrats did helped; everything they did hurt. Everything. Min wage. TARP. Stimulus. ObamaCare. The Gulf oil spill. Every budget they ever proposed, written or not. Every little czar they put in place to spend other people's money and to bully the only productive people still toiling away at the thankless tasks of making stuff and providing jobs. At every point, the Tea Party and its sympathizers tried to stop these idiocies, only to be called ignorant racists.

Tea Party Movement outnumbers Obama Libs. Even in the midst of all the Obama Regime destruction, America has something to celebrate: Tea Party Patriots are keeping Obama from completing his threatened Fundamental Transformation of America.

The Masses Rise Up. Al Gore says we need an "American Spring" to match the dubious Arab Spring. If his liberal friends stopped calling the Tea Partyers terrorists, they might realize that our uprising is a Tea Party Summer.

Tea Party Terrorists. According to the website Politico, Vice President Joe Biden agreed "with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting" that congressional tea party members "acted like terrorists" in the way they stood against attempts to raise taxes and force spending reductions as part of the debt-ceiling deal. Biden denied making the comparison. Given the heated rhetoric behind and in front of the scenes, the use of such a phrase, particularly in light of Biden's known salty language, has credibility.

Dems' Risky Tea Party Smear Strategy. If I were a producer at NPR or CNN or Fox, and I wanted the "Tea Party person" on my show to ask the location of the party's terror cells, who would I call as an official spokesperson? ... My point is that the Tea Party isn't really a political party, certainly not when it comes to the kind of enormous powers liberals are magically ascribing to it. It is a movement more than a party. And rarely has a movement been so anonymous, so faceless.

John Kerry: Media Has "Responsibility" To "Not Give Equal Time" To Tea Party. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday [8/5/2011] that the media has the responsibility to not give equal time or credence to the Tea Party's views.

Anticipating the Coming Convulsions as the Welfare State Dies. The Tea Party has dared to speak the truth, and the uncomfortable realities it has pointed out have destroyed the bogus consensus that has allowed the debt Titanic to sail giddily on toward the iceberg. That's why the establishment response is to demonize the popular movement. We're "terrorists" or "lunatics" or, bizarrely, "hobbits." Our crime is telling the truth.

T-Phobia. Tea Party Phobia seems to be upsetting political tummies all over DC. The other week Veep Joe Biden and Senator Kerry were heard shrieking like a pair of old steam whistles. Joe called the Moms and Pops of the Tea Party "terrorists" — maybe because they inspire terror in Joe when he sobers up enough to read the latest Gallup poll. As for Kerry, ole' John told Fox News the media weren't supposed to give equal time to the Tea Party.

Tea Party Group Slams Rep. Waters Over Outburst. A national Tea Party group urged Democrats to adhere to their own calls for civility after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters told a restless crowd over the weekend that the "Tea Party can go straight to hell." Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, who lead the Tea Party Patriots, suggested President Obama should step in to put a check on the overheated rhetoric.

The Editor says...
In my opinion, Ms. Waters will be very surprised someday to see who's in Hell and who isn't.

Enviros Go Straight to Jail. If Tea Partiers were really so vile, then why are arrests at a tea party gathering about as rare as hens teeth, yet when leftists come together, getting arrested is almost standard operating procedure? ... The real story from Tea Party gatherings is how orderly and respectful they are. Glenn Beck hosted a rally on the National Mall in DC last year with hundreds of thousands of Tea Partiers in attendance. A big follow-up story was how "spotless" the mall was after they left. When the left held a counter-rally about a month later with a dramatically smaller crowd, the place was "trashed."

Big Labor Uses Labor Day to Demean and Advocate Violence. For many Americans, Labor is the unofficial end of summer, but this year's Labor was a chance for the Obama White House and Big Labor to demean and advocate violence against their political opponents, which happen to be Republicans and the Tea Party Movement.

The American Train has Jumped the Tracks. The rise of the Tea Party movement shows that a significant portion — albeit still a minority — of the people is coming to understand the nature of the radical assault on America, and what its consequences will be. Is it too late? Can we reverse course?

Stop Calling the Tea Party Extreme. It Isn't. The left-leaning mainstream media and liberal Democratic politicians continue to refer to the Tea Party as extreme, wacko, and out of touch with the American public. Clear evidence indicates exactly the opposite.

Grading the Tea Party. It's tough for Tea Party supporters these days. The movement's members find themselves under increasing attack as their challenge to the status quo grows stronger.

Al Gore attacks Tea Party's 'extremist agenda'. Former vice president Al Gore is blasting Tea Party supporters as "extremist" in a new fundraising pitch for House Democrats. ... "The Tea Partiers now calling the shots in the Republican Party won't back away from their radical agenda."

The Editor says...
Al Gore has no room to complain about anyone else's radical agenda.

Democrat Strategies Right Out Of V.I. Lenin Playbook. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the socialist revolution in Russia, published multiple tutorials for like-minded revolutionaries around the world. Someone in the Obama administration must be familiar with his writings. Socialist minds think alike. ... It is interesting to observe how the avalanche of attacks against the Tea Party activists by mainstream media, liberal commentators and other Democratic Party representatives makes some Republicans uncomfortable with the Tea Party. Conservatives should realize that there is no time for old-fashioned political rituals when the transformation of the country is under way.

The Tea Party Budget. [Scroll down] To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things:
• Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
• Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
• Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don't support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
• Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
• Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
• Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.

Liberals and 'Austerity'. The dirty little secret is that any "austerity" is going to disproportionately affect Democrats. All those lovely social programs, those crony capitalist subsidies? They benefit Democrats. Look at the Tea Party Budget, which cuts a manly $9.7 trillion from the federal budget in 10 years, from 24 percent of GDP to 16 percent. The Tea Party cuts hit nothing but Democratic sacred cows. Eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. Cut EPA by 50 percent. Eliminate HUD. Eliminate ethanol and "unproven energy technology subsidies."

The Richmond Tea Party Audit and the First Amendment. When the Richmond Tea Party (RTP) wanted to hold a daytime rally under the right of peaceable assembly protected by the Virginia and United States Constitutions, the City of Richmond made the RTP spend about $8,500 on a special events permit, liability insurance, police presence, and other costs. The City of Richmond later allowed Occupy Richmond to hold protests over the course of weeks, but did not require the special events permit and other expenditures like those made by the RTP. Occupy Richmond has cost the city and state police about $31,000, and has resulted in multiple arrests.

We Need Not Repeat 1776. In 1776, there was an elite hereditary British aristocracy that was totally out of touch with the everyday class, in fact preying on it. Today we have an elite class of professional politicians with apparently lifelong tenure in Congress and their minions in a massive bureaucracy that controls the populace by overseeing regulatory compliance.

Five Differences Between the American Revolution of 1776 and Today: [#1] It's not people versus king or dictator; it's people versus people. It's not a government oppressing all the people by denying them their basic rights; it's some people using government to oppress other people, primarily for their own financial gain.

Why the Left Fears You: The radical left is certainly out of the closet. The simple fact that the Tea Party scares the Cronycrats is all we need to know. While the Old Media are a lost cause, the New Media are getting bigger and better. The only way to mobilize conservatives is through the New Media.

Obama Brings Back the Constitution. [Scroll down] If these issues were confined to the law blogs and law journals, they would make for lively debate. Yet Mr. Obama's overreach has provoked something unique. This is the rise of a populist movement with the historically unpopulist priorities of making the federal government smaller and insisting on its constitutional limits. The press has mostly missed this aspect of the tea party. Perhaps some find it impossible to take seriously the idea that ordinary men and women might have a valid take on the Constitution.

Mitt Romney: The Last Republican President? There is a growing awareness and unease among many that the best days of the United States are behind it and the future is indeed grim. An overwhelming 70 percent of the populace is of the opinion that the nation is headed in the wrong direction and that the "American dream" is no more. There is also a growing consensus, as epitomized by the Tea Party movement, that only a dramatic 180 degree course reversal can save the country.

Top 10 perils of Pelosi. [#3] Tea Party assault: When the Tea Party arose to counter Pelosi's profligate spending, her response was to smear the movement. She tried to cast doubt on its authenticity, saying, "It's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America." She later likened Tea Partiers to Nazis, and fiscal-conservative Republicans to terrorists. Of course, the mainstream media followed suit and have attacked the Tea Party ever since.

Our Elective Despotism. Both the Republican and Democratic establishments are composed of hopelessly corrupt, procrastinating control freaks, who seek fame and fortune through over-spending money they didn't earn and enthusiastically crushing any spontaneous outbreaks of democracy among U.S. citizens, for example, the Tea Party.

Juan Williams plays dumb. One reason many liberals were overjoyed with the election of Barack Obama was that they could use his race to shield their socialistic policies. This is why the R-word was the first one out of the lips of many critics when people formed the Tea Party. They could not wait to label critics as racist. I am not saying that no conservatives are racist. What I am saying is that the trumped up charge of racism is a diversion from the real issue: President Obama is bankrupting the country.

A Tea Party Senate Takeover. The tea party isn't dead. It's just looking down ballot. While fiscal conservatives remain split over the GOP presidential candidates, grassroots activists are coalescing around a stellar slate of limited-government candidates looking to reinforce and reenergize the right in Washington. And in the spirit of the modern-day tea party movement, no entrenched incumbent — Democrat or Republican — is safe.

Obama unleashes the IRS on the Tea Party:
Congressional investigations sought over IRS 'assault' on tea party groups. The federal government's latest requirements include copies of "all the [web] pages that are accessible only to your members," along with an accounting of all "donations, contributions, and grant income for each year," including "names" and "amounts" of every contributor. "How did you use these donations, contributions, and grants?" the IRS asks. "Provide the details." The agency also asked for "the time, location, and detailed description" of every event and program the Richmond tea Party has conducted since October 22, 2010, along with "copies of handouts"; "the names and credentials of the organizers"; "detailed contents of ... speeches or forums, names of the speakers or panels, and their credentials"; "the amount ... each person" was paid; and "the names of persons from your organization and the amount of time they spent on the event or program."

Richard Lugar Calls TEA Party Voters Morons. Richard Lugar's campaign just sent out a truly astounding email. The email reprinted in whole an article from Mike O'Brien titled Dan Parker's favorite Republican. Although the article wasn't written by Lugar, it was enthusiastically pimped in its entirety by Lugar's campaign, thus indicating Lugar's basic agreement with it. The article reeks with contempt for conservatives in general and TEA Party voters in particular — including this astounding paragraph...

IRS Accused of 'Intimidation Campaign' Against Tea Party Groups. A conservative civil liberties group accuses the Internal Revenue Service of attempting to "intimidate and silence" a number of tea party groups that have applied for tax-exempt status. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) says IRS requests for information about the groups included "probing questions" that violate the free speech and freedom of association rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Why the TEA Party is Under Attack by the IRS, and What to Do About It. A substantial number of Tea Party organizations have come under attack by the IRS, which seeks to hinder the issuance of a tax-exempt status by making such an application, for all intents and purposes, impossible. Many Tea Party groups seek to take advantage of tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3), and §501(c)(4); and while these impose specific responsibilities, the IRS is clearly abusing its discretionary power, by asking for information that is impossible to provide, or is unconstitutional to ask for.

Obama Re-Election Team: Shock and Awe Attack on Tea Party. As a black conservative traveling on my sixth Tea Party Express national bus tour, I find the Obama administration and the mainstream media plans to intensify their efforts to brand the Tea Party racist extremely disturbing. The scheme of Obama's re-election team is quite simple: use misdirection to create angry voters who are focused on hate, racial loyalty, and white guilt rather than Obama's horrific record.

Senators worry IRS targets Tea Party groups. Is the IRS purposely targeting Tea Party groups? That's the question two Tennessee senators are asking. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are among 12 senators raising the question. They're worried the Obama administration is using the IRS to take aim at Tea Party related non-profit organizations.

Tea Party rallies in Washington against ObamaCare. Tea Party supporters rallied Saturday in Washington to oppose President Obama's government health care law, two days before the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the legislation. "We want our freedom back," former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain told hundreds of ralliers standing in the rain in Upper Senate Park, a few hundred yards from the steps of the Supreme Court.

Tea Party activists defy rain to rip Obama health care law. Several hundred rain-soaked Tea Party activists rallied on Saturday [3/24/2012] to call for the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law after arguments next week.

Dem Rep Smears 'Threatening' Tea Party As 'Racist,' 'Crazy,' 'Ugly. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (NY - 11) attacks the Republicans and the Tea Party at candidate forum hosted by "Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform."

Oklahoma Democratic chairman says Timothy McVeigh would be member of tea party were he alive today. "I certainly stand by my remarks, because it's widely known that McVeigh was anti-government. I think that he was a right-winger, and I think the current tea party people, while I'm not saying that they're proposing violence, they're anti-government," party Chairman Wallace Collins said.

Opposing viewpoint:
The Tea Party's Inner ACLU. The tea party movement has generally been constructive, but every so often it runs off the road. A case in point is its emerging condominium with the anti-antiterror left to block terrorist detentions.

The Editor says...
I doubt if any of the Tea Party people objects to the detention of actual (or suspected) terrorists. It is the prospect of a mass roundup of political dissidents that has people concerned about the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Similarly, there are lots of Libertarians who are still very concerned about the so-called Patriot ActPatriot Act being used against everyday Americans, in addition to actual terrorists.

Tea Party Rising. It's easy to underestimate the tea-party achievement in ousting Senator Lugar. After all, haven't the tea parties knocked off a lot of incumbent Republicans in primaries? Actually, no. Most tea-party successes have come in races for open seats.

Tea Party overthrows another RINO. In deference to Lugar's long-running 36 years in [the Senate], Obama's statement commented on the "retirement" of Lugar, albeit an enforced retirement driven by unhappy conservative GOP voters back home again in Indiana. That's just the latest sign of incumbent troubles in this season of continued disconcerting economic turmoil. "While Dick and I didn't always agree on everything," a conveniently magnanimous Obama said, "I found during my time in the Senate that he was often willing to reach across the aisle and get things done."

Tea Party wins in Indiana. Reports of the Tea Party's death have been exaggerated greatly. Oh sure, Harry Reid may say it's dead, and he clearly wishes it were so. The upset victory of Richard Mourdock in Indiana indicates the Tea Party is alive and well.

Voters Say We Are All Inmate No. 11593-051 Now. The Tea Party shows it's alive and well, Wisconsin's embattled governor gets more votes than the top two Democrats and a federal inmate gives the president a primary battle. The natives are still restless.

Tea Party's effective use of Twitter aiding its makeover of GOP. Conservatives have long been upset with the direction their party was headed. One need look no further than the last 5 Presidential candidates the party has put forward, each one more typical and predictable than the last. [...] Every 4 years, the GOP and its party members knew who their next candidate would be before the primaries even began, and the people that made up the party's base knew that there wasn't much that could be done about it. This past primary cycle changed that, and it forced this year's "next-in-line" candidate into a primary fight that nearly cost him the nomination.

The Editor says...
I've been hearing lately that Twitter and Facebook are essential tools for right-thinking activists, but I've never been on either one.

2012 Will Be the Tea Party Election Year. The Tea Party movement could have become a third party, but it didn't. The combined wisdom of its leaders and members realized that the way to change the government at all levels was to elect people who were in agreement with its core principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Initially, the Tea Party movement grew from two people to 1.2 million in two months. On April 15, 2009, they turned out for 850 Tea Party events around the nation. Today the authors estimate that 20 million Americans identify themselves as Tea Party patriots.

Biden: Tea Party stopped us from growing economy. Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy "much, more" if the Tea Party hadn't taken the House.

Barack Obama, the First Tea Partier. It turns out that our fourth greatest president, first in so many things, may have been the first "teabagger" himself, as seen in the 1997 photograph [in this article]. Yes, that really is Barack Obama wearing a regimental coat and carrying a tricorn hat in his hand. And that flag behind him really is a Gadsden flag, with its serpent and its "Don't Tread On Me" slogan.

Van Jones Slams the Tea Party Again. Van Jones, never one to hold back in his criticism of the Tea Party, said during a recent appearance that the movement and its "so-called patriots" are essentially out to destroy America.

"Accuse others of what you do."
- Karl Marx

The Wisconsin Recall was a Tea Party Victory. This victory marks the third time the far left and Big Labor has been defeated at the polls since Obama's inauguration. If ever there was a referendum on public sector unions and the President's idea of how government should work, it was with this election. If ever there was a measure of the muscle of the tea party movement, let it be judged by this election.

ObamaCare's Secret History. On Friday [6/8/2012] House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails proves anything, it's that the Tea Party isn't angry enough.

A tea party battle cry. For the past century, Americans have been surrendering, little by little, their freedom for a little promised comfort. A century from now, the emergence of the tea party movement will be seen as one of two things: the death throes of liberty or the moment when Americans began to remember who they were. If Obamacare is implemented in a second Obama administration, America will never recover.

If ObamaCare's a tax, we have a solution. The full fire and brimstone of the seemingly dormant Tea Party movement will now resurface like a transcontinental chain of volcanoes, and given the enduring and growing majority of Americans against ObamaCare, one can safely assume that that passion will translate into the same sort of lopsided two-to-one Republican victory among independents it produced in 2010.

With Cruz victory in Texas, is the Tea Party the new 'Establishment?' [Scroll down] Cruz was no ordinary Tea Party figure, and few people's idea of a Beltway outsider. He attended Harvard University's law school and founded a Latino law review there; clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court for Chief Justice William Rehnquist; worked at two federal agencies in Washington, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, under President George W. Bush; and is married to a woman who works for Goldman Sachs.

Ted Cruz's star rises. Move over, Marco Rubio: there's another national Latino star-in-the-making likely headed to Washington. Ted Cruz's resounding win over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Texas Republican Senate runoff Tuesday night [7/31/2012] positions the 41-year-old, Ivy League-educated Cuban-American to become a force to be reckoned with in the nation's capitol — an overnight A-lister of Republicans to watch.

Texas Republicans choose the Tea Party: Now what for the GOP? The Tea Party, that spontaneous eruption of conservative rebels that some had written off as all but defunct, has taken another major step in its relentless remake of the Republican Party. GOP Establishment, beware. Texas Republicans handed political neophyte Ted Cruz their party's Senate nomination Tuesday [7/31/2012], which is tantamount to election come Nov. 6 to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The son of a Cuban immigrant (is this beginning to sound familiar, Marco Rubio fans?), Cruz has been the longest-serving solicitor general in Texas history, but had never before run for office.

The Senate Gets a Little More Hispanic and a Lot More Conservative. The holy crusade that movement conservatives undertook against Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst concluded with Tuesday's Senate runoff, producing his once-unlikely defeat at the hands of his much-celebrated Tea Party challenger, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz. What makes the election so interesting is that Dewhurst, who has been denounced from one end of the conservative blogosphere to the other as a "RINO" and as "Dewcrist," can't really be accused of any specific ideological heresies.

The Editor says...
Ted Cruz's supporters are not just some splinter group that got lucky. There were 631,316 votes for Ted Cruz in the July 31 runoff.

Tea party basks in Cruz's win in Texas. Ted Cruz's stunning 14-percentage-point victory over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in Tuesday's runoff for the Texas Republican Senate nomination gives the tea party explosive momentum heading into the remaining primaries nationwide and the November general elections.

Ted Cruz Began His Campaign with Conservative New Media. As Andrew Breitbart often said, Republicans fail when their media strategy centers around the mainstream. They spend too much time trying to prove what they are not, rather than expounding on what they are. Ted Cruz understood that earlier than most — which is why, to conservatives, his "surprise" win is no surprise at all.

Tea Party Unbound. For several years now it seems to me that voters throughout the country in a perfectly peaceable way have demonstrated their revulsion at the ruling class's political, academic and media elites, and the media's disparagement or utter refusal to cover this civil revolution has not succeeded in killing it. Instead, as more people join in and see how the media distorts or refuses to report what they see with their own eyes, the sooner all of the major media will be joining Newsweek and CNN and the NYT and the Washington Post in their death throes.

The Morphing of the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement morphed from protest signs to campaign signs. That's how a Texas Tea Party activist succinctly put it when I asked him what's become of the movement.

41 Million Tea Party Supporters Set to Vote. The Tea Party is regularly ridiculed and declared "dead" by the mainstream press and their elitist allies in Washington and Hollywood. Not surprisingly, when Tea Partiers show up and rally by the thousands, they get all but ignored, while 30 Occupy Wall Street crazies in masks will always get wall-to-wall coverage and admiration. TV shows and movies take cheap shots at Tea Party conservatives, often linking them to murder-of-the-week cases on insipid crime procedurals or dismissing them as "birthers." But a new Associated Press poll shows tea party supporters may have the last laugh in November.

The Tea Party gets a news site. As with many right-wing news sites, TPNN puts heavy emphasis on the anti-mainstream media message: "We don't need our supposed betters in the mainstream media telling us which stories matter or what we should think. We don't mindlessly mimic the talking points of Washington leaders. The Tea Party movement now has a home for news it can trust."

Obama's Executive Disarmament Confirms that the Tea Party Can Not Go Away. Due to extensive media coverage of Obama's Disarmament Show, low-info voters will cry hearing stories of how guns make kids fearful and give Obama carte blanche, regardless of the Constitution. Predicting from their pattern of spineless behavior, Republicans will probably simply go along with Obama's illegal dictates. So who will stand and be the voice of our Founding Fathers and We The People? Answer: the Tea Party.

Tea party promises on fourth anniversary to "shock the entire political world". The grass-roots movement observes its fourth anniversary Tuesday, marking an event that resonated with many Americans on Feb 19, 2009. [...] Since then, the tea party has been declared dead on several occasions by mocking pundits. But that does not appear to be so.

Reich: Tea Party 'Conspiracy to Undermine the Government of the United States'. Democrats and the media have accused Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of "McCarthyism" merely for posing tough questions to and about Chuck Hagel during the latter's confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Yet a recent column by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich reveals who the real McCarthyites are in U.S. politics today, as Reich likens the Tea Party to a conspiracy "to undermine the government of the United States."

Libertarians and the Tea Party. [Scroll down] In any event, we need a clarification of what the Tea Party stands for. At the RNC last August, the Republican Party included most of the 12 planks offered by Tea Party citizens through the FreedomWorks organization. And most of them sound like Ron Paul's talking points as well: eliminate the Department of Education, reduce the bloated federal workforce, curtail excessive federal regulation, and audit the Fed.

New York town removes flag as 'offensive' Tea Party symbol. A veterans organization in a New York town is fighting for its right to fly a patriotic flag after the city council refused to let the group display the flag, calling it a symbol of the Tea Party with right-wing connotations. The United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association replaced a tattered American flag at the New Rochelle Armory, flying the Gadsden flag underneath it. The bright yellow "Don't Tread On Me" flag has been used by the Navy and Marine Corps since 1775.

Sen. Harry Reid: 'Government is inherently good'. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he can't understand why the tea party remains popular, given its similarity to the anarchist movement and its steadfast opposition to the "inherently good" government. Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, made the statements during floor remarks in the Senate earlier this week, expressing dismay over legislation stalled because of tea party opposition, Breitbart reported.

Reid Likens Tea Party To Anarchists, Says "Government Is Not Inherently Bad; Government Is Inherently Good". [Quoting Harry Reid:] ["]We have a situation where this country has been driven by the Tea Party for the last number of years. When I was in school, I studied government and I learned about the anarchists. Now, they were different than the Tea Party because they were violent. But they were anarchists because they did not believe in government in any level and they acknowledged it. The Tea Party kind of hides that.["]

Why Don't They Do Something? What does it take to get a sufficient number of people — who are usually passive — to become politically aware and committed to changing today's mess? This is, of course, the classic conundrum facing those — of the right or the left — who seek substantial change in the status quo. I do not advocate revolution. A reprise of the Tea Party movement of 2009-2010 would suffice. The 1994 voter revolt that ousted Democrats from control of both houses of Congress would do nicely.

Reid defends remark likening Tea Party to modern-day anarchists. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the Tea Party is the main reason why things are not getting done in Congress and views it as a party of modern-day anarchists. Reid on Wednesday afternoon [5/1/2013] stood by comments he made on the Senate floor last week comparing Tea Party-affiliated Republicans to 19th century American anarchists.

Why was the Department of Homeland Security monitoring Tea Party IRS demonstrations? What's so interesting about 60 tea partiers protesting the IRS in San Jose, California on Tuesday, May 21st? The fact that this bit of information was conveyed to the protesters by a Department of Homeland Security officer who was also in attendance. What was a DHS agent doing at the San Jose Tea Party protest? Why aren't DHS officers protecting the homeland against foreign enemies armed with explosives and hate? Perhaps because the Obama Administration is more worried about domestic "enemies" armed with the Constitution and love of country.

A sure sign that the Tea Party movement is highly effective:
Reid: GOP Should Purge Tea Party. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is fed up with Tea Party conservatives and wants Republicans to get rid of them to make life easier for Democrats in the Senate. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Reid, in an interview with "To the Point" that will air on Saturday, "said the key to solving what he has labeled as Republican obstruction is for the party to rid itself of so-called Tea Party Republicans."

Tea Party Revives to Fight Common Core. Today's [5/31/2013] Washington Post has a front-page above-the-fold article on the battle that's revitalizing the Tea Party: blocking the Common Core, the Obama administration's push for a de facto national education system. The IRS scandal has surely helped to energize the Tea Party, but it's the fight against Common Core that's lent the movement new purpose and substance.

Tea Party Patriots to Organize Mass 'Audit the IRS Rally' in D.C.. The Tea Party Patriots will organize a mass "Audit the IRS Rally" on June 19th in Washington, D.C. with local and national Tea Party groups to protest the IRS's targeting of conservative organizations.

Yet another arrest-ridden liberal protest gets the atta-boy from national press. The coverage of the Tea Party, especially racism charges, is meant to discourage home-schooling moms and flat-tax dads from getting involved and to put off possible newcomers. The press largely finds it distasteful when conservatives voice their beliefs in public and would like them to keep it as quiet as possible if they feel the need to talk at all. The persecution of Tea Party groups at the hands of the IRS institutionalized this message. One method was unfair and unethical; its ensconcing in the halls of government power was unconstitutional. But make no mistake about it. Neither is merely a mistake.

Nobody home at the White House but the Tea Party. While publicity hounds Barack and Michelle Obama primped and preened over in Ireland and searched out the roots of their "Irish ancestors", before heading out to Berlin, tens of thousands of Tea Party stalwarts will be out in force on Capitol Hill today searching for their country.

Tea partyers rally at Capitol, blame White House for IRS mess. Thousands of activists rallied outside the Capitol on Wednesday to protest the IRS targeting of conservative and tea party groups, with many of the event's speakers laying the blame for the fiasco squarely at the White House. The "Audit the IRS" rally, organized by the Tea Party Patriots organization in response to the agency's improper scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, drew members and leaders of tea party groups across the country, radio personality Glenn Beck and the Senate's tea party trio: Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Capitol Hill Police Block Tea Party Activists from Immigration Rally. Capitol Hill police left a voicemail for Kevin Mooneyhan, Deputy Executive Director of Tea Party Patriots, saying that "your people" only are permitted to assemble for the event on the west side of the Capitol. The activists' presence at the immigration event on the east side supposedly violates the terms of the Tea Party's permit. Mooneyhan was instructed to move any activists who planned on attending the Tea Party rally away from the immigration event. Keep in mind, the immigration event is hosted by sitting members of Congress. The notion that citizens can't attend an event featuring duly elected Representatives in a public space is absurd. "The Capitol police are violating our rights to assembly and association," Mooneyhan told Breitbart News. "How does our permit limit the rights of individuals to attend public events? It's intimidation."

26 percent of Obama supporters say tea party greatest terrorist threat: poll. About half of all voters see radical Muslims as the biggest terrorist threat to the country, but among those who approve of President Obama's performance, the tea party is not far behind, according to a new poll. Fifty-one percent of likely U.S. voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the country today, and 13 percent say the Tea Party is, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

A quarter of Obama supporters think the Tea Party is America's top terror threat. Rasmussen has just published an extraordinary poll which highlights the deep-seated prejudice against the Tea Party among both US government workers and supporters of President Obama. According to the poll: ["]Half of all voters consider radical Muslims the bigger terrorist threat facing the nation, but supporters of President Obama consider the Tea Party to be as big a danger.["]

How Crazy Are Democrats? This Crazy. No Tea Party group has ever been implicated in a terrorist attack or even, as far as I can recall, an isolated act of violence. Attenders of Tea Party events are notorious for cleaning up after themselves like Boy Scouts. But this survey suggests that partisan Democrats are living in a parallel universe. [...] No wonder IRS employees, nearly all if whom are likely Obama supporters, thought it was only natural to try to block any organization with Tea Party in its name!

Government Police Raise Issues on Liberty. Earlier this year, agents from the Department of Homeland Security, presenting themselves as national "police," were deployed across the country to "monitor" Tea Party activists who were peacefully protesting the Obama administration regarding the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS. From California to Florida, armed DHS functionaries, according to protesters in attendance, were turned out to intimidate and spy on them. These DHS agents arrived in large Homeland Security vehicles that were emblazoned with large letters reading "police" and were dressed in "police" uniforms. Exactly who are these DHS "police?" They are part of the Federal Protection Service (FPS), a division of the National Protection and Programs Directorate of the DHS.

What Has Mark Levin Wrought? In The Liberty Amendments Mark Levin has delivered more than advertised. He promises a credible agenda for reinvigorating constitutional government based on an approach to the amendment process which avoids the liabilities of better known options. What he delivers, though, is a vast, potentially game-changing political arsenal that can be drawn upon by everyone from had-it-up-to-here Tea Partiers to Republican candidates at least sentient enough to know they need something more than budget and deficit talk.

Cruz: DC Establishment 'Scared to Death' of Grassroots. Cruz emphasized that the new battle is between "entrenched career politicians and the American people." He criticized those in Congress who refused to hold town halls during the August recess. "They didn't even want to hear what their constituents want to say," Cruz said, noting that more power was leaving Washington and going back to the American people.

Terrorized by the Tea Party. [T]he present establishment duopoly [...] constitutes, in reality, little more than a one-party state in which either party, if the other didn't exist, would have to invent it in order merely to preserve the illusion of a two-party state subject to substantive political opposition. In political reality, there has in living memory been no conservative political party in the United States. There is none now; and, absent reforming the Republican Party or creating a third party, there will be none in the future.

Study finds IRS suppression of Tea Party swung 2012 election. A new study by the American Enterprise Institute — "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence From The Tea Party Movement" — finds that the movement boosted Republican turnout by three to six million votes in the 2010 election. This effect was blunted in the 2012 election, though, because growth in the movement stalled. That slowdown happened, co-author and AEI economist Stan Veuger notes, at the same time that the IRS began coming down hard on these groups. He argues in a RealClearMarkets.com article that this most likely had a major impact in the 2012 election.

The Tea Party's coming vindication. The mainstream media — and their parrots in the Republican establishment — are claiming that President Obama decisively won the government shutdown battle. In fact, the narrative being peddled is that the GOP brand has been badly damaged, paving the way for a possible Democratic Party takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections. This is puerile nonsense. Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, may have lost the battle, but they are poised for a major victory in the larger Obamacare war.

Tea Party Arose from GOP Establishment Failure to Restrain Govt. Spending. Fox News political analyst Brit Hume conceded that Republicans that grew the federal government while they were in power the last decade may have ultimately been responsible for the recent standoff over the budget because their actions helped create the Tea Party that now stands fiercely opposed to their goals.

The Tea-Party Plan Was More Realistic. Not only did the tea-party plan have a chance, it was far less cynical and far more compassionate than the Republican alternative. The Republican alternative to the tea-party plan boils down to this: Let the people suffer (also called "let Obamacare implode"), then they'll come to us, we'll win a buch of elections over several cycles, then we'll make it better. Well, step one is working (if that's the right word to use). People are suffering.

FEC may exempt Tea Party group from donor disclosure citing harassment, intimidation. Federal Election Commission officials may take the nearly unprecedented step of exempting a Tea Party group from disclosing its donors due to concerns its supporters could face harassment and retaliation from government officials such as the Internal Revenue Service and private citizens. The Tea Party Leadership Fund requested the exemption and convinced some FEC officials "that TPLF is entitled to an exemption from the reporting and disclosure requirements of the [law] and Commission regulations because it has demonstrated a reasonable probability that compelled disclosure would subject its supporters to threats, harassment, or reprisals."

Tea Party at the Crossroads. Third parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the Tea Party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties. More important, the Tea Party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined, or just plain sold out by professional politicians.

Big Government is a Clear & Present Danger to our Liberty. Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) has been a steadfast supporter and ally within Congress of the Tea Party movement. Unlike many of his Republican counterparts who attempt to distance themselves from the Tea Party brand, many who actually attack it, Huelskamp embraces it.

Tea party groups can't shield donors, FEC rules. The Federal Election Commission declined on Thursday to grant a tea party group the same exemption from disclosure that it has long granted to left-wing political parties. The panel voted 3-2 against a proposal that would have allowed the Tea Party Leadership Fund to shield the names and information of their donors from public scrutiny.

How Obama referred to Tea Party protesters as 'tea-baggers' in handwritten letter to Texas teacher. Responding to an angry constituent's letter about the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama allegedly used a sexually charged derogatory term referring to members of the Tea Party movement. Thomas Ritter, a fifth-grade school teacher from Irving, Texas, has sent the president a note criticizing Obamacare — the controversial law offering health care to the uninsured, which has become the butt of jokes following a disastrous launch last month. 'This bill has caused such a divisive, derisive and toxic environment... The reality is that any citizen that disagrees with your administration is targeted and ridiculed,' the Texas man wrote to the commander-in-chief.

Obama Refers to Tea Party Members as 'Tea-baggers'. President Barack Obama used the sexually vulgar expression "tea-baggers" to refer to tea party members in a letter he wrote to a Texas grade school teacher. The term "tea-baggers" has been used to ridicule the tea party, a group of American activists who advocate reducing taxes, shrinking the size of government, and returning to traditional family values. Obama was replying to a letter he received from Thomas Ritter, a 5th grade school teacher from Irving, Texas.

The Tweetable Guide To Media Myths And Left-wing Violence. To this very day, if you type "John Patrick Bedell" into Google, the very first autofill suggestion is "John Patrick Bedell tea party." That's not deliberate malice from Google. The predictive search is based on how often a word or phrase was searched. In other words, folks were so desperate to find out if Bedell was a tea partier, they taught Google to watch for it.

Attempted Character Assassination of Breitbart Protégé Brandon Darby. Darby became an emerging voice of the center-right populist movement called the Tea Party after working undercover with the FBI to stop former comrades from killing Israel civilians and using firebombs to hurt law enforcement and stop Republicans from assembling at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby chose to testify in highly publicized federal trials against members of the far Left and they tried to destroy him for it — and they did so with the help of mainstream left-of-center media outlets.

Five Tea Party Challengers: The Ted Cruz Wannabes. Come 2014, these five ambitious Senate hopefuls might storm their way onto Capitol Hill and change the Republican Party, with Ted Cruz as their hero.

Chamber of Commerce to Spend $50 Million to Crush Tea Party. On Christmas Day, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it plans to spend at least $50 million to "support establishment, business-friendly candidates in primaries and the general election, with an aim of trying to win a Republican Senate majority."

Report: Chamber to hit Tea Party with $50M. The Chamber of Commerce is planning to spend at least $50 million on a campaign to boost establishment Republicans in primaries against Tea Party challengers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The group's broader aim is to help the GOP win Senate control and block Tea Party Republican candidates who might lose otherwise winnable seats to Democrats

Tea Party Leadership Fund to Recruit Boehner Primary Challenger. The Tea Party Leadership Fund will announce on Friday [1/10/2014] an effort it plans to undertake to search for a candidate to primary House Speaker John Boehner, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. The group is funding a $25,000 ad campaign against Boehner and a petition drive at PrimaryBoehner.com with a goal of collecting 1 million signatures by Jan. 31. Radio's Rusty Humphries, a spokesman for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, is leading the group's effort to find a candidate.

Chamber of Commerce throws down the gauntlet to Tea Party. Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, gave his annual "State of American Business" speech and didn't pull any punches toward the Tea Party. Claiming he wasn't "attacking" the Tea Party, going so far as claiming that they agree with many Tea Party positions, Donohue nevertheless made it clear which side of the GOP civil war he's on.

Lemonade Lessons: the Tea Parties are just the tip of the iceberg. What the New York Times and so many other liberal institutions do not realize is that all of this recent political fuss is not about the Tea Parties or the Tea Party members. It is not about the rallies, the signs, the undocumented accusations of off-color or rude or politically incorrect comments, the Tea Party leaders (or lack of same), the candidates they support, or even the candidates they oppose. These are all just symptoms of a much larger frustration and anger.

SC Tea Party Convention to Show America a Better Way Forward. Joe Dugan, the executive producer of the South Carolina Tea Party Convention, told Breitbart News minutes before the convention was to officially begin that his goal with this program is to shape the narrative for the Tea Party movement moving forward in its battle against the political establishment in Washington, D.C. "We are disgusted with Republican leadership," Dugan said outside the convention center at the Springmaid Beach Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Louie Gohmert Calls Tea Party to Fight GOP Establishment. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) called on grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers across the country to organize and fight back against the GOP establishment's efforts to stamp out the movement during his speech to the South Carolina Tea Party Convention here on Sunday morning [1/19/2014].

Liberals' worst nightmare about to come true. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, chairman of Stand Up America, has just unveiled the liberals' worst nightmare, a plan to unite the tea party into a vast army to turn America back to its constitutional roots. The plan was one of several steps Vallely announced Sunday afternoon [1/19/2014] while speaking at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention.

Schumer Calls for Using IRS to Curtail Tea Party Activities. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) proposed using the Internal Revenue Service to curtail Tea Party group funding during a speech on how to "exploit" and "weaken" the movement at the Center for American Progress on Thursday [1/23/2014]. Arguing that Tea Party groups have a financial advantage after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, Schumer said the Obama administration should bypass Congress and institute new campaign finance rules through the IRS.

Chuck Schumer Calls For The IRS To Stop The Tea Party. The IRS scandal is not only not over but is getting worse, with a call by New York's senior senator for the already-politicized agency to use its power to tax to destroy the conservative grass-roots movement.

Voice of the little man, courtier of plutocrats. The favorite senator of Wall Street and K Street explained to a liberal D.C. audience last week how to defang the Tea Party: offer a populist message that splits the grassroots from their wealthy donors. Republicans should listen to this counsel, and turn the tables on Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. Schumer argued at the Center for American Progress on Thursday that the Tea Party is built on a foundation of deception: "Wealthy, hard Right, selfish, narrow" elites have fooled regular Tea Partiers into hating government. Schumer's premise is that Big Government is the friend of the regular guy, and only the selfish wealthy elites benefit from more economic freedom. [...] Schumer, to fund his own elections, taps deep into the plutocracy he condemns.

Silencing the political opposition. Chuck Schumer, the Senate's No. 3 Democrat, thinks the Internal Revenue Service hasn't done enough to silence the Tea Party. He wants the White House and the IRS to "immediately redouble" efforts to shut down conservative political-action groups through tougher government oversight and enforcement. The Tea Party opposes much of President Obama's agenda, and to Mr. Schumer, that's both a sin and a crime.

The most dangerous years of the Obama presidency are upon us. Holding the House and taking back the Senate in 2014, while extremely important, cannot stop someone who considers himself above it all. A united front is needed for the next three years. So what is Republican and Congressional leadership planning? A war on the Tea Party.

Pat Caddell Says Establishment Republicans "Want the IRS to Go After" The Tea Party. The civil war between the Tea Party and the GOP Establishment has been brutal. But could it be the reason congressional Republicans aren't putting the heat on President Obama for the IRS scandal? Democratic pollster Pat Caddell thinks so, and radio host Rush Limbaugh said it's plausible. One historian even told Breitbart News the modern GOP resembles a "crime family." "The establishment Republicans want the IRS to go after the Tea Parties," Caddell told Fox News on Sunday [2/16/2014].

Mississippi Bloodbath: Open Warfare Breaks Out In Tea Party Vs. Barbour, Cochran. What has until now largely been a battle between Cochran and McDaniel facing off head-to-head is turning into the front line of the brutal and bloody political war between the Chamber of Commerce-style lobbyist big government Republicans and conservative grassroots focused Republicans who align with the Tea Party movement. Conservatives say Barbour and Cochran are examples of exactly what's wrong with the party right now, while establishment figures say the exact same thing about the Tea Party.

Tea Party Candidate First Ever to Win as Write-In for PA State Senate. A Tea Party candidate became the first ever state senator in Pennsylvania to win as a write-in candidate on Tuesday [3/19/2014] in a special election that showed how dissatisfied voters are, even at the local level, with both organized political parties. During the campaign, conservative Republican Scott Wagner was blistered by establishment Republicans that he accused of "orchestrating the special election in such a way to hand the seat, vacated by Mike Waugh in January," to the establishment Republican candidate Ron Miller.

ATF Director: 'Wish I Had Better Answers' About ATF Agents Probing a Tea Party Conservative. B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, couldn't tell Congress why his agents made two visits to a tea party conservative in a 13-month period — but only after she requested tax-exempt status for her conservative group, True the Vote. Catherine Engelbrecht had a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for 12 years. "And suddenly she applies for tax exempt status, and you're knocking on her door twice in 13 months," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Jones at a hearing on Wednesday. "Congressman, I wish I had better answers," Jones said.

Conservative Leaders Predict Tea Party Will Win GOP's 'Civil War'. The increasingly open "civil war" now raging between a Republican establishment that favors big government and members of the Tea Party is a necessary evil that will eventually force the GOP back to its limited government principles, conservative leaders say.

The Tea Party Establishment: Outsiders become insiders. In the four years since the Supreme Court struck down fundraising regulations that effectively gave the Democratic and Republican parties a monopoly on large-scale political activity, a collection of Tea Party-affiliated organizations has arisen in Washington that competes with the GOP for campaign contributors, money and influence — and over what legislation to push and which candidates to nominate. The groups, including the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have moved aggressively to kill legislation they oppose and oust incumbent Republicans they deem insufficiently conservative.

What Happened to the Tea Party? It has been five years since the Tea Party movement broke out as a national phenomenon. [...] This was before Congress had taken up ObamaCare, mind you, so these people were protesting against the bailouts and the "stimulus" and the massive expansion of government in general. When ObamaCare was added to that agenda, it was just gasoline added to the fire. Today, five years later, Tea Party rallies are less frequent and much smaller, and the Tea Party movement has become less visible.

Tea party candidate Curt Clawson wins Republican primary to replace former Rep. Trey Radel. Curt Clawson, a businessman who was little known months ago in Southwest Florida, won a contentious GOP primary Tuesday to fill the U.S. House seat left open by the scandalous downfall of Trey Radel. Clawson, 54, pitched himself as an outsider against more established candidates and was embraced by the tea party.

Tea party conservatives making waves in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Republicans gather next weekend in Milwaukee for their annual convention amid dissent from some conservative tea party members who have already passed votes of no confidence against two moderate lawmakers and also support a resolution reaffirming the state's right to secede from the union.

House Republicans call for special prosecutor on Tea Party targeting. House Republicans plan to vote next week on a resolution that would urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS's improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups. In a statement announcing the vote, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Republicans have no faith in the investigation that is already being carried out at the Justice Department. "It is time for Attorney General Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting scandal and bring the appropriate charges against those responsible," Cantor said in a statement. "This is far too serious a matter to leave to the discretion of partisan political appointees no matter who is in the White House."

The GOP Has Finally Found a Way to Defeat the Tea Party. After being caught flat-footed by tea-party insurgents in 2010, allowing candidates like Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Nevada's Sharron Angle to win the GOP nomination and then self-destruct — and then, for fear of alienating the newly empowered Right, copping a largely laissez-faire attitude in 2012 — the Republican establishment, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is taking a different approach this time around.

The Tea Party, Revisited. Today [5/6/2014], the 2014 primary season begins in earnest. As with 2010 and 2012, there are a fair number of "Tea Party" challenges to Republican incumbents and establishment primary favorites. Today we see if establishment favorite Thom Tillis can clear the 40 percent benchmark in North Carolina and avoid a Senate runoff.

Republican establishment gloats after primary victories. The Republican establishment gloated after three underfunded Tea Party challengers failed to knock off incumbent Republicans in primaries on Tuesday [5/6/2014] while another establishment-backed candidate secured the GOP nomination for Senate in North Carolina.

Is the Tea Party Over? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was panned by conservatives for the prediction he made to the New York Times about Tea Party primary challengers. "I think we are going to crush them everywhere," he said. "I don't think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country." A provocative way for a Republican leader, locked in a tough race himself, to talk about the most passionate activists in his party.

VA Tea Party Ousts Key Cantor Ally on His Home Turf. On Saturday [5/10/2014], Tea Party activists ousted a top ally of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) from a key Virginia chairmanship in Cantor's own district, underscoring discontent Cantor is facing from conservative activists at home. Conservatives mobilized against Linwood Cobb — the powerful, incumbent 7th district GOP Chair who was working with Cantor's top establishment consultants and political action committees to take power away from grassroots delegates — to elect Fred Gruber to the chairmanship.

Tea Party Alive And Well — And Influencing Blacks. [T]he new highly publicized Pew Research Center survey, showing that Republicans have a notable edge in the upcoming mid-term congressional elections, contains an interesting surprise, which I believe the Tea Party can also take some credit for. Although it is surely premature, to say the least, to suggest that blacks are becoming Republicans, the data reported in the Pew survey shows a meaningful shift in black opinion in this direction.

Eric Cantor's tea party opponent in Va. primary may be picking up momentum. There was a time when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sympathized with the tea party's frustration with Washington. Now, he's engaged in open warfare with the GOP's insurgent wing. This week, Cantor's opponent in the June 10 primary — a tea party activist named David Brat — is gaining national attention as a potential threat to Cantor's hold on his solidly Republican, suburban Richmond district.

Tea Party-Backed Conservative with a Yale PhD Just Won Senate Primary & Wants to 'Destroy Obamacare'. It's official: Midland University President and Tea Party favorite Ben Sasse is Nebraska's GOP nominee for US Senate. [...] His abilities were recognized by President George W. Bush, who appointed him to various positions within his administration. And it's no big deal, but Sasse has five academic degrees as well, one of which is a PhD. from Yale. Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Mike Lee all endorsed Sasse.

Tea Party-backed candidate Sasse wins GOP Senate primary in Nebraska. Tea Party favorite Ben Sasse won the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat in Nebraska Tuesday night [5/13/2014], after a heated and costly primary battle that drew heavy national attention. Sasse, a university president, was able to hold off former state treasurer Shane Osborn and dark horse candidate Sid Dinsdale, who had begun to surge in recent weeks. Sasse grabbed 49 percent of the vote with Dinsdale finishing second and Osborn finishing third, according to preliminary returns.

Judicial Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C.. New documents obtained and released through a Judicial Watch lawsuit show the targeting of tea party and conservative groups came directly out of Washington D.C., not a rogue IRS office in Cincinnati. On July 6, 2012, former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance Holly Paz sent an email to IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky asking for an explanation of how tea party group applications were being handled. Grodnitzky responded by confirming the cases were being handled in Washington.

Tea Party Victory in West Virginia Republican Congressional Primary. Alex Mooney, the Tea Party-backed candidate in the crowded Republican primary in West Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, easily won his party's nomination in Tuesday's election. With 85 percent of the precincts reporting, Mooney leads with 35 percent of the vote. Pharmacist Ken Reed is in second place with 22 percent. Five other candidates split the remainder of the vote. Mooney, former chairman of the Maryland GOP, moved to West Virginia in 2012 in order, he said, "to live in freedom." He promised voters to "fight Obama to preserve it."

Five Big Things The Tea Party Has Gotten Right. Let's not sugarcoat it: This has been a bad year for the tea party. "We are going to crush them everywhere," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed. He did his part by easily dispatching conservative primary challenger Matt Bevin Tuesday [5/20/2014]. The reasons for the tea party movement's problems have been well rehearsed. From primary challenges to budget fights, they failed to pick their battles. They supported some bad candidates. Groups may have spent their donors' money unwisely.

What the Media Miss About the Tea Party Movement. Even before Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blew out Tea-Party-conservative-by-day-cockfight-rally-goer-by-night Matt Bevin, many in the media walked down a tired, well-worn narrative path. An afternoon headline from CNN blared, "How Mitch McConnell crushed the Tea Party" well before the polls had closed. The primary result was a big "win" for the GOP establishment and a "loss" for the Tea Party. [...] The real struggle in 2014 is not between the GOP establishment and the Tea Party but within the Tea Party itself. And, more importantly, in spite of this struggle, the Tea Party continues to ascend.

Tea Party Continues Winning. The tea party is not a political party. It never has been. The tea party never set as its goal defeating every single incumbent Republican officeholder. The fact that the tea party has taken the scalps of about 50 House Democrats in the 2010 election and several giants in the Republican establishment during 2010 and 2012 is a bonus. That is far in excess of what the tea party movement ever expected to accomplish.

Tea Party Takes Texas. The Tea Party is alive and well and is firmly established as a dominant force in Texas Republican politics. Victories by Tea Party favorites nearly swept the statewide Republican runoff election [5/27/2014]. Establishment candidates like State Representative Dan Branch and State Senator Bob Deuell faded quietly in defeat while strongly supported Tea Party candidates like Sen. Dan Patrick, Sen. Ken Paxton, and former State Rep. Sid Miller sailed to easy victories in their statewide races.

John Boehner's friends plot tea party crackdown. They've given John Boehner constant headaches during his three years as speaker. Now, Boehner's friends are trying to make sure that a small pocket of tea-party-aligned Republicans won't have a chance to derail his speakership next year. And if they try, they could be punished. A group of his closest allies — including fellow Ohio Republicans like Pat Tiberi — are discussing tactics such as trying to change GOP Conference rules to punish members who do not support the party's nominee during a floor vote. A lawmaker who bucks the Republicans' choice for speaker could lose committee assignments — or worse. Boehner's allies have already stripped some Republicans of their committee assignments for straying too far from the team.

How the Tea Party Took Over the GOP in Texas. I attended the Texas Republican Convention held in Ft. Worth, Texas from June 5-7 2014 as a delegate and the big takeaway was that the Tea Party has effectively taken over the Republican Party in Texas.

Cantor's Out. What Now? [Dave] Brat is certainly a challenger, a massive underdog like Rocky, but I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that he's a Tea Party guy, exactly. The big national Tea Party groups didn't support him. Hardly anyone did. Brat spent $206,000 on the race, against Cantor's $5.4 million. Outspent, outgunned, and dismissed — by me, certainly — he won. Amazing. People power can actually make a difference in this country. This scares Washington.

The Brat Upset. Superficially Brat's positions are not that much different from Cantor's, except that they are less nuanced. But this contest was not decided on policy. It was decided on the question of governance. It was about 'who decides'. It's no longer about what 'what is your position on tax credits'. It's now about 'whose side are you on?' The biggest reason Cantor lost is probably because he's an incumbent. The natives are restless. They are tired of the deciders; bone weary of the reasonableness of Washington, the respectability of open borders, the incontrovertibility of climate change, the inevitability of higher taxes, the 'ended debate' over more government healthcare and the high minded campaign to sympathize with the Taliban.

Dave Brat Wins One for Federalist 44. Virginia has been an epicenter of the establishment GOP's war on the Tea Party, and vice versa I might add, with political shenanigans and bullying known as "slating" designed to keep conservatives out of political party positions. Eric Cantor and his team were in it up to their necks. The best explanation of Brat's win, however, may have been given on January 25, 1788.

Crushing defeat of Eric Cantor by Tea Party kills Obama's hopes of immigration reform. Canter [sic] will resign his leadership post as of July 31, sources said Wednesday [6/11/2014]. And with him out he way out, the GOP's future House leadership picture has been thrown into chaos. While political commentators and Democratic Party insiders have crowed that the populist right-wing tea party movement was on its last legs, the rumors of its death now appear to be greatly exaggerated.

'People Are Sick & Tired of Centralized Gov't': Mark Levin. "People want a new Republican Party with fresh faces, with vigorous leadership, and they're not getting it, and they want it because the Republican Party is the only organization that can challenge Obama and Schumer and all the others and start to defeat them," he said. Levin said the American people are yearning for leadership and they don't like the status quo.

House Dem Chairman: 'Please Don't Equate the Tea Party Republicans with Americans'. The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus said he thinks the "earthquake" of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) was due to "being disconnected, somewhat out of touch with the district."

Elites Beware: Eric Cantor's Defeat May Signal a Populist Revolution. Expecting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to win his GOP primary in Virginia, I spent Election Day in Pennsylvania — interviewing angry Republicans, Democrats, and independents about the rise of political populism. I was in the wrong state, but I had the right topic. Cantor's defeat has less to do with immigration reform than it does with an uneven movement that should frighten conservative and liberal political elites to their shallow cores.

Outside groups spent $23 million to crush the tea party in GOP primaries this year. To be clear, the $23 million here is on top of the cash spent by each GOP incumbent's own campaign. It doesn't include a dime of what, say, Mitch McConnell's operation dropped to defend his seat. This is crony money, showered on establishment candidates to make sure the gravy train keeps running.

McDaniel Has A Legal Path To Victory, Says Consultant. Sen. Thad Cochran's second-round primary victory may be nullified if Chris McDaniel's team can show the margin of victory was less than the number of people who wrongly voted in both Democratic and GOP primaries. "It's tedious, but it is a simple task [to check and] Mississippi state law is very clear on this," said Bill Pascoe, a political consultant for Independent Women's Voice, which backed McDaniel. Last July, the mayoral election for the state's fourth largest city, Hattiesburg, was nullified after the losing candidate showed that the 37-vote margin of victory was smaller than the pool of suspect absentee ballots. Those absentee ballots included 36 that were delivered to the Democratic mayor's wife, and were later filled out by jail inmates, including a felon who was disbarred from voting.

GOP Establishment Turns Out Democrat Voters to Defeat Conservative Candidate. Remember that headline, bookmark this page and circle June 24 on your calendar, because the result of Tuesday's primary runoff in Mississippi was an ill omen that portends Republican defeat in November. Check back here on Wednesday, Nov. 5, to see if my helpless sense of dark foreboding doom is correct, but today it seems obvious: If the Republican Party spends money to turn out Democrat voters against a conservative in a GOP primary — the paid professional party apparatus doing this as a deliberate strategy — what message does that send to conservatives, whose votes are crucial to whatever hope Republicans have of winning an electoral majority?

Steal a Page From Murkowski's Playbook and Write in Chris McDaniel in #MSSEN and Matt Bevin in #KYSEN. [Scroll down] Truly disgusted, I thought to myself: why not use their own tactics against them? After incumbent Beltway RINO Lisa Murkowski lost her GOP primary in 2010 to Joe Miller, she ran in the general election as a write-in candidate. She won, becoming the first to win as a Senate write-in in 50 years.

Resentment [is] Behind the Waning Patriotism of Liberal Americans. Liberals tend to equate patriotism with the government. Obama was supposed to usher in a glorious new era of European-style big government. He's failed, though alas not entirely. But in the attempt he aroused a populist movement — the tea parties — full of people who wore their traditional patriotism on their sleeves and tricorn hats. The forces of American exceptionalism proved formidable, taking advantage of our exceptional constitutional structure to thwart European social democracy. And liberal resentment over that fact is palpable.

Establishment Tea. The tea parties have almost since their inception been attacking the party establishment for not standing for anything, and the establishment has been complaining for nearly as long that tea-party candidates are not ready for prime time. This primary season, each side seems to be learning the other's lesson.

TheTeaParty.net plans movement's revival. After a disappointing primary season, the Tea Party is getting set for a revival going into the fall general elections with one of the nation's leading movement representatives, the 2.5 million member TheTeaParty.net, bringing back its top strategist to run the organization. On Tuesday [7/8/2014], the Washington-based group announced the appointment of Niger Innis as executive director. The prominent black conservative and civil rights activist ran an insurgent House campaign in Las Vegas, Nev., but came in second.

Hillary Clinton Praises GOP Establishment, Big Business For Taking On TEA Party. Hillary Clinton thanked the Republican establishment and its big business allies for taking on the Tea Party and defeating conservative candidates like Chris McDaniel in Mississippi's June runoff. In a Thursday interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, Clinton said tea partiers and conservatives needed to be reined in.

The Editor says...
Reined in? By the IRS, perhaps?

The Vindication of Barry Goldwater. Here we are fifty years after Goldwater's nomination — fifty-four years after the publication of his book — and every word of Conscience of a Conservative is even more politically relevant than it was when the book was written. A better rationale of the political success of today's Tea Party could not be written.

Rob Reiner Likens Tea Party to Hamas. Hollywood director and liberal activist Rob Reiner told talk-show host Larry King that the Tea Party is like the terrorist group Hamas, because apparently both groups are extreme and cannot be negotiated with, and the only solution is to make them go away or "eliminate" them.

Meathead Still an Idiot: Rob Reiner Likens Tea Party to Hamas. Hollywood director and liberal activist Rob Reiner told talk-show host Larry King that the Tea Party is like the terrorist group Hamas, because apparently both groups are extreme and cannot be negotiated with, and the only solution is to make them go away or "eliminate" them.

Flushing Money Down the Tea Party Toilet. [E]vidence indicates some Tea Party groups care far less about your ideals and far more about your money — taking it and making it their own. They're an ideological Ponzi scheme; they use donations to generate more donations, by creating sensationalistic ad campaigns to persuade donors they're getting value, and to scare or guilt them, and new donors, into sending more donations. Here are five very recognizable organizations that spend vastly more on fundraising efforts than on support for any candidate.

The mainstreaming of liberalism. One of the curious aspects of the Tea Party's emergence during the past four years is the extent to which the mainstream media have fostered the idea that this political phenomenon represents a kind of radicalism. Certainly, some politicians of the so-called Tea Party have tossed out ideas and expressions that have been silly and warped. Does that mean, though, that the Tea Party, as a broad political movement, is radical? The answer is no. The Tea Party is a reactive movement, aimed at protecting the political mainstream from radical ideas, initiatives and policies of the left.

Gallup poll shows Tea Party supporters the most motivated to vote. Among self-identifying Tea Party supporters, 73% are very or extremely motivated to vote in the midterms. A smaller majority of Republicans who do not identify with the Tea Party (57%) say the same. Among non-Republicans, enthusiasm drops to 42%, a little more than half that of Tea Party supporters.

GOP Establishment Gears up for Civil War Against Tea Party. Despite Republicans' ascension to Senate control and an expanded House majority, many conservatives from the party's activist wing fear that congressional leaders are already being too timid with President Obama. They do not want to hear that government shutdowns are off the table or that repealing the Affordable Care Act is impossible — two things Republican leaders have said in recent days.

Time: Right-Wing Militias Are The Real Threat To Cops. Time Magazine warned of a growing threat to cops nationwide in September 2010. The nationally renowned publication argued that sinister individuals would launch targeted attacks against police officers and even ambush them in their patrol cars. Time alerted readers that these groups and individuals have a disturbing hatred of cops and that there was a real threat of "lone-wolf" attacks. Who are these groups that present such a threat to police? Right-wing militias, according to Time.

It's Time to Brew: the Tea Party Needs to Come Alive. Academics and pundits have many criticisms of the Tea Party, e.g., its members are racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. These are unfounded claims, but there is one criticism that is true and it is holding this movement back: the Tea Party is disorganized and lacks sophistication and cohesion. This lack of organization has benefitted the Tea Party in some ways, but the time has come for this passionate but underdeveloped movement to reach its full potential. The Tea Party's goal for the new year should be to once again become a visible and vocal actor in American politics.

Tea Party Candidate Sues Democrats For Fabricating A Quote. A Republican candidate is suing a Democratic congresswoman and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for defamation for doctoring his statements in campaign ads. Veteran actor and Republican Chris Mitchum, son of Hollywood icon Robert Mitchum, lost a tight race to Democratic Rep. Lois Capps this past November in California's 24th congressional district. But he only lost after Capps and her campaign committee (both defendants in the suit) fabricated a Mitchum quote in ads paid for by the Washington, D.C.-based DCCC.

The Right Wing Scam Machine. I've been saying for a while now that too many scammers and opportunists have been taking advantage of the Tea Party and conservative grassroots. I said so again a couple weeks ago when guest hosting on Bill Bennett's radio show and I got a lot of grief for it. Well, here's the latest proof. The folks at Rightwing News have a new report out showing that grassroots donors have been bilked of tens of millions of dollars that never went to the candidates they thought they were helping.

Tea Party References Scrubbed From 'Battlefield Hardline' After Breitbart Report. Last year, Breitbart News reported that preview footage of EA's then-unreleased first-person shooter Battlefield Hardline contained content that conflated the Tea Party movement with a group of racist survivalist enemies. However, with the release of Battlefield Hardline this month, it appears that all imagery and dialogue referencing the Tea Party has been removed from the final version of the game following our initial report.

2016 race: Why a Tea Party president is a real possibility. When the Tea Party began in 2009, even those of us at the heart of the movement couldn't have predicted how it would permanently alter America's political landscape. Just six years later, it's undeniably at the heart of American politics in spite of countless attacks from the political establishment and from the national media. Because of the Tea Party's strength and influence, candidates who call themselves conservative must prove their bona fides to successfully court any grassroots support at all. Sen. Ted Cruz is a great example. Clearly a Tea Party favorite, Cruz has stood strong in the Senate for the movement's values.

Dems in shock over near landslide loss of Kentucky governorship to Tea Party Republican. Democrats outspent and outpolled Republican novice Matt Bevin and expected their candidate, Attorney General Jack Conway, to keep the Kentucky governorship in Democrat hands, where it had been for all but one term of the last half-century. Instead, Tea Partier Bevin, who had previously challenged Mitch McConnell for the GOP nomination for senator and lost big, pulled off a near landslide victory with an 85,000-vote margin.

Kentucky's New GOP Lt. Gov. Is Black Tea-Party Activist. Matt Bevin's 53 percent to 44 percent victory tonight marks only the second time in 48 years that Republicans have won the Kentucky governor's race. But Republicans also made history in another way. Bevin's lieutenant governor running-mate, Jenean Hampton, is now the first African American elected to statewide office ever in the state's history.

EEOC Is Considering Whether Wearing This Popular Tea Party Symbol Constitutes Workplace Harassment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering whether wearing clothing in the workplace with the Gadsden flag printed on it constitutes legally actionable racial harassment. According to Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who runs the "Volokh Conspiracy" blog at The Washington Post, the EEOC ruled two months ago that it will need to collect more evidence in a case filed in Jan. 2014 by an African American federal employee who complained about his coworker wearing a hat with the Gadsden flag printed on it. The complainant said that the Gadsden flag, which was designed during the Revolutionary War in 1775 and has become popular with the Tea Party movement, is racist because its designer, Christopher Gadsden, was "a slave trader & owner of slaves."

The Editor says...
As far as I know, the American Revolution was not a racist event, and "Tea Party" is not a race.

Is the Gadsden flag racist? The "Don't Tread on Me" Flag just got trod upon — by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC is investigating whether the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden Flag could be considered a racist symbol in the workplace. In recent years, the yellow flag with its coiled snake has also become a symbol of the Tea Party. "Whatever historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts," the EEOC report states.

'Don't tread on me' shirts and hats could be officially declared RACIST by the government — even though the symbol is an icon of the American Revolution. The United States workplace discrimination watchdog is considering if employees wearing clothing with a Gadsden flag logo are racial harassing African Americans. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is reportedly investigating the issue surrounding the 'Don't Tread On Me' snake logo after an African American employee of a federal agency complained they were racially harassed when a co-worker wore a cap showing the symbol.

How We Killed the Tea Party. As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it's time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn't die a natural death. It was murdered — and it was an inside job.

Jump to Snitch on your neighbor.
Jump to President Obama -- Year One.
Jump to the Obama Index Page.
Jump to Biased reporting about the economy.
Back to the Home page