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."

This week, the Chicago Tribune endorsed Democratic State Senator Reverend James Meeks' voucher plan that would allow over 35,000 kids in struggling Chicago public school access to a quality education:

Meeks is trying valiantly to shake up the status quo in public education, and we stand with him in that effort. He is pushing a solid plan to create a voucher program for Chicago. The Senate's executive subcommittee on education is set to discuss the bill on Wednesday.

Read the entire piece here. For more on the Institute's work on education reform, click here.

'The voucher movement seems to have been born, or seems to have been started as a Republican idea. That's the way Democrats look at it. That's the way black lawmakers look at it. This is a Republican idea. This is what the Republicans want to push on us. . . . We don't seem to see public schools not working in your area."

The speaker was the Rev. James Meeks, explaining black resistance to vouchers. The venue was a sold-out lunch put on by the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI). The result? Something new in Windy City politics: a powerful black Democrat reaching out to a free-market think tank to force reform on the city's most hidebound institution—the Chicago public schools.

As my colleague Collin Hitt wrote in the Southtown Star:

Meeks is pursuing a voucher program that would allow thousands of impoverished families a choice of schools. This new power for parents promises that many children can enroll in schools that are better able to meet their needs. It promises that surrounding public schools will improve, and it promises that everyone in Illinois, as taxpayers, will benefit.

For more on the work we're doing at the Institute to advance liberty in Illinois and beyond, check out www.IllinoisPolicy.org

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

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.

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.

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.