You can't make this stuff up....

From the SITP "No Kidding" Department: Carl Paladino does not like Sheldon Silver. In fact, he appears to like him even less than he does Andy Cuomo.

So when Mr. Silver stated that he would move out of the state if Mr. Paladino won the gubernatorial election, Mr. Paladino, ever the gentleman, facilitated the move by buying Mr. Silver a ticket on Amtrak from Albany to Washington.

ALL ABOARD!

Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a wild ride...

September 16, 2010

My Dear Fellow Patriots;

There can no longer be any way to spin it otherwise - the tea party movement is poised to force a paradigm shift in American politics.

The primary election results Tuesday night were, in a word, shocking. We saw outsider candidates upset party regulars not only with the trouncing of RINO Mike Castle in Delaware by underdog Conservative Christine O'Donnell, but here in New York we saw outsider Carl Paladino destroy the candidacy of the anointed mainstream Republican, Rick Lazio.

And right here on Staten Island, the man who was NOT the choice of the party bosses, Michael Grimm, garnered 69% in the district, which includes all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. On Staten Island alone he earned 73% of the vote. Grimm's victory was so stunningly lopsided that it could only be interpreted as a complete repudiation of politics as usual.

If you needed any further proof that the tea party movement is not married to a party, Tuesday night's butt-kicking of the Republican establishment should have provided all the proof you could ever need.

Now my question is this: what are you going to do about it? What can I do to convince you that making a real difference this November is going to take more than your emotional support, and more than simply your vote? In order to create real change you must provide your candidate with the one thing that is as vital to him as the air he breathes, and without which he can never win the battle against his opponent this fall. And no, I am not talking about your money, though he needs that, too - I am talking about your time and effort.

Taking back America will take work. Real work. Are you ready, willing and able to roll up your sleeves? I know we are not all capable of devoting a lot of time - we have lives to live, families to feed and jobs to keep. But when working for a candidate the hours are flexible, the chores are varied - and the payoff just might be the restoration of our country.

You can man a phone bank or pass out literature on your block. You can stuff envelopes or distribute lawn signs. You can do something.

You can also tell me that your vote is all you can give. What I'd ask you to think about, though, is what can be accomplished when you contribute a few hours of your time and leverage your one vote into ten votes, or twenty votes or a hundred votes. That is how elections are won.

If you have recognized that we have reached a crossroads in America, if you are ready to work for change, please contact me. Time is short and the hours are long - but the moment is now. I got off my couch one afternoon about 18 months ago and started on a journey to make a difference. I'll be gone as long as it takes. You come too.

Yours in Liberty,

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY

UPDATE: A NY Post poll has Carl Paladino pulling to within 6 points of the once heavily-favored Andrew Cuomo.

All It Took Was the Pledge

I spent Saturday with a group of friends - about three or four hundred thousand of them.

Together, shoulder-to-shoulder, we gathered for a few hours on the National Mall in our nation's capitol. We were there to hear well-known and charismatic people speak about restoring honor and hope to our nation. I expected to be inspired, and I was, but I found that I was moved not as much by those who spoke as I was by those who didn't.

There was a kind of power in that crowd; a passion for freedom that was palpable and electric. Husbands and wives, parents and children, young and old talked quietly amongst themselves as we moved towards the Lincoln Memorial; crowding every trail and pathway in a swath a half-mile wide, resting on benches or a shady patch of ground when the heat became too oppressive.

I walked silently among them, alone in a crowd, absorbing the energy that crackled in the air around me. And as I walked, I was transported; I was no longer on the mall, no longer in Washington, D.C., no longer on the East Coast - I was in America.

You may summer in Maine or winter in Florida or Arizona. You may cruise to Alaska or take the kids to Disneyland. You may gamble in Las Vegas, party in New Orleans, explore the Grand Canyon, hike the Appalachian Trail, honeymoon in Hawaii or swim in the Gulf of Mexico. But to really experience America, you have to experience her people.

This is what I have learned about my country in the past year: our true beauty and greatness lies not in purple mountains and fruited plains - but in our people. Good, hard-working, charitable and uncomplicated people - who believe profoundly, who know, that the content of a man's character means everything and that the color of his skin means nothing. Because we believe in the sanctity of the individual, and because we measure a man by what's in his brain and in his heart, we're not the ones who need to be lectured to about civil rights.

We know that being American is a state of mind. We look through clear glass at a clear reality; others hold a prism before their eyes and see only separate bands of colors. I pity them.

On Saturday in Washington D.C., we the people, we Americans, stood up - taller than any monument, prouder than any statue, and more durable than the tall trees that surrounded us.

We crossed 14th Street and circled around the Washington Monument, within earshot now of the massive speaker systems, and we trampled the hot grass as we migrated towards the National World War II Memorial. Beyond that was the Reflecting Pool, flanked by monuments to two excruciating wars - Korea and Viet Nam. My goal was to get close enough to have a good view of the Lincoln Memorial and the stage set before it.

I never got that far. I didn't need to. In the middle of a field, with Washington's white marble obelisk now a hundred yards behind us, everyone stopped. Those on the ground stood up. Hats were removed, veterans snapped to attention, right hands covered pounding hearts - we were halted by the words that boomed from the speakers: "I pledge allegiance..."

Now hundreds of thousands of voices spoke in unison: "...to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

With tears streaming down my cheeks I realized that I didn't need to hear from Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin; all I needed to hear that day I heard in those few moments. All I needed to learn that day I was taught not by celebrities or politicians, but by those who were just like me - ordinary people living ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

I knew then that OUR voices, the voices of free and independent Americans rising up by the millions, would be the only voices that mattered in this struggle, and that our unwavering commitment victory in November would be the only true way to reclaim the honor and greatness that is America's destiny.

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY

Attention: This is NOT a depiction of Rep. McMahon

Do not be confused! Appearances can be deceiving!
Here are the Top 5 reasons this is NOT our Representative:

5. OUR Congressman has an older staff.
4. OUR Congressman is not Ron Howard's brother.
3. OUR Congressman did not vote for the health care takeover (though he did not vote for its repeal, either).
2. OUR Congressman has already been to Africa with Oprah and Bono.

And the number one reason that this is NOT Congressman McMahon...

1. OUR Congressman has more hair!

Guilty!

Nancy Pelosi, who once called ordinary folks in the tea party movement Nazis - because they dared to demonstrate against the ruling class who would run our lives - has decided that a proper role of government is to investigate dissent.

In calling for a probe of those who protest the location of the Cordoba House - a Muslim community center and mosque to be built in the shadow of Ground Zero - Ms. Pelosi has shown a tone-deafness that is almost beyond description, but is sadly typical of the entire Obama administration.

However, on a positive note, it does rip the mask off this regime's true feelings about about just what the limits of free speech ought to be in their Bizarro-world.

Here is Pelosi's statement in a radio interview yesterday:

There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded, how is this being ginned up...?

Ms. Pelosi, I am guilty. I have ginned. I have not, however, been funded. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be sending out an invoice?

Yes, I was guilty of exercising my right to free speech - a.k.a. "ginning" - when I wrote that I believed the construction of the Cordoba House in lower Manhattan was insensitive, insulting and provocative. What is the penalty for opposing a project, policy or piece of legislation an American citizen finds abhorrent? I await my sentence.

I also await my check. Since I somehow missed the offer to fund my ginning-up activities, I feel that is is only right that I be reimbursed as soon as possible. And while you're at it, can I please get paid for my tea party activities? I work very hard to lay this astroturf, Ms. Pelosi, and if I'm going to be accused of being funded by various - and nefarious - right-wing cabals, should I not see at least some of this money? Right-wing, radical, racist, I've-got-mine Nazis like to take their wives to dinner, too.

Nailing It.

The Mosque That Cannot Be Ignored

After six U.S. Marines fought their way to the peak of Mt. Suribachi in February of 1945, I doubt that there were any citizens of Tokyo who viewed the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima as a form of "community outreach."

Triumphant armies have always planted their symbols and standards at the conclusion of battle, and I believe that even the most progressive and tolerant elements of Japanese society would have averted their eyes from that symbol to avoid the pain of loss, to avoid a constant reminder of the horrible death suffered by a loved one.


So it will be that we in America must avert our eyes to avoid the pain of loss, because of the cowardice and political correctness of a ruling class that has removed all impediments to the construction of a mosque within yards of Ground Zero.

Indeed, the building over which the mosque will rise is in such close proximity to the World Trade Center site that a piece of landing gear crashed through its roof on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The construction of this mosque will be a heinous act of triumphalism on a scale so massive that it is almost unimaginable.

Over the killing field of 3,000 Americans, men and women who were guilty on the morning of their deaths of nothing more than simply getting up and going to work, the Islamists will smugly plant their flag of victory. Such is the degree of effrontery on the part of its sponsors that it was scheduled to have been opened on September 11, 2011, and was to have been called the Cordoba House, referencing the seat of the Islamic caliphate in Spain in the 8th century, which Muslims consider to be symbolic of Islamic rule in the West.

There is something terribly wrong with the people who would want to do this, and there is something terribly wrong with the people who would allow it to be done when they had the means to prevent it. To desecrate the site of the worst attack on American soil by a foreign enemy, and to do so with a structure glorifying the religion in whose name the terror was perpetrated, staggers the imagination and defies logic.

There is no question that the location is symbolic in a way that sickens most Americans.

The leader of the Cordoba Initiative is one Imam Feisal Rauf, who in the days after the attacks called the United States an accessory to the crime, and said that for all intents and purposes Osama Bin Laden was made in the U.S.A. He has steadfastly refused to condemn Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. He has dodged questions about the massive funding required to complete the project.

Still, freedom of religion and speech are the basic principles upon which this country was founded, and I'll fight to the death to defend both them and the constitution in which they were enumerated. However, opposition to this mosque isn't about inhibiting religion or speech - there are thousands of mosques in New York - and I recognize that when something can be built “as of right,” meaning that there are no legal obstacles to the construction, we have no right to prevent it. Not liking the builder – or what he’s building - does not trump his right to build.

This case, however, is simply about common decency. If, as the Imam states, the construction of an Islamic Community Center is about building bridges between the cultures, I would think a good way to start would be to be mindful of the sensitivities of a community, a city and a nation that mourns still. There are dozens of sites upon which to build this project. Why here? Why so close to an open wound? We see through you, Imam Rauf, we are not blind, unlike the cowards and quislings that sit on commissions and inhabit City Hall.

The ruling class may have removed the last legal obstacle to your project, but the souls of 3,000 dead Americans cry “NO!” The families of 3,000 dead Americans cry “NO!” The vast majority of New Yorkers are outraged and cry “NO!”

It may mean nothing to you, but there are millions – no, tens of millions – of ordinary Americans who remain deeply wounded by the cowardly attack that killed 3,000 innocents, and who have not forgotten that the pilots of those planes shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they successfully concluded their insane mission.

We will never know peace if a mosque lords over the site of that murderous act of war, Imam Rauf, but know this: you may never know a moment of peace within it.

An American Heart

I saw this song performed live in Philadelphia, at the Unit-Tea rally. It was written and sung by Jon David, an L.A.-based writer/producer/artist whose real name is Jonathan Kahn.

Jonathan explained to the crowd that when he first started to perform the song, he did so incognito - hiding his features behind a hat and sunglasses and his identity behind a nom de plume; the L.A. scene would not tolerate a conservative. He came out of the closet with an article in the Wall Street Journal in May of this year. He said: "Being a conservative is the kiss of death in Hollywood..."

Here is his song:



Lyrics:

They say our reputation
Needs a new coat of paint
and a delicate melody
But I say I like the bruises,
And a melody don’t mean a thing
If we don’t have the strength to sing

I won’t be made to ever feel ashamed…
…that I’m American made
I got American parts
Got American faith
In America’s heart

Go on raise the flag
I got stars in my eyes
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize

They say that we need changin’
As if all the Founding Fathers
seem to get it wrong
But I say I still believe in
The greatest Liberator, Innovator, Cultivator
Freedom knows

So I suggest you take a look inside
I think you changed already
You went and lost your pride

But I’m American made
I got American parts
Got American faith
In America’s heart

Go on raise the flag
I got stars in my eyes
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize

Dress her up so you don’t recognize her
She’ll still be there if you wake up in the night
‘Cause a mother can always find her child
Even when that child don’t know he’s lost

I’m American made
I got American parts
Got American faith
In America’s heart

Go on raise the flag
I got stars in my eyes
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize

"The Great Anniversary Festival"

The manuscript that launched this country on its journey to greatness was written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and we can only wonder if, as he scratched his quill pen across a clean sheet of parchment, he knew the extent to which he would be shaping the history of the world.

By early June of 1776, the Second Continental Congress had decided that a formal document needed to be created, one that would inform the King, the people of Great Britain, and the governments of the world that the will of the American people was unshakeable and unmistakable: the thirteen American colonies, united, would have nothing less than complete independence from the British crown.

The declaration that Jefferson produced a scant month later shook the foundations of Europe - and signaled the rise of what would become the greatest nation in history.

Today, as we have on every fourth of July since 1776, we celebrate that Declaration of Independence and the nation that was born on the day it was affirmed. Of the adoption of the declaration by Congress, John Adams wrote to his wife “I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the Great Anniversary Festival."

All too often we take for granted the men who signed that parchment, but we should always be mindful that in the eyes of King George and the British Parliament – rulers of a nation that possessed the most formidable military in the world – the signers were nothing more than traitors, deserving of nothing less than execution. By his affirmation of the declaration each man knew he might be signing his own death warrant – so we would do well to remember that our nation was born because men of steel nerves and raw courage made it happen.

We were never meant to be a country of the timid – we were destined for boldness and greatness from the beginning, because those were the traits of our founders and forefathers. They apologized to no man or monarch; they ran from no fight; they defended their rights - and ours - to the moment of their death.

Ironically, for two of the men responsible for the creation of the declaration, John Adams and Jefferson himself, that moment of death came 50 years later to the day; they passed into history within hours of each other on July 4th, 1826.

So as we bask in the happy company of family and friends today, let’s reflect on the courage of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Most of them were many days travel from hearth and home for months at a time, suffering and debating through two hot, pestilent Philadelphia summers. All of them, to a man, risked their lives for their principles - because they believed, as you believe and I believe, that the natural state of man on Earth is freedom and that there is no higher cause than liberty.

As much as anything else this day, we should remember and celebrate their courage, those men of the Second Continental Congress, and the bravery and dedication of all the men who gave their lives for that glorious cause.

We are honor-bound, too, to acknowledge that they bestowed upon us a responsibility we cannot shirk and cannot ignore: America, the last, best hope of man on earth, must be defended at all costs against those who would destroy her by force of arms - or enslave her with the stroke of a pen.

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY

McMahon: Free Speech Be Damned

June 25, 2010

My Dear Fellow Patriots;

Yesterday, my Congressman voted to stick a knife into the heart of free speech.

He voted for a bill that carries a cruel joke of an acronym: DISCLOSE. That stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections. Never has there been such a misnomer.

He voted for a bill that has only a single reason for its existence: to thwart the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United vs. FEC, which unshackled corporations from the restraints on political speech imposed upon them by McCain/Feingold.

When the SCOTUS ruled that private citizens, of which corporations are comprised, have the freedom to speak their political minds, Democrats went into a panic. How could they silence these newly-freed voices? First, they denied that corporations are composed of individual human beings with a right to free speech. Then, they demonized them as soulless entities with no shred of humanity – never mind that corporations are comprised of nothing BUT people like you and me.

Finally, behind closed doors, Chris Van Hollen and Chuck Schumer, the two men in charge of getting Democrats re-elected in the House and Senate respectively this fall, crafted DISCLOSE. In doing so, they reminded us once again that what Nancy Pelosi promised would be “a new era of honest, open, and transparent government,” is simply an epic fail.

The bill, which will have a tremendous effect on this November’s campaign, received a total of one hour of debate. This was determined by the same Democratic rules committee that had allotted 41 hours of debate to the naming of post offices.
What does the bill mean? This from Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner:

So unions now get nearly unrestricted, undisclosed political spending. Further, the restrictions in the DISCLOSE Act only cut one way — against business. If you took TARP funds as a business, express political advocacy is now verboten. So GM has very limited first amendment rights, but even though arguably primary beneficiary of the auto bailout was the United Auto Workers union which got government guaranteed billions directly as a result of the TARP funding — UAW can spend almost whatever it pleases, and it has a history of spending millions on Democratic campaigns.

Further, under the DISCLOSE Act if a company has more than $7 million in government contracts, it has no right to political speech. But public sector unions can spend millions of recycled tax dollars campaigning for Democrats, no problem. All this will likely do is make business spend more money on lobbyists rather than campaigns. Of course, campaign spending is much more transparent than lobbying, but when it comes to the DISCLOSE act, clean elections and free speech seem to be secondary considerations to getting Democrats elected.

And what are we to make of the fact that this bill - unlike all other campaign finance bills - has NO provision for expedited judicial review? It's just more evidence that this is a desperate move, by a desperate majority, desperate to hold on to power. They know that this law will likely fail to pass constitutional muster - but not before Election Day, 2010.

Instead of a bill that applied restrictions fairly to all entities, it contained loopholes (called "carve outs") to help the Democrats friends and silence their foes. I am disappointed that my representative would try to pull the wool over our eyes in this way - and worse, that he would try to silence our voices.

I suspect he still hasn’t gotten it. We are no longer asleep, Congressman McMahon – we are awake, alert, very concerned, informed and engaged. In the old days, you could double-talk your way around this vote and count on it being forgotten in a few short days. You'd probably be right if you thought that nobody was even paying attention.

Not anymore, Congressman. There are about 1,500 people on our mailing list, and these missives are forwarded to thousands of others, and they all have friends, relatives and neighbors. They may not call and they may not write, but now they are paying attention, and now they DO NOT forget - they watch and listen and read, and will remember when it's decision-making time in November.

Every vote like this one, every vote that makes us less free, every vote that brings us further under the thumb of this administration – every one – will energize us.

We will not rest, Congressman. We will take it to the streets and we will take it to Capitol Hill, and most importantly, we will take it to the voting booths.

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY

On Memorial Day.

There are 1,541 American men buried in Suresnes, France. In the cemetery at Meusse-Argonne, 14,246. At St. Mihiel, there are 4,153, and in Lorraine lie 10,489 of our military dead.

There are others in France: in Somme, in the Rhone valley, in Aisne-Marne and in Brittany, all hallowed ground where the mortal remains of fathers, sons and husbands sent by their countrymen to defend freedom, lie under stark, white crosses, a silent testament to the goodness and greatness of the United States of America.

They died in Sicily - almost 8,000 are buried there, and in Florence over 4,400; men who fought to liberate Italy from the tyranny of fascism. And there are more than 5,000 American dead in Luxembourg.

At Henri-Chapelle lie the bodies of 7,992; in Ardennes, 5,329, and to end this incomplete list, 528 Americans are buried where they fell – in Flanders fields, where poppies grow. These three cemeteries are in Belgium.

All are in Europe. I have not even touched upon the war in the Pacific. To do so would be almost incomprehensible; in total, American military deaths during World War II alone numbered over 400,000.

Let the numbers wash over you – don’t permit yourself to be so overwhelmed that they become meaningless. Think hard, concentrate on the magnitude of the sacrifice, feel the pain of so many tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands - of mothers who watched their little boys answer the call to defend freedom everywhere – because that’s what Americans do. And make no mistake, no matter what their age, to those mothers they were all just little boys.

Close your eyes for a few moments and think about these things, and you will find when you open them that Memorial Day will mean something just a little different than it did before.

There are almost no words to describe the debt we owe to those men and women who gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of liberty, a debt that is owed by free men and women everywhere, because without the armed forces of the United States, there would be freedom nowhere.

Reflect on the magnitude of America’s sacrifice to the world. We were not fighting for our own liberation – we were fighting for others bound to us by a single tie: a belief that freedom and liberty are the natural state of man, and that tyranny is to be fought and defeated no matter the cost.

We can honor them in no greater way than to dedicate ourselves to those principles. We can never forget them, we can never lose our way, and we can never permit anyone to tell us we are the problem, not the solution.

We must condemn and reject those who suggest it, whether the calumny be uttered by a foreign potentate or, sadly and inexplicably, a member of our own government.

And above all, we must never, never apologize for America’s role in the world, and we must vow to never let freedom slip through our fingers. To do so not only cheapens the lives of those we honor today, it condemns them to the pure hell of having died in vain.

The Staten Island CONSERVATIVE Party?

The Staten Island Conservative Party has accelerated its rush to irrelevance with its Executive Committee’s endorsement of a liberal Democrat in the race for New York's 13th Congressional District. In a bizarre move eerily similar to the Republican Executive Committee's decision to endorse the non-candidacy of Vito Fossella, it proves once again that principle has very little to do with the "good ol' boy" decision-making process.

How any party that calls itself "Conservative" could endorse the continued majority status of a Democratic Congress that is bankrupting our country, trampling our individual liberties, crushing private enterprise and expanding the powers of the federal government far beyond ANY interpretation of the Constitution, is a complete and utter mystery. The Staten Island Conservative Party Executive Committee has shown that they are not forward-thinking individuals interested in conservative principles and values, but rather are the sad, old remnants of an incestuous club.

Statement's like Carmine Ragucci's "he can deliver for the district" sound more like the acceptance of a Tammany-era bribe than political astuteness, and represents the most reprehensible sort of political quid pro quo. The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress, of which Rep. McMahon is part, are stealing the wealth of America, and America's children, and America's grandchildren, and giving it to their disciples to distribute in return for endorsements and votes. This represents “crony governance” more at home in a banana republic than the United States, and bears little resemblance to the representative republic founded by our forefathers over 200 years ago.

In the ossified thinking of Staten Island Conservative leadership, pork trumps principle every time.

Though he does so roughly 90% of the time, Representative McMahon is to be commended for not voting in complete lockstep with Nancy Pelosi. However, he unfortunately lacks the clout to either change or derail any draconian legislation. If voting against his party’s leadership is merely symbolic and cannot change the outcome of the Obama administration’s far-left legislative agenda, he may “get it,” as Mr. Ragucci has said, but has little to show for it except pork-barrel projects funded with money pinched from the pockets of taxpayers, stolen from the treasury or borrowed from future generations of Americans.

I would urge any and all members of this "party" who are rightly disgusted by the decision of your Executive Committee to act on the courage of your convictions and denounce this disgraceful endorsement.

What It Means To Be a Democrat Today...

It means that in a joint session of Congress, you permit the leader of a foreign nation to come before you and bash the Governor and the citizens of one of your states - a state under attack from that same foreign nation. And then you give the man a standing ovation.

It means that you permit the leader of a foreign nation to come before you and lecture you about putting the interests of foreign criminals ahead of the interests of citizens of the United States. A man whose own country has some of the strictest immigration laws in the world - which are methodically and brutally enforced. And then you give the man a standing ovation.

It means that you permit the leader of a foreign nation to come before you and mischaracterize a law that protects the sovereignty of the United States, in essence telling you that your borders no longer exist, and therefore, your country is no longer a sovereign nation. And then you give the man a standing ovation.

We will remember in November.

We will remember this sickening image.

Gotta Love Governor Christie...

Free Speech In the Crosshairs

Do you remember what it was like before the internet and talk radio and Fox News?

Do you remember the suffocating cocoon in which we felt wrapped and trapped, desperate for someone, anyone, to simply tell the unspun truth about the direction in which our country was headed? To express an understanding of the love we felt for a proud America who need not apologize to any nation or people, unashamed of its independence, vitality and free markets?

The Obama Administration remembers those days; so does the Left; so does the Mainstream Media.

They long for those times – times when they could empower the march to Marxism on a daily basis, news cycle after news cycle after news cycle. They are desperate to return to that era of control over the shaping of the political agenda, and as their electoral prospects dim, their anxiety grows.

The Tea Party Movement is their worst nightmare.

It is becoming a mighty river of public opinion and voting trends, flowing from the confluence of talk radio, cable news and the internet; it is Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Heritage.org writ large; it is, indeed, the awakening of the sleeping giant . It is the message of conservatism gone viral; it is a longing to return to constitutional principles that is sweeping that portion of the populace that reveres and believes in the documents that are the foundation of this great country.

The Tea Party Movement empowers people who wish to halt the “fundamental change” being wrought upon this nation. Fundamental change? Why would any person who believes in the sanctity of human life and liberty want to fundamentally change a nation that has done more good for more people than any country in the history of the world?

Because of these things: the internet, talk radio, Fox News and Tea Party rallies, the silent majority now has a voice and feels empowered to push back. Worse for the left, it appears that we don’t merely wish to keep the statists in check – we mean to make fundamental changes to our government by disabusing it of the insane "entitlement-as-a-right" atmosphere that has pervaded Washington since the sixties.

And so, for the march to Marxism to continue, we must be stopped.

A seed was planted back in the ‘90s, when Bill Clinton tried to lay the impetus for Oklahoma City bombing at the feet of Rush Limbaugh, a seed which has been fertilized and watered by Democrats, the mainstream media and the Left countless times over the years.

It was nurtured again last week by Mayor Bloomberg, whose first instinct was that the as-yet-unidentified Times Square bomber was someone who was unhappy with the recently-passed health care legislation - code words for a disgruntled Tea Partier.

Then a few days ago at a graduation ceremony, President Obama said, “Meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter...[snip]...Information becomes a distraction, a diversion...”

Information a distraction?

These are not isolated events; these are puzzle pieces which the Left hopes to fit together, and I can guarantee you that we will not like the picture that emerges after it is assembled.

Right now, the Tea Party movement stands atop a three-legged stool that is comprised of talk radio, cable television, and the internet. From this vantage point, at rallies throughout the country, grassroots groups espouse an obedience to the Constitution that is anathema to this Democratic Congress and their radical agenda – but all attempts to collapse this stool have thus far failed.

The collective wheels of the Left continue to spin, however, and therein lie my worst fears.

There is one thing which will give the Left, championed, as it is, by this Democratic Congress and the media, a shot to silence once again the silent majority: a major domestic terrorist attack that can be hung around the neck of the Tea Party movement.

Forget, for a moment, that a single kook with deranged purpose can erupt within ANY ideology – that truth that will be ignored. The sad truth is that the agenda of the Left is advanced by any act of violence that can plausibly be connected to an American that has expressed or implied Tea Party connections.

And if that happens – watch out.

Expect the Left to drag out the Fairness Doctrine, and use it as a cudgel to beat conservative voices into silence. ALL conservatives will be blamed for the attack, even humble bloggers, and all will be condemned as the enablers, the instigators, the progenitors of a deranged, right-wing monster.

They will shout that under such circumstances political candidates must disavow the Tea Party movement at every turn, that rallies must cease – or even be outlawed as an incitement to violence – and that mainstream America is obligated to turn away from the conservative principles in which we so passionately believe.

Say goodbye to Limbaugh, Levin, Malkin, Krauthammer and the rest if the Left finally gets the inaccurate and disingenuous "hate speech" moniker to stick.

To ensure that a movement such as ours will not rise again, they will systematically cut off every leg of the stool, every voice of the movement, and they will do it through legislation or simply by fiat. All they need is one kook.

My fear is that they, the Left, will provide him.

Already, one outlier has exhorted “infiltration” of the Tea Party movement to discredit it – but that was a single nut without a real plan, and without the brains to keep his intentions secret. There are other, smarter and more dangerous individuals out there, to whom a human life – or a hundred, or a thousand – is a small price to pay to quash a Constitutional movement that threatens to unravel decades of planning for "fundamental change."

The disturbed individual that tried to exhort his followers to infiltrate and discredit the April 15th Tea Party events with racist and violent signs became neutralized when a bright light was shone on his shadowy plot. That one was easy. The next one might not be.

The next one may carefully infiltrate the movement, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary Americans at rallies, may carry the appropriate signs, talk the talk, walk the walk - and then strike. His Tea Party bona fides will appear to be impeccable, but his heart will be filled with duplicity, hatred and death.

Be vigilant. Stay strong. And if, God forbid, such a thing were to happen, stand firm in your commitment to our country, our flag, our Constitution and the goodness of America. We cannot let the actions of a madman, whatever his motivations, be the excuse this Administration is seeking to marginalize - and worse, criminalize - this movement of free Americans.

Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY