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

My thoughts on David Frum's Monday morning quarterbacking with regard to the health care debate:

There has been much hullabaloo regarding David Frum's recent statements that the passage of health care non-reform represents is largely a result of short-sighted GOP stubbornness.  The failure to stop ObamaCare is hardly the GOP's Waterloo as Frum asserts.  It is, however, a major setback for the American people who overwhelmingly oppose this legislation and will have to live with the consequences.

For the full piece, visit the American Thinker.

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."

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.

In his State of the Union Address Wednesday night, President Obama called on folks to let him know if there are better health care solutions he and congress should be considering...

...He echoed this sentiment at today’s House GOP retreat. Some might say he was being sarcastic, reminding us of how hard it is to govern (especially in light of all he has inherited from you-know-who.) But that would be cynical, particularly in this post-partisan era.

Just before Christmas my colleague Peter Fotos and I penned a “wish list” of simple policy proposals that constitute substantive health care reform – and it didn’t even take 1,000 pages! The health care snitch line was disabled, so we’ll give the President the benefit of the doubt that it ended up in his spam folder.

President Obama and his Congressional allies talk a lot about the need to control health care costs and avoid pressure from special interests. Unfortunately, neither the House nor the Senate versions of “ObamaCare” that he called upon congress to reconsider withstand either litmus test.

Click here for more.

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

This is a huge victory for the tea party and for the millions of Americans the recognize the threat of ever-expanding government exemplified in policies like ObamaCare, the bailouts, cap and trade, and the rest of the President's radical agenda.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco summed it up best before the final tally.  As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Regardless of the outcome ... this should be a gigantic wake-up call to the Democratic Party - that we're not connecting with the needs, the aspirations and the desires of real people right now," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

It gets even better:

...But Newsom said the Republican resurgence in Massachusetts suggests "there's real intensity and fervor out there, as represented by the Tea Party" activists expressing anger at government spending and at job losses.

"This is real," he said. "At our own peril, we dismiss these tea parties as ... some sort of isolated extremism. ... It's not."

I couldn't have said it better myself.