Tea Party | featured news

You may have heard or read about the ugly scenes on Capitol Hill yesterday, when a few conservative activists shouted racial and homophobic epithets at Democratic lawmakers. Today the conservative activists are back. And so is the ugliness--only this time, a few Republicans were actually encouraging them.

With a modest "tea party" protest outside, thousands rally for what the president calls a "fateful debate" that has been raging for a century.

Some Tea Partiers say they can pinpoint the precise moment when they made it clear to the Republican Party they had no intention of being its lapdog.

A New Jersey appeals court is allowing a conservative tea party group to proceed with an effort to throw a Democratic U.S. senator out of office.

Is the Coffee Party on the scale of the Tea Party movement? Saturday is the first big test in attempting to answer that question.

The Republican race to unseat Barbara Boxer was always volatile, with a multimillionaire businesswoman and a scrappy candidate embraced by the "tea party" movement competing for the right to challenge the three-term senator. But former Rep. Tom Campbell's late entry into the Republican primary seven weeks ago has markedly altered the dynamics of the race.

Even the White House's top spokesman is getting in on the act of mocking former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for looking to talking points written on her palm during a speech to "tea party" activists.

Republican observers say Palin's done more lately to establish herself as a political celebrity focused on publicity rather than a political candidate focused on policy.

The political action committee that organized the Tea Party Express ("Our Country Deserves Better PAC") funneled almost two-thirds of its spending back to the political consulting firm from which it was spawned. More than $850,000 of the money the "grassroots" PAC collected went to the firm of GOP political operatives who ran it.

Tea parties -- they aren't just for conservatives anymore. Liberals are turning against President Obama with an energy that until now has been reserved for Fox News viewers who wear tri-corner hats and wave yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags.