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.

I hesitate to attempt to discern people's motives, I simply don't see what he brings to the table other than the risk of splitting the common-sense government vote, resulting in a Reid victory.

Does he bring a unique perspective and positive agenda to the race that other contenders don't? Does he have a solid platform informed by principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility? I've seen evidence of neither. The tea party movement rejects mere labels as reliable indicators of a political philosophy. For example, Republicanism isn't synonymous with fiscal responsibility. Likewise, a candidate claiming to be the "tea party" candidate means nothing. What does he stand for? The citizens of Nevada deserve to know.

What's more, according to numerous accounts from grassroots activists on the ground in Nevada, he's a Johnny-Come-Lately to the movement - just in time for the election cycle.

One comment he made to CNN.com was particularly troubling:

He says he's fielded endless calls from Republicans trying to strong-arm him to leave the race, and he resents it: "I don't think Republicans own the Tea Party," Ashjian said. "In fact, I know they don't in Nevada, because I do.

Claiming to "own" the tea party movement is highly hubristic and highly inaccurate no matter who you are. In Mr. Ashjian's case, it is particularly odd given that he has been uniformly denounced by virtually every grassroots tea party group in Nevada.

While I'm not sure if he's a plant intended to be a spoiler as some have mused, he is, at the very least, a sub-par, unserious candidate. The best service Mr. Ashjian can do his country and the state of Nevada is to step aside so Nevada voters have a solid challenger to face Mr. Reid in the general election.

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."

Founded in 2002, the Institute has enjoyed tremendous growth and success advancing liberty-based public policy initiatives in Illinois.

The Institute houses a number of projects geared towards turning Illinois into a beacon of liberty in the Midwest. In addition to robust policy centers, the Institute is home to a cutting-edge transparency project, a "Liberty Leaders" grassroots force, and much more.

I'm very excited to be joining this impressive team.

Check out our latest policy publication, the 2010 Illinois Piglet Booklet. A joint venture with Citizens Against Government Waste, the booklet details just some of the wasteful spending of Illinois taxpayer dollars:

• $6,500 for a tub of live bass. The state paid for fishing seminars and demonstrations using a 4,000 gallon, 40-foot long tank filled with live fish.
• $353,165 for car racing. The state is funding Raceway Associates, which partners with big-time 
races like the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, as well as a massive construction grant for Atkinson 
Motorsports Park in northwestern Illinois. 
• $10,000 for a Batman gala. Your tax 
dollars funded a star-studded party for “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan.
• $1,100 for Hawaiian party props. Your 
money made its way to Island Enterprises, a company providing “everything for luaus and Hawaiian themed events from dancers to music to props and apparel.”
• $78,066 for quail promotion. The state is funding Quail Unlimited, which is “dedicated to the wise use and management of America’s wild quail, doves, upland game birds and other forms of wildlife.”

Check out the booklet and more of our work at www.IllinoisPolicy.org

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.

Some environmentalists were predictably steamed, going so far as to state that Audi was equating environmental regulation with the Nazis... Others, like David Roberts hailed the ad as a recognition of the "moral authority" of so-called greening, but not after getting in some particularly gratuitous "teabag" references.

Both are wrong. The ad brilliantly mocks a world that makes such "green" selling points necessary. Corporations in all industries are "going green" for PR (and often in name only) not because of "morality," but because it is in vogue - "green" is the new black. Roberts, like many others, seems to buy into the global warming religion. It blinds him from what is a hilarious commercial mocking the nanny statist meddlers and junk science peddlers that want to tell us what kind of car we can drive and how high we can have our thermostat. Force us to "go green" through regulation? Fine, I'll buy a diesel Audi that fits into your arbitrary metrics to solve a problem that doesn't exist and cruise down the highway as fast and as much as I want. It's a joke, enviros, and the joke is on you.