4th of July

Eric Kleefeld rounds up more local Tea Party coverage and sees a conflict between “the hard-line activists who attend these things, versus the more mainstream politicians who want to win elections and are looking for their votes.”
This isn’t really new. The first big round of Tea Parties* on April 15 were products of grassroots activists [...]

Robert Gibbs says the Iranian diplomats are no longer invited to July 4 U.S. embassy cookouts. Good. Did anyone but Jason Zengerle think the invites were some cunning scheme to collect intelligence? I hardly see the value in diplomatic snubbing, but there are tasteful and tasteless ways to engage in outreach to unsavory regimes, and [...]