On Tuesday, a number of tea party organizations are gathering at a FreedomWorks “Restoring America Summit and Rally” at Pittsburgh International Airport’s Embassy Suites to soak up insights from the likes of FreedomWorks’ own founder Dick Armey on school choice, public unions, tort reform and the privatization of Pennsylvania state entities, among other issues.

Scheduled to speak alongside the former U.S. House majority leader include: Freedom Works CEO Matt Kibbe; Frederick Douglass Foundation Chairman Timothy F. Johnson; Fox News contributors Deneen Borelli, Mary Katherine Ham, and Tammy Bruce; The War Room’s Rose Tennent, and “Thomas Paine,” the character Bob Basso plays on YouTube.

Other event co-sponsors include Washington County PA 9.12 Project, PennsylvaniaTeaParty.com, Mercer County TEA Party, Protective Precious Metals, Marley Financial Group, Watchdog Radio, We the People Greene County and the Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement.

The rally is the third FreedomWorks-sponsored event happening in Pennsylvania this month. Previously the group partnered with the Kitchen Table Patriots for a school choice event in Doylestown, Penn., and with the Lehigh Valley 9.12 Tea Party Group for an event in Center Valley, Penn., that focused on ending teacher strikes.

FreedomWorks has been outspoken about trying to abolish collective bargaining rights for all Pennsylvania employees and recently started a petition calling for legislation that would do so.

The Frederick Douglas Foundation’s emphasis on this particular event appears on the issue of school choice, pushing the notion that charter schools are the answer to high dropout rates among black youth — and that state teachers unions are part of the problem.

In a statement on Tuesday’s event, the FDF’s Tim Johnson said:

“We have to stop this ‘School to Prison’ pipeline and provide all parents with real educational choices like charter schools. Educating children is not about satisfying the teachers unions or the bureaucrats who are more concerned about keeping their healthy salaries or job security! … If we are serious about leaving our children and grandchildren with an America we had the opportunity to grow up in, we better make sure they are able to read, write and perform basic math skills. If they can’t get these basic and essential survival tools from their local public schools at taxpayers expense, we better make sure they get them from somewhere.”

Conrad had been open about his ambivalence about running for another term and those doubts almost certainly increased following a 2010 election that decimated the Democratic party…

Outside interest groups — the conservative American Future Fund and liberal-aligned Commonsense Ten — have already run ads in North Dakota, suggesting that the race would be a major priority for both national parties.

His retirement is bad news for the Democrats — North and South Dakota has reliably voted Republican in presidential elections but elected Democrats to Congress until recently.

For the last eighteen years before the 2010 elections, North Dakota had two Democratic senators and one Democrat at the state’s lone seat in the House of Representatives — dubbed ‘Team North Dakota’ giving the small state more influence on committees (especially the House and Senate Agriculture Committees) than it would have had otherwise. Rep. Earl Pomeroy lost his seat in 2010 after airing a last-ditch ad featuring him showing his driver’s license and saying, “I’m not Nancy Pelosi, I’m not Barack Obama” U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan announced that he would not run for re-election in early 2010 after he faced the possibility of a serious challenge from popular Gov. John Hoeven (R).

South Dakota, too, elected Democrats like Sen. Tom Daschle, Rep. Stephanie Herseth and before them, Sen. George McGovern — all of whom were defeated in big Republican years of 2004, 2010 and 1980, respectively. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) may well be the last Democrat of the Dakotas after 2012, as he is up for re-election in 2014. (He survived re-election in 2002 by 524 votes.)

The race might not be a foregone conclusion for Democrats as it was in 2010 — dthere isn’t a popular candidate like Gov. Hoeven in the race, and Barack Obama only lost North Dakota by eight points in 2008.

As they did during the health care debate, liberals will probably point out that the Dakotas have four senators, though the states’ cumulative population is only a little larger than that of the Bronx.

Dave Weigel notes that in 1889, congressional Republicans made the Dakotas two states to increase their representation in Congress. Belatedly, that could happen.

Overlooked, though, has been the fact that every panel Democrat voted for the bill. That might not sound unusual, but the Senate Banking Committee is home to Sen. Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat with a long record of protecting the finance industry in the face of reforms. (South Dakota is a banking hub.) Indeed, last year Johnson opposed even the Democrats’ credit card reforms, a bill seen as the low-hanging fruit of finance reforms (if only because the banks were wildly unpopular at the time and so many voters have direct experience with the tricks used by credit card companies).

No matter. Johnson said at the time that the bill went “too far in prohibiting lenders from adjusting prices to account for increased risk.”

On the much more comprehensive bill passed by the Banking panel yesterday, though, Johnson indicated a change of tune, saying he was “pleased” Congress is moving to “modernize” the nation’s finance system. His vote in favor of the reforms, which are sponsored by Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), provided the proof.

There’s still a long way to go. Indeed, more than 400 amendments have been filed against the bill, many of which would protect the banks at the expense of consumer protection. Still, some observers on Capitol Hill are saying today that Dodd’s ability to rally all the Democrats behind the bill is no small achievement — that Senate Democrats, for once, have shown some party discipline.

Johnson’s entire statement:

I am pleased that we are moving forward legislation that will create better regulation and protect consumers and Main Street small businesses. This has been a long process, and I commend the Chairman for working hard to find common ground to target the causes of the financial crisis, and reform and modernize our nation’s financial regulatory system.

The bill incorporates good ideas from both sides of the aisle.  It creates a systemic risk council to act as an early warning system, monitoring our economy and financial institutions for trouble.  It ends government bailouts by addressing the gaps that existed when large nonbank financial companies, like AIG and Lehman, failed and there were no tools to unwind them.  By ending “too big to fail,” the American taxpayer will never again be forced to shoulder the costs of risk taken on Wall Street.  It will also finally regulate exotic products like credit default swaps, and hold Wall Street companies accountable for the risks they take that put consumers at risk.

Our efforts at bipartisanship have led us to find good solutions to protect small community banks and credit unions. We have also found common ground to protect consumers, provide uniform rules regarding consumer protection, and level the playing field for banks and nonbanks.

This bill is not perfect, and there are certainly items each of us on this Committee would like to see improved as we go to the floor.  I am hopeful that bipartisan conversations will continue on these issues in coming weeks as the bill moves through the full Senate.

But their demands are largely in line with the president’s agenda as he prepares to travel to Copenhagen next week for the international climate negotiations. They include “global agreement on emissions reduction goals,” “reciprocal commitments,” aid to “help the most vulnerable populations adapt” to climate change, and “cost-effective global action.”

The ten principles, the senators write, are designed to “protect against the twin risks of climate change and costly but ineffective climate action.”

The signers of the letter are Democratic Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Carl Levin (Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Mark Begich (Alaska). Most of these senators are expected to support domestic climate legislation if it contains provisions to protect manufacturers from the economic effects of cap-and-trade.

The New York Times obtained a White House response to the letter that underscores the similar perspectives from which he and the senators are approaching the issue of climate change:

The President agrees with many of the Senators’ recommendations and has worked with other world leaders to advance a Copenhagen accord that reflects them. Domestically, the U.S. has taken numerous steps this year to transition to a clean energy economy — from setting an aggressive new fuel economy standard for new cars and trucks to making an historic investment in clean energy in the Recovery Act this year. The President worked closely with Members of Congress as they passed comprehensive energy legislation out of the House and is working with Senators to pass a bill that will decrease our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and enhance American competitiveness.

In addition to taking strong action at home, the President has kept climate change at the forefront of our foreign policy throughout the year. Following bilateral meetings with China and India, each country announced that they would take significant mitigation actions and stand by those commitments, and they called for full transparency as to their implementation. Since those meetings, China has announced a mitigation plan. And the President has worked with Prime Minister Rasmussen in support of a comprehensive accord in which all countries take meaningful steps, that has immediate operational effect and rallies a global response to the global threat of climate change.

Here’s Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), quoted yesterday by The Hill:

“I’m very disappointed. [NRA seems] to be going beyond their Second Amendment issues, particularly when I think the judge’s positions on those issues are still fairly open,” Warner said. “I trust in her judgment and temperament. I think the NRA at some point has gone beyond its mission, and are perhaps allowing themselves to get hijacked by those who are in the extreme.”

Warner joins Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) as an A-rated lawmaker in the eyes of the NRA who has recently announced his support for Sotomayor.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), for the record, says he has no clue how he’ll vote on the nominee, The Hill notes.

Take Sen. Tim Johnson. The South Dakotan was the lone Democrat on the banking panel to vote against the bill.

The reason? Well, officially, Johnson said the bill “goes too far in prohibiting lenders from adjusting prices to account for increased risk.” (Among other things, the bill requires companies to give 45 days notice when raising interest rates and prohibits issuers from applying rate increases to existing balances — the types of things that would prevent rates from jumping 20 or 30 percent overnight because of a single late payment.)

Yet South Dakota also happens to be a hub for some of the largest credit card operations in the country, including Citibank. Johnson is clearly protecting the regional industry here, and his opposition to the bill forecasts a tough fight ahead for reform supporters. Indeed, Delaware — another center of credit card activity — is home to Sen. Tom Carper, another Democrat with a history of protecting the industry.

As the stalled cramdown bill has shown, the finance industry has plenty of influence even when the issues aren’t regional. With two Senate Democrats already defending the industry over consumers, the race to 60 is sure to be close.

That’s significant because Democrats currently command just a one-seat advantage on the panel (11-10), and two of those Dems — Tim Johnson (S.D.) and Tom Carper (Del.) — would likely join Republicans in protecting the banks against legislation restricting, among other things, abusive fees, rate hikes and marketing practices for credit cards. (The reason is simple: A bank that’s collecting fewer late fees is a bank that’s making less money than it was the year before.) Both Delaware and South Dakota are home to major credit card operations.

It’s unclear how the panel’s party ratio will break down next year. (The race in Minnesota is still undecided). But Plunkett said the Dems could pick up two or three additional seats, which would be plenty to overcome the presumed opposition of Johnson and Carper. That spells good news for Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who has a credit card reform bill written and ready to reintroduce next year. Indeed, consumer advocates are cautiously optimistic that 2009 will be the year that bill is enacted.

“It’s gonna be close,” Plunkett said.