I saw this in the thread and just had to comment....

"Tea Party forum?

Naaa. Just a few folks that actually believe our Constitution means something..."

In my experience it's more like "Just a few folks who beleive The Constitution means what we think it means, not what's actually in it." The Tea Party folks I've talked to have ideas for changing this country that would not only destroy our infrastructure and leave many impoverished and homeless, but also trample on the Constitution and the rights currently afforded to all our citizens.

There also seems to be a large anti-Muslim sentiment, not only in that party, but in some of the comments in this thread. I feel compelled to remind that Muslims are people too. The Constitution isn't a religious document, and Muslims are equal citizens under the law. If we want to go back to a "founding fathers" argument...they as puritans were fleeing religious persecution in Anglican England and one of the provisions of their new government was that it was to be separate from religion, allowing anyone to practice however they wanted without fear of persecution. Surely the Tea Party, being constitutional purists, would want to honor that, right?

I think that if we really want to clean up the dirty politics game that is preventing progress and the positive change that everyone is hoping for, we need to try and get the Supreme Court to reverse its decision about unlimited corporate election funding. In fact I think that we need to eliminate all funding from corporations and lobby groups. Don't give politicians the ability to recieve incentives, sell their votes, or be swayed from their duty by private interests. In this way government can afford to spend less by focusing their efforts, tax less, and get more done with the money they do have. I think we should place a hefty tax on companies that want to take jobs overseas and away from Americans, to hopefully create sufficient incentive for jobs to come back here.

That's my two cents.

Anyways...I always love a good discussion. Even though this isn't usually the forum for it, it's enjoyable to read everyone's opinions all the same.