Meckler, who was bound for Detroit, said that he had been in New York since Sunday, Dec. 11 and, while he did not have a New York permit, he carried the weapon with him as he receives “threats,” the prosecutor’s office said. The box contained a Glock 27 semi-automatic pistol and 19 rounds of nine millimeter ammunition.

According to the Port Authority, he was arrested shortly after 5:20 a.m. by police at the airport. Meckler is charged with a Class “C” Felony, which carries up to 15 years in prison. However, as he declared the gun and presented his other identification to the ticket agent he is not likely to face jail time, officials said.

“He had a misunderstanding of the law. He had a permit to carry in California,” said Al Della Fave, a spokesman for the Port Authority Police. “They charged him with possession of a concealed weapon in the second degree.”

To read more, visit: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/tea-party-member-brings-gun-nyc-airport-arrested/story?id=15165432#.TuqAEGOa–U

By Ralph Z. Hallow-The Washington Times

The tea party protests and parades were much more modest this Tax Day, reflecting the grass-roots movement’s metamorphosis from the mass fist-waving demonstrations of the past two years to something much more precise and targeted — a political “smart” bomb that, for now, shows no signs of becoming a third-party movement.

Tea party activists, many now in office in Washington and state capitals around the country, are quietly targeting politicians and policies responsible for what they say have been decades of fiscal profligacy that threaten American living standards.

“The lack of demonstrations shows the battlefield has moved to the halls of Congress, where the fight is over what to cut, and the focus is purely on lobbying Republicans to keep charging,” said Nathan Mintz, Los Angeles County Republican secretary and South Bay Tea Party founder. “The battleground also has moved to the halls of state legislatures. In Wisconsin, the target is the public employees union, as opposed to unfocused outrage.”

Many of those fist-wavers from the demonstrations on the National Mall and in town squares across the country were new to politics.

But they have “gone native” in a sense, mixing it up with politicians in the legislative hallways instead of brandishing placards outside. Eavesdropping and hobnobbing with power brokers, they pass insider info like ammunition over the wall to the tea party troops outside.

“We, like many other tea parties in Texas, are concentrating right now on the state Legislature,” said Tea Party Patriots Organizer Barbara Bruechner of Mount Pleasant, Texas. “Texas has tea party representatives in Austin monitoring the numerous bills as they move through our state House and Senate and then sharing that info with tea party/grass-roots leadership across the state. That information is then shared with members of individual groups, and alerts are sent out when our elected officials need a little pressure to do the will of the people.”

The tea party, with its not-so-secret agenda to take over the GOP and oust the party’s so-called “RINOs” (“Republicans in name only”), is changing from a ragtag, rogue regiment of disgruntled Republican foot soldiers to a well-oiled and well-informed fifth column, determined to burrow in and become one of the two major parties.

Here’s how Alaska tea patty activist David Eastman explains it: “The movement is busy organizing and entrenching, very much like a new third-party would, and this explains at least partly why there is less of a focus on rallies,” he said.

To read more, visit: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/20/tea-party-moves-from-streets-into-political-suites/

Posted by Lucy Madison, CBS News

Leaders of the Tea Party Patriots are planning a rally in Washington, D.C. next week to protest House Republicans’ willingness to compromise on spending cuts in the federal budget and demand that Republicans “make the tough decisions we sent them there to make.”

“On Thursday, March 31, 2011, Tea Party Patriots will be holding a Continuing Revolution Rally on the East Side of the Capitol Building from noon to 1:30pm,” reads a note on the group’s Facebook page. “While the Congress continues ‘business-as-usual’ with their short term continuing resolutions, we will be there to Continue our Tea Party Revolution and demand they make the tough decisions we sent them there to make.”

Mark Meckler, co-founder and National Coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, told CBS News the rally is intended to hold Republicans to a series of campaign pledges – including the Republican “Pledge to America,” which promised to cut $100 billion from the federal budget in the 2011 fiscal year.

“The point of the rally is to do as we promised: stand with the people who are willing to make the hard choices and do the difficult work of getting spending and debt under control,” Meckler told Hotsheet. “There are 54 people who voted against the short term [continuing resolution to fund the government], and they need to know we stand with them. For those that voted for it, we need them to know we are here, and we want them to join with the 54 and do the right thing, instead of the easy, short term thing. So this rally is intended as both a carrot and a stick.”

House Republicans passed a spending bill in March that would have cut $61 billion from the budget, but it failed in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Democrats and Republicans have since compromised on a pair of short-term spending bills (or continuing resolutions) to fund the government while they continue negotiations on a long-term budget.

Meckler argues that rather than compromise, Republicans should let the chips fall where they may in the face of a budget stalemate.

“It’s important that folks understand that this is the President Obama/ Harry Reid shutdown,” he said. “The Republicans passed a [bill] out of the House that included $61 billion in cuts. If Harry Reid can’t pass that in the Senate, and the President won’t sign it, any consequences belong to them. They are obstructing the will of the people to get serious about cutting spending.”

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner argues that Republicans are doing the best they could in the face of a Democrat majority in the Senate.

To read more, visit: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20046923-503544.html

After making a raucous national debut and helping to power a grass-roots uprising that swept conservatives into office, tea party activists are now taking on a more sophisticated and decidedly insider-oriented electoral frontier: redistricting.

With state legislators across the country set to redraw the congressional landscape, the tea party is attempting to further the political gains it made last fall when a slate of activist conservatives won House and Senate seats.

“They understand that the way districts are drawn impacts our political culture perhaps more than anything else,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder and coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella group. “It’s advancing the gains they made and adding to the places where they aren’t yet competitive.”

But for a movement that generally shuns such inside-the-Beltway instincts, the tea partiers’ involvement in redistricting comes dangerously close to emulating the professional politicians they so often disdain — a sign of the movement’s maturation process and a recognition that it can expand its political power in ways that go beyond the ballot box.

To local groups reorganizing to take on redistricting fights, however, there could be nothing more true to the tea party spirit than fighting the sort of tailor-made districts and partisan line-drawing that serve as a once-a-decade incumbent protection plan.

Some groups are jumping in to protect favorite pols or to target long-serving liberals. Others are trying to expand the ranks of tea party officeholders. But also driving the conservative push, activists say, is resistance to gerrymandering — the drawing of near-foolproof districts that allow long-serving members of both parties to burrow into seats where they are immune from competitive reelection bids.

“End Gerrymandering,” reads the redistricting page on the website of the Bayshore Tea Party Group, a New Jersey organization that is heading up a petition drive seeking 10,000 signatures.

Barbara Gonzalez, the group’s founder, called gerrymandering anathema to grass-roots conservatives — many of whom railed against incumbents last cycle — and said the tea party wanted to see members from both parties face more competitive races.

To read more, visit: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50818.html#ixzz1G6HvxKKe

By Seth McLaughlin-The Washington Times

Republicans last week painted the country’s northeastern corner red last week, grabbing control of the state House, Senate and governor’s mansion in Maine for the first time in more than four decades in a stunning electoral sweep.

But the GOP wins might be worrisome news for the state’s GOP senior senator, opening up the possibility of a 2012 primary challenge to moderate three-term Sen. Olympia J. Snowe now that state voters have shown that a fiscal conservative can win in a statewide contest.

“There is going to be a primary, and she is going to have at least one ‘tea party’ candidate against her. If it is done correctly, she can be beaten,” said Andrew Ian Dodge, the coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. “She is definitely the next target.”

The midterm election results in Maine mirrored the outcome in at least 19 other states, where the GOP generally rode a more conservative message to majorities in state legislatures and in successful gubernatorial bids. Although Maine’s two Democratic U.S. House members were also re-elected, the last time the Maine Republicans enjoyed such dominance at the state level was during the Johnson administration.

The Maine wave propelled Paul LePage, the conservative Republican mayor of Waterville, into the governor’s mansion, and ousted Democratic majorities in both houses of the state Legislature.

While it is unclear who might oppose Mrs. Snowe, at least a couple tea party members are weighing a bid, Mr. Dodge said.

While Mrs. Snowe has gained respect and clout in Washington as a centrist willing to work across party lines, she also has attracted her fair share of detractors along the way. She was one of the few Republicans to vote for President Obama’s $814 billion economic stimulus package, a measure widely loathed in tea party circles.

To read more, visit: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/8/maines-snowe-next-tea-party-target/

By DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON, JENNIFER LEVITZ, ALEXANDRA BERZON And LAUREN ETTER, The Wall Street Journal

Less than two years ago, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin were 30-something suburbanites in metro Atlanta, frustrated by recession, dismayed by the election of Barack Obama and waiting for the next chapter of their lives.

Ms. Kremer, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, had quit her career to raise her daughter. The child had grown up and just moved out, and now Ms. Kremer was filling her time with two blogs—one on gardening, one on politics.

“I had this empty space in my life,” Ms. Kremer recalls.

Ms. Martin, a software manager by training and part-time blogger, was cleaning houses to help pay the bills after her husband’s temporary-staffing business collapsed. They were in danger of losing their home.

As her family’s fortunes crumbled, Congress—including Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), for whose campaign Ms. Martin had volunteered—voted for President George Bush’s bill to bail out the big Wall Street banks.

Ms. Martin was enraged. “It wasn’t because the government didn’t bail my husband’s business out,” she says. “Sometimes it stinks when your business goes bad. But it’s part of our system.… The government doesn’t need to come in and hold a business up and keep it from failing.”

In the span of a few weeks in February and March 2009, the two women met on a conference call and helped found the first major national organization in the tea-party movement. Within months, they became two of the central figures in the most dynamic force in American politics this year.

Ms. Kremer, 39, currently chairs the political action committee known as the Tea Party Express. It has raised millions of dollars for upstart candidates and engineered the campaign that threatens Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Once shy about public speaking, today she crisscrosses the country addressing thousands at a time. “Are you ready to fire Harry Reid?” Ms. Kremer bellowed to a crowd of 2,000 in Reno, Nev., this month.

To read more, visit: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578332725182228.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Tea partyers are flying into D.C. to watch election results together.

Tea Party Patriots, the largest coalition within the conservative movement, has rented out hotel space near the Capitol on November 2 where activists and journalists can get together.

It is a big night for the movement, as many tea-party candidates are on the ticket. Many activists have spent months volunteering for the campaigns of anti-establishment politicians who could change the dynamic in Congress.

Tea Party Patriots, a nonprofit, hasn’t endorsed any candidates. The D.C.-based event is a change of pace for the group, which decided to host 9/12 events outside of the nation’s capital—saying it is expensive and unnecessary for activists to converge in D.C.

As for what happens after elections, check out the five goals tea party leaders laid out.

– Ambreen Ali, Congress.org

By Joseph Weber-The Washington Times

Organizers behind one of the largest “tea party” activist groups said Tuesday they have received a $1 million commitment to help grass-roots organizations for the midterm elections and said they were ready to take up President Obama’s challenge to offer specifics on fixing the nation’s problems.

The Tea Party Patriots – which claims connections to more than 2,800 smaller groups – will receive the money through an anonymous donation and will distribute the money by Oct. 4, backers said.

Though Tea Party Patriots organizers said the grants are to help those smaller groups improve their organizational efforts during the final weeks of the general election, the money cannot be used to endorse a candidate.

The only other restriction is that the money must be used to further the movement’s core tenets of limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets.

“This is to help groups on the ground become more efficient, not tell them what to do,” Mark Meckler, the Tea Party Patriots’ co-founder and national coordinator, said at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

He said the group also is responding to President Obama’s call Monday for members of the movement to identify specifically what they would do to help revive the economy and create more jobs.

In a televised town-hall meeting on CNBC on Monday, Mr. Obama acknowledged the legitimate concerns of tea party activists, but added, “The challenge for the tea party movement is to identify specifically what would you do.”

“It’s not enough just to say, ‘Get control of spending,’ ” Mr. Obama said.

To read more, visit: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/21/tea-party-group-boasts-of-1m-benefactor/

For decades, faith and family have been at the center of the conservative movement. But as the Tea Party infuses conservatism with new energy, its leaders deliberately avoid discussion of issues like gay marriage or abortion.

God, life and family get little if any mention in statements or manifestos. The motto of the Tea Party Patriots, a large coalition of groups, is “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.” The Independence Caucus questionnaire, which many Tea Party groups use to evaluate candidates, poses 80 questions, most on the proper role of government, tax policy and the federal budgeting process, and virtually none on social issues.

The Contract From America, which is being created Wiki-style by Internet contributors as a manifesto of what “the people” want government to do, also mentions little in the way of social issues, beyond a declaration that parents should be given choice in how to educate their children. By contrast, the document it aims to improve upon — the Contract With America, which Republicans used to market their successful campaign to win a majority in Congress in 1994 — was prefaced with the promise that the party would lead a Congress that “respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.”

Tea Party leaders argue that the country can ill afford the discussion about social issues when it is passing on enormous debts to future generations. But the focus is also strategic: leaders think they can attract independent voters if they stay away from divisive issues.

“We should be creating the biggest tent possible around the economic conservative issue,” said Ryan Hecker, the organizer behind the Contract From America. “I think social issues may matter to particular individuals, but at the end of the day, the movement should be agnostic about it. This is a movement that rose largely because of the Republican Party failing to deliver on being representative of the economic conservative ideology. To include social issues would be beside the point.”

As the Tea Party pushes to change the Republican Party, the purity they demand of candidates may have more to do with economic conservatism than social conservatism. Some Tea Party groups, for instance, have declined to endorse J. D. Hayworth, who has claimed the mantle of a fiscal conservative, in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona. But these groups find his record in Congress no more fiscally responsible than the man he seeks to oust, John McCain.

The Tea Party defines economic conservatism more strictly than most Republicans in Congress would — the Tea Party agrees about the need to do away with earmarks, but the Contract, for example, also includes a proposal to scrap the tax code and replace it with one no longer than 4,543 words (a number chosen to match the length of the Constitution, unamended.) It would limit the growth of federal spending to inflation plus the percentage of population growth and require a two-thirds majority for any tax increase.

Social issues still pack a wallop: a group of Democrats opposed to abortion rights could determine the fate of health care legislation in the House. And Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, while celebrating the Tea Party for energizing their movement, spent much of their time talking about banning gay marriage and overturning Roe v. Wade. “God’s in charge,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota told a cheering crowd.

Tea Party leaders themselves have found it hard to keep the issues out. The inaugural Tea Party convention, organized by the social networking site Tea Party Nation, featured remarks by fervent opponents of gay marriage and abortion rights, including the Baptist pastor Rick Scarborough And some leaders criticized Sarah Palin — normally a Tea Party favorite — for advocating “divine intervention” to help the country.

Jenny Beth Martin, the leader of the Tea Party Patriots, complained that she spent the days after the convention answering questions about social issues.

“When people ask about them, we say, ‘Go get involved in other organizations that already deal with social issues very well,’ ” she said. “We have to be diligent and stay on message.”

Many Tea Party members do embrace those issues. The subset of Tea Party organizations known as 9/12 groups, founded by Glenn Beck, asks members to embrace seven of nine principles, the second of which is “I believe in God and he is the center of my life.”

Some experts, like Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard and the author of “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right,” say that the Tea Party uses a kind of code to talk about social values. For instance, when they emphasize a return to the strict meaning of the Constitution, they interpret that as a return to a Christian foundation.

“When they talk about returning to the values of the Founding Fathers,” she said, “they are talking about life as a social issue.”

Tea Party leaders champion states’ rights, holding dear the Tenth Amendment, which restricts the role of the federal government. The Independence Caucus questionnaire, for instance, asks candidates for their views on Wickard v. Filburn, a Supreme Court decision that Tea Party groups say has been used to vastly expand federal powers. (Roe v. Wade does not come up.) So while some may oppose gay marriage or abortion, they want it left up to states to decide. Nor do they support any abridgement of the right to carry guns.

But when the Sam Adams Alliance, a Tea Party-friendly conservative organization in Chicago, surveyed 50 leaders of the movement about the most important direction for the movement, none selected social issues. Most said “budget” or “economy/jobs.”

While social conservative movements grew out of churches, the Tea Party has built its numbers online. Advocacy groups that have helped grow the movement, like Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, have also emphasized the importance of focusing on economic conservatism.

Raising social issues, the movement’s leaders say, risks fracturing the strength it has built. “Every social issue you bring in, you’re adding planks to your mission,” said Frank Anderson, a founder of the Independence Caucus, based in Utah. “And planks become splinters.”

They also recognize that support for gay marriage has increased, particularly among the young, and so opposing it may alienate supporters.

At a candidate forum sponsored by the Kitchen Table Patriots in suburban Philadelphia in January, nine candidates, mostly first-time politicians seeking office after getting involved in the Tea Party, were asked whether they believed that Roe v. Wade should be repealed. Only one said yes.

“I think that it’s also going to get Democrats over, if you’re not so rigid,” said Anastasia Przybylski, the co-founder of the Patriots. “I have friends where that’s a big turnoff — they’re registered Democrats because of abortion but they’re totally freaking out about the debt.”