Here in Illinois, we are engaging tea party activists and concerned citizens across the state to turn what has become known as the land of Blago and Obama back on the path to prosperity.

If you're an Illinois resident or in the area this fall, get on board!

To learn more check out IllinoisTurnaround.com

Fortunately, there's an old piece of paper meant to keep the nation's leaders in check even after they've hopped over every procedural hurdle and bent every rule to get their way regardless of the will and interest of the people: the United States Constitution.

The efforts of a dozen or so state Attorneys General and legislatures to mount opposition to ObamaCare has been couched by many cynical commentators as pointless, legally impotent wheel spinning. The Wall Street Journal ran a heartening piece last week that paints a much more hopeful picture by taking a look at the implications of some of the more egregious parts of the bill, such as the insurance mandate, on the role and power of the federal government:

...if Congress can force Americans to buy a product, the question is what remains of the government of limited and enumerated powers, as provided in Article I. The only remaining restraint on federal power would be the Bill of Rights, though the Founders considered those 10 amendments to be an affirmation of the rights inherent in the rest of the Constitution, not the only restraint on government. If the insurance mandate stands, then why can't Congress insist that Americans buy GM cars, or that obese Americans eat their vegetables or pay a fat tax penalty?

Click here for the full piece.

My latest piece at The Daily Caller:

In a tacit admission of the Tea Party’s success, backers of the wildly unpopular big-government, liberty-crushing policies of the Obama administration are brewing up their own movement—the Coffee Party. It all allegedly started with a random musing in a post by Annabel Park on Facebook in which she called for an alternative to the Tea Party movement.

Read more here.

Mr. Brooks' most recent reading of the tea leaves is equally...intriguing.

Take Brooks' summary of the tea party movement which he contorts to fit his cute narrative comparing tea partiers to the 60's radicals of the New Left:

The people we loosely call the Tea Partiers also want to destroy the establishment. They also want to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

Brooks goes on to characterization of the tea party movement as preoccupied with black helicopter theories:

In its short life, the Tea Party movement has developed a dizzying array of conspiracy theories involving the Fed, the F.B.I., the big banks and corporations and black helicopters.

I'm curious to know how many tea parties Brooks has gone to and how many tea partiers he's interviewed in order to form the opinion that informs his commentary. Based on my experience organizing, participating in, and documenting the tea party movement, Brooks' generalizations of the tea party movement bears no correlation with reality. The tea party movement is in fact a mainstream, grassroots coalition of Americans concerned with the direction of this nation. Brooks would likely draw a different conclusion were he to look beyond the pages of his own paper. Sadly, Mr. Brooks appears to suffer from the same delusion as many of his colleagues: that the reporting on the pages of the Times truly is an accurate portrayal of "all the news that's fit to print."

I'll be participating in the following panel:

Thursday, February 18th - 11:45am
"Saving Freedom One Patriot at a Time"
Marriott Ballroom
Ginni Thomas, LibertyCentral.org
Dana Loesch, St. Louis Tea Party
Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots
Moderator: Andrew Moylan, NTU

Afterwards, I'll be signing copies of A New American Tea Party in the main exhibit hall. Stop on by if you're at CPAC!

If you aren't already coming, be sure to check out the impressive agenda here. Online registration is closed, but you can show up and register for a few different packages.

Writes Ben Boychuk:

What tea parties represent is a revival of good, old-fashioned constitutionalism and the idea that government needs to get back to basics. There is a great yearning for a return to first principles. Millions of Americans, but perhaps not yet a majority, would very much like to restore the principles of the American Founding Fathers to their rightful and pre-eminent place in our political life.

Read the full piece here.

Below, Paul Bedard at US News & World Report has a great wrap-up of the growing discontent across party lines throughout the nation.

Many political and media elites wrote the movement off as “fringe” – an irrelevant, small cadre of disgruntled right-wingers not worthy of their attention. As I told the Washington Times, know that they smell a hint of controversy, they’re suddenly quite intrigued.

Many in the media are quick to point out the missteps of this one group in TN throwing a convention with Sarah Palin as signs that the movement is in trouble.  They see one event, one organization hitting bumps in the road and conclude from there that there is a significant rift in the movement.

It is particularly curious given that these very journalists, commentators, and politicians have to date characterized the movement as directionless and leaderless.  The former has been proven untrue beyond doubt in the wake of the election of Scott Brown in my bluer than blue home state of Massachusetts.  The later is true: this isn’t a top down movement by any means, and I argue that it doesn’t need a leader.  This movement’s power comes from the millions of concerned Americans that constitute it.  The movement rejects the creepy idolatry exhibited in the past presidential campaign. It represents an important shift away from partisanship and personalities to principles.

If only there was one book out there journos could take for a spin that clearly articulates the history of and principles behind this powerful grassroots movement…

The bottom line is, if millions of people getting involved in the political process through protests, town halls, and marches over the past year weren’t newsworthy, the attention given to a couple thousand in TN is…curious.  Maybe I’m just being cynical.