Tea Party to Waters: Get Civil

Congresswoman calls on Dems to get tough

(NEWSER) - Rep. Maxine Waters wants the Democrats to get tough with the Tea Party—really tough. “You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned—the Tea Party can go straight to hell," she said Saturday night at a California summit. "I'm not afraid of anybody," she added. The feisty Congresswoman was also in the news last week for criticizing President Obama’s style, CBS News reports. More»

Mark Meckler faces felony weapon charge in NY

(NEWSER) - In what he must surely consider an example of government overreach at its worst, a leading Tea Party activist has been arrested at New York's LaGuardia Airport for trying to check in for a flight with a gun and ammunition in his luggage. Mark Meckler, co-founder and chairman of the Tea Party Patriots, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, which is a class C felony, the New York Daily News reports. Meckler's Glock 27 pistol was registered in California but not in New York. More»

Occupy is not the Tea Party of the left, organizers insist

(NEWSER) - The Tea Party has a message for you: It is nothing like Occupy Wall Street, even though there have been many inevitable comparisons between the two movements. Such comparisons are “almost laughable,” however, a chief strategist for the Tea Party Express tells Politico . A FreedomWorks campaigns director explains that the Tea Party utilizes MLK-like tactics and that its numbers are made up of “kind of cheerful, happy warriors,” whereas the Occupiers are “really, truly, very unhappy, angry” and more like Malcolm X. More»

Haven't tea partiers ever heard of sharing?

(NEWSER) - Steve Almond used to hate taxes. But now he hates the Tea Party movement (or, more accurately, the Tea Party's “series of highly publicized tantrums”) even more…and he’s ready to confess something “almost heretical”: He actually loves Tax Day. Here’s why:

• It made him organized: Not only does this newfound organization protect him from an IRS audit or, you know, prison…it also helps him to analyze his spending, which makes it “much harder to fall prey to the junk mail come-ons of credit card companies," he writes on Salon .

2 years after Tea Party peak, few inroads made into GOP

(NEWSER) - Regardless of who wins the presidential election in November, it is clear who lost—the Tea Party, reports Politico . The Republican Party, which just wrapped up its annual meeting of state chairmen yesterday, is still all establishment, with almost no Tea Party members on its 168-member governing committee. Tea Partiers may have county chairmanships and seats on state committees, but it will take years for them to work their way up the GOP's ladder. More»