On one side of the debate, you have freedom loving Americans who are the taxpayers, the ones who fund our government and are the heart and soul of this great nation. On the other, those who would seek to ride on the backs of the taxpayers as they take this country down a path of statism.

This is the great fight right now: freedom vs. statism, and the ones of the front lines for freedom are the tea partiers. They have been, and are continuing to, answer the bell time and time again in this crucial time in American history. They’ve been mocked and reviled, questioned, but they are America’s best hope to turn this magnificent nation back to a path of freedom and prosperity and away from destructive statism.

What I saw in Madison on Saturday was amazing. Thursday morning, the American Majority staff in Wisconsin and some local tea party leaders, Meg Ellefson and Tim Dake, along with Dave Westlake, decided there should be a rally in support of Scott Walker and his Budget Repair Bill. In roughly 48 hours, it went from idea to reality, from a few people talking to 10,000 rallying on the steps of the capitol.

Within hours of announcing there would be a rally, I got a call that Andrew Breitbart was in.

An hour later, Herman Cain said he would be there. Then Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit was roped in. The next morning, I got ahold of Joe the Plumber and asked if he would record some robo calls to promote the event. He not only said yes, but he hopped in the car to drive from Ohio to speak at the rally. Then Andrew mentioned that Brad Thor, the New York Times bestselling author, would be willing to speak. I said sign him up. Then Tim Phillips of AFP offered to fund some of the buses to bring people in. I said great, and then he too came and spoke at the rally.

I diverted my flight home from Southern California, landed in Chicago at 1am Saturday morning, and got up at the crack of dawn to drive up with Jim Hoft, Andrew, Brad, Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers, and the rest of the posse. Our four car caravan rolled into Madison around 11am, and I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, even in the minutes before the rally. Fox News asked how many we were expecting, and I said we expected thousands.

Of course there were just a few more than a couple of thousand, with reports of at least 10,000; there were even reports of 15,000 this morning, though that number strikes me as being high. But I keep on thinking, even today, “All of that in less than 48 hours.” All the credit goes to the American Majority staff in Wisconsin, the magnificent local tea party leaders and others who worked behind the scenes to make the event happen.

The battle between the tea partiers and public sector unions was joined Saturday in Madison. It will play out over the coming days, weeks, months, even years, in Ohio, Florida, Indiana and other states. There is no doubt that the public sector unions are better organized and have more funding. But I’m putting my money on the tea partiers because I believe that in reality they represent the significant majority of the American people, and the American people are saying it’s time to get back to what has made us great: limited government, free enterprise and individual freedom.

I spoke with Brian Darling, who is a Big Government contributor, after the event yesterday at Heritage Foundation. He later sent me his “List of Myths” that the democrat-media complex will try to push on the American public this week as they go for their power grab in the US Senate.
With his permission, I am posting those “myths” here.

Four Myths about the Filibuster

There are four myths that you will hear over and over again about the filibuster. Don’t believe the left when they claim that the filibuster is unconstitutional and was an accident of history. Furthermore don’t believe it when you hear that the Senate is not a continuing body and therefore the Senate can only change rules in the first day of a new Congress. The explicit words of the Constitution, the Senate’s written rules and the history of the Senate show that the filibuster was created by design, it is constitutional and the Senate is a continuous body.

Myth: The Filibuster is Unconstitutional. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) argues that “When the authors of the Constitution believed a supermajority vote was necessary, they clearly said so. And while the Constitution states that we may determine our own rules, it makes no mention that it require a supermajority vote to do so. In addition, a longstanding common law principle, upheld in Supreme Court decisions, states that one legislature cannot bind its successors. To require a supermajority to change the rules, as is our current practice, is to allow a Senate rule to trump our U.S. Constitution and bind future Senates.”

Fact: The Filibuster is constitutional and efforts to restrict debate in the Senate may be unconstitutional. The Constitution empowers the House and Senate to establish rules of procedure. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states that “each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.” This provision in the Constitution empowers the Senate to make rules governing debate. The Senate in 1917 established the cloture rule requiring a 2/3rds vote of all Senators present and voting to shut down debate after years of not having a means to shut down debate. Senate Rule 22 today states “invoking cloture on a proposal to amend the Senate’s standing rules requires the support of two-thirds of the Senators present and voting.” The clear letter of the Senate’s rules mandate a supermajority vote to change the Senate’s rules.

Myth: The Filibuster was created by accident. Sarah Binder, Senior Fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute testified before the Senate Rules Committee on April 22, 2010, “when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake.”

Fact: On numerous occasions the early Senate rejected rules changes that would have limited debate. According to John Quincy Adam’s diary published in 1874, he wrote that in 1806, Vice-President Aaron Burr advised the Senate that the motion for the previous question was of no use and should be dropped. Burr thought it not necessary. In a 20 minute address to the Senate he spoke of his tenure as chair of the Senate. It was Burr’s view that the rule was not necessary for the Senate. This was a decision of the Senate and was made after a discussion of the issue by the Vice President. The opponents would like to characterize this as an oversight, yet future attempts to reinstate a move the previous question were resisted by Senators. According do Senator Robert C. Byrd’s “The Senate, 1789-1989, “Henry Clay, in 1841, proposed the introduction of the “previous question” but abandoned the idea in the face of opposition.” Byrd also wrote that “when Senator Stephen Douglas proposed permitting the use of the ‘previous question’ in 1850, the idea encountered substantial opposition and was dropped.” According to Byrd, “An effort to reinstitute the ‘previous question,’ on March 19, 1873, failed by a vote of 25-30. Byrd cited the following: “Between 1884 and 1890, fifteen different resolutions were offered to amend the rules of regarding limitations of debate, all of which failed of adoption.” It is clear from the early history of the Senate that the filibuster was not merely an accident of history, it was a design by early Senators.

Myth: The Senate is not a continuing body.

Fact: The Senate’s rules memorialize the fact that the Senate is a continuing body.According to Marty Gold and Dimple Gupta’s Harvard Law Review article titled “The Constitutional Option to Change Senate Rules and Procedures: Majoritarianism Means to Over Come the Filibuster” describing Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson’s (D-TX) compromise proposal to make it easier to shut down debate and affirm that the Senate is a continuing body. Rule XXII would be amended to reduce the required vote for cloture to “two-thirds of the Senators present and voting,” and, in order to assuage the worries of Senators who opposed the constitutional option, a new clause would be added to the Senate Standing Rules holding, “The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules.” Our Founders set up the Senate with staggered 6 year terms and only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for election every two years. Our Founders set up the Senate to be a far different body than the House of Representatives. The length of terms and mandate that every state, regardless of size, gets two votes is evidence that our Founders wanted a Senate to be far different from the House. The facts are that the constitution authorizes the Senate’s rules. The Senate’s rules confirm that the Senate is a continuing body and that it takes a 2/3rds vote to shut off debate on a rules change. A strong case can be made that the actions of liberals in the Senate violates are an unconstitutional power grab.

Myth: The Senate can only change rules on the first day of the new session by a simple majority.

Fact: The Senate can never change rules with a simple majority vote. The Senate’s rules are clear that the Senate is a Continuing Body. As the Senate Web site explains: To foster values such as deliberation, reflection, continuity, and stability in the Senate, the framers made several important decisions. First, they set the senatorial term of office at six years even though the duration of a Congress is two years. The Senate, in brief, was to be a “continuing body” with one-third of its membership up for election at any one time.… “ According to Marty Gold’s Law review article Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R-MA) argued in 1957 “there never is a new Senate; there is merely a change in one third-of its members.” The Senate’s rule 5 states1. No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on one day’s notice in writing, specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided by the rules. 2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules. The left claims that new rules are not adopted until the Senate operates under new rules. This claim simply is not true,

Remember these myths this week as you watch the progressives assault the filibuster.

Democrats had no problem with the filibuster during Bush’s tenure (and certainly not during the late 50s when they filibustered the Civil Rights Act). It’s the Democrats who have constantly fiddled with senate rules:

n 1841, when the Democratic minority hoped to block a bank bill promoted by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, he threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton rebuked Clay for trying to stifle the Senate’s right to unlimited debate.

Three quarters of a century later, in 1917, senators adopted a rule (Rule 22), at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, that allowed the Senate to end a debate with a two-thirds majority vote, a device known as “cloture.” The new Senate rule was first put to the test in 1919, when the Senate invoked cloture to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. Even with the new cloture rule, filibusters remained an effective means to block legislation, since a two-thirds vote is difficult to obtain. Over the next five decades, the Senate occasionally tried to invoke cloture, but usually failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote. Filibusters were particularly useful to Southern senators who sought to block civil rights legislation, including anti-lynching legislation, until cloture was invoked after a 57 day filibuster against the Civil Right Act of 1964. In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 of the current one hundred senators.

The Senate isn’t supposed to function in the same manner as the House, which was designed to be more reflective of the people’s wishes. Darling hits upon this, as well as gives a rare credit to Sen. Chris Dodd for acknowledging such:

Dodd understands the concern that a stubborn minority can force the majority to bend to its will, yet filibuster reform is not the appropriate solution to that problem. The solution is for Senators show a willingness to sit down and talk out problems while respecting the tradition and rules of the Senate.

The talking point now is that the filibuster is antiquated, something I’ve heard said or seen implication of in a plethora of news outlets; thus it’s important to remember the history and purpose of the rule and the party responsible for changing, or attempting to change, it whenever it didn’t suit them.

It also marked a new chapter in on-line media. Most of the conservative on-line media are scorekeepers. The provide opinion, but don’t really move the ball forward. I know that sounds both hyperbolic and self-serving, but consider: after the second day of our video release the U.S. Senate voted to defund ACORN and the Census Bureau severed all ties with the embattled organization. All of this happened before either the Washington Post or New York Times had devoted a single column inch to the burgeoning scandal. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 16 years. Nothing politically happened until one of those papers weighed in. Until last year. The game totally changed and, even today, neither the JournoList-supporting Post nor the hemorrhaging Times understands this. Newsweek is dead. USA Today is shedding staff as fast as it can while Time clings to life as something to glance at on an airplane and every other part of the legacy media retires to “background noise.”  Simply put, no one cares about them anymore.

There was a time that news organizations like the Post and the Times could set the national agenda. They were the arbiters of what was news and what was “important.” A wink from one of their reporters would set off a national debate. If they ignored a story, well, it went nowhere. They were the “casting couch” of all possible news. Those days are over.

I won’t go through all of the details, but Big Government was essentially launched because of the grass-roots uprising we’ve witnessed over the past year. We felt that, whether the debate was about stimulus, TARP, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade or bailouts, the fundamental issue that had galvanized the American public was the inexorable growth of government.  They rightfully didn’t like what politicians in DC and state capitals (from both parties) were pushing down their throats. Big Government was for all of those patriots who rejected being lectured to or managed by an increasingly isolated political class. Try Freedom was our existential message.

It has been a wild ride.

We have broken a lot of stories beyond ACORN. From Jim Hoft’s great expose on Kevin Jennings, Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” to Liberty Chick and Don Loos’ great reporting on SEIU, Big Government has brought you actual news…rather than, as most do, simple commentary. We broke three videos: Phil “I Don’t Worry About the Constitution” Hare, Bob “Who Are You” Etheridge and Ciro “You Are Calling Me a Liar” Rodrigeuz that may have a real impact on the elections in November.

But, there has been so much more. The Build-a-Bear silliness, the first reporting of ObamaCare rationing with the de-listing of Avastin, the uncomfortably close ties between Google and the Administration and the only real defense of the “Tea Party Movement” against a baseless smear of racism. (Yes, we have noted who didn’t rise to the defense in the same way. Short answer: Most of the “tea party movement.”) And much more.

There is much more planned for this year. But, we can’t do any of this without you. You are why we created this site and, every day, you give us the inspiration to keep fighting. We were born to fight, but, without you and our great contributors, we would be fighting a fool’s game. You all give us the strength to keep up the fight. Your ongoing commitment to the fight gives us inspiration to strive and do better.

America has awoken from its slumber. We are ready.

In addition to the troubling new powers for a new nanny-state consumer agency and possibly the Federal Reserve added to the prospect of billions more in bailouts for reckless financial firm, the bill may also contain the sneaky  “proxy access” power grab for unions, radical environmentalists, and other groups on the Left. This rule, inspired by Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, is contained in Dodd’s “discussion draft” bill from late last year.

As I detailed in BigGovernment last week, “proxy access would federalize and override decades of state law governing the structure of corporations and force publicly-traded companies to put shareholders’ nominees for a board of directors on a company’s proxy ballot along with the firm’s own nominees for those positions.” Many shareholder groups that are pushing this are union pension funds, the radical Tides Foundation, and other progressive groups — from animal rights to anti-Israel — who place their own political agenda items at the expense of ordinary shareholders.

Even if these groups’ nominees do not get elected as directors, they could use the threat of a campaign – which the company and other shareholders would be forced to subsidize – “as a lever to force U.S. companies to bow to the Left’s wish list on every policy from “card check” that would end secret ballot for union elections to cap-and-trade rationing of electricity to a silencing of conservative voices by small group of ideological shareholders who would have veto power over the content of a media company.” Indeed, proxy access could also serve as a type of Fairness Doctrine-rule in which progressive shareholders of media companies attempt to block conservative content, as now-disgraced New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi did when Sinclair Broadcasting was going to air the “Stolen Honor” documentary critical of John Kerry.

As I documented in the article, proxy access has its roots in the “proxy tactic” that community organizer Alinksy outlined in his Rules for Radicals. In that handbook, Alinsky called for progressive groups to utilize shareholder proxies as “the razor to cut through the golden curtain that protected the so-called private sector from facing its public responsibilities.” Alinsky admitted that this tactic “will result in diminished dividends” for middle-class investors, but said that it was necessary to fool the middle class to “build power for change.”

But on the debate on health care and other issues pushed by progressives, the middle-class is showing that it isn’t fooled as easily as Alinsky and his followers though they could be. It remains to be seen, though, whether the proxy tactic will fool Corker, or whether he will be educated on this and other forms of “corporate jujitsu”(Alinksy’s own words) by the legions of savvy middle-class investors and entrepreneurs.

On that note, I am happy to report that leaders of 17 groups representing a broad spectrum of the Center-Right coalition  — from my organization Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform to the Christian Coalition of America  — have sent a letter to Dodd, Banking Committee Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Corker expressing objections to proxy access.  Such a rule, the letter states, “would benefit special interests with political agendas at the expense of ordinary shareholders” and “would allow … activists to achieve through the board nomination process what they have been unable to accomplish through the political process.” The letter is printed below and also available here.

And as previous BigGovernment articles have noted, you can share your thoughts with the office of Sen Bob Corker at (202) 224-3324.

proxy access letter 2009 –

The convention attracted Tea Party organizers, activists, and supporters from around the country, as well as some of the more prolific bloggers on the subject of the Tea Party movement.

Founding Bloggers invited some of these top Tea Party bloggers to sit down with us to talk tea. They graciously agreed to spend some time with us, and “Talking Tea” is the 9 minute result.

Below is the full length clip; however, we have also broken out a couple shorter segments for your viewing convenience:

1) Breitbart On The Republican Establishment – (WARNING: NSFW)
2) Breitbart On Destroying CNN and NYT

Special thanks to the staff at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Breitbart, Jim Hoft Dana Loesch, Chip-X, and Evan Maloney.

Sorry, that headline comes from an alternate universe where Media Matters isn’t a political hack tank devoted to defending Progressive Democrats at all costs.

It only took 6 hours for them to begin glossing over an audio interview Jim Hoft conducted with a retired teacher who had the misfortune of attending one of the GLSEN events associated with Fistgate.

The teacher, who wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, offers her opinion about the event, and Obama “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings’ awareness of the overtly sexualized curriculum.

Excerpt from Fistage VII:

MT: This whole conference was his dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning.

GP: So there was no way that they would have had material there that he would not have, would you say approved of?

MT: Obviously, this is material that he abvocates. Even today if you read the text of some of the books that they put out.

GP: That was up on my blog, by the way.

MT: He knew about that too. He knows about everything all along. Remember, the buck stops with him. He was the head of all of this.

GP: OK.

MT: He brought in all of the people that would agree with him as any administrator would do. You bring in people who agree with you who you can work with.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Below is how Media Matters reacts to the damning material [emphasis added in bold]

Note to any Progressive Democrats appearing on any media outlet or writing any blog, your talking points are as follows:

Hoft’s new Jennings claim is a dud
December 14, 2009 11:05 am ET by Matt Gertz

Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is again attempting to link Department of Education official Kevin Jennings to a workshop for high school students which included explicit discussions of sex that took place at a 2000 GLSEN/Boston conference. Hoft’s new “Explosive” claim is that a Massachusetts teacher who “wanted to remain anonymous out of safety considerations for herself and her family” claims “that there is ‘no way’ that Obama’s Safe School Czar did not know about the pornographic and sexually explicit material that was presented and discussed at the conference.” Of course, neither Hoft nor the anonymous teacher provide any actual evidence that Jennings knew the specific explicit content that would be discussed at that workshop; when he was made aware after the fact, he reportedly criticized it.

Media Matters seems to be treating Jim Hoft as though he is a district attorney, burdened by a legal standard of evidence for admission in a court of law, when in fact Jim is simply doing a job that many in traditional media are too squeamish to do. He’s reporting. Different standard.

Sure, an actual attendee may have given her eye witness impression of her first hand experience at a GLSEN event, but that doesn’t mean anything. Nothing to see or hear, here!

Refresher course…GLSEN was founded by President Obama’s “Safe School’s Czar”. Below is one example (among dozens) of what GLSEN and Media Matters are defending as acceptable recommended reading for kids (NSFW):

Queer 13 – Pages 16 + 17

(A man masturbates and explicitly ejaculates as he sits on a hill overlooking his hometown.)

I sit down on the hard ground and cry a little. I fish my aged cock out of my jeans as though I can mark the scene with pleasure so later I can find it and reread it for understanding. Once imagined, it is my responsibility to jack off in front of it all. The air feels funny on my cock, which usually squirms like a larva in the darkness; it’s more sensitive than I am to the prickle of a slight breeze. There is nothing to arouse me except myself. My tract looks so boring, its emptiness so lacks potential, that I can almost believe in reality, since here is appearance spreading out at my feet. It only takes a minute. My crotch rings like an alarm clock, some pump mechanism kicks in, and after short flights my sperm falls on the gray dirt. I feel edgy and shallow, emptied out by the day ahead, and twinges of residual pleasure make me twitch.

The Republicans stood in the dark and refused to leave. A few officials, including John Culberson, took out their phones and began Twittering the action to America, this spawning the #dontgo movement. It was the first nudge to the hibernating conservative constituency who were excited about having something over which to be excited in their party. Netroots activists seethed at the realization that Democrats left America in limbo rather than vote against reducing energy costs and drilling stateside –  though the majority of the population approved of such. They rallied around the legislators that had the brass to stay and urged them to “Don’t go!”

Democrats shut down Republicans a second time promptly after the election by moving to bar them from amending legislation in the House.

Taxpayer fury over these offenses grew to a shriek in February when Rick Santelli delivered his famous diatribe on the floor of the Chicago exchange. The feelings of angry disenfranchisement felt by so many conservatives coalesced following Santelli’s speech. The first wave of tea parties came from this, the first national effort occurring on February 27th, 2008. I was at St. Louis’s very first tea party and stood across the mighty Mississippi on the Arch steps with a bunch of wide-eyed, virgin protesters who were just as shocked as I was to see the amount of people who had assembled.

We’ve kept the movement growing, too. Nationwide demonstrations on April 15th with a bunch of smaller ones peppered in between have raised awareness of government trespasses; the email distribution lists have grown; the flash protests have swelled in size; more people now than ever are reading the legislation that their officials can’t be bothered to read. The administration relented and addressed us this past spring as we protested outside the president’s town hall in Arnold, Missouri. He invited us to meet with him. We accepted, we sent him a certified letter of acceptance and thanks, he never replied.

Conservatives exhausted the phone lines and keyboards contacting their representatives to alter their vote on the stimulus, cap and trade, and other legislation. Leaving messages with clueless aides wasn’t enough. Receiving canned email responses which did nothing to address voter concerns wasn’t enough.

It only validated what we all knew anyway: Washington wasn’t listening.

We conservatives, still stinging from the Patriot Act and the Wall Street bailout of the previous administration, were furious. If our elected officials were too busy frittering away our taxpayer dollars to take our calls and emails then Katy bar the door: “we the people” would march to their offices.

One of the first town halls was that of Claire McCaskill; she and Americans for Prosperity arranged a make-up “listening session” for conservatives with her aides after her University City office staff had a melt down when constituents marched to the Senator’s office and tried to speak with the her. Staffers responded by bolting the door, drawing the blinds, and calling the cops. The listening session was specifically for those citizens who felt excluded and the result was an endless stream of polite, but impassioned citizens who raised their voices and pointed their fingers towards McCaskill’s aide Michelle Sherrod. Video of this, taken by myself and Jim Hoft, went viral.

Conservatives stormed town halls across the country as their officials arrived home for recess. We lined up and blasted our representatives for forsaking us and the Constitution. We expressed outrage at the lack of debate concerning the health care proposals. When our officials went into hiding, like Russ Carnahan did, some of our like-minded conservative brethren plastered fliers featuring the MIA legislators on the back of a milk carton.

Democrats feign shock; they can’t possibly imagine the cause of so much fuss. Hand them their smelling salts. They bemoan the “rudeness” of the loud town halls while lying to constituents about portions of the health care legislation, bussing in plants, and supporting SEIU members who beat down dissenters in the parking lot seemingly on their orders. They’ve called us “unAmerican,” “evil-mongerers,” “silly,” “an angry mob,” “terrorists,” and that what we’re doing “borders on treason” – all which seems truly rude if we’re defining rude behavior. Their only defense against this strong, informed citizenry is to brush them off as kooks and they’ve leaned heavily on the mainstream media to do so.

Just one problem: conservatives are bypassing mainstream media. Conservatives blogs are on the rise and media is loathe to admit that we’re dominating social media networks and the best sellers’ lists.

The collective consciousness of half the country’s population has changed: we stopped measuring our validity and successes by the media and by our enemies’ criticisms. We embraced the spirit of the underdog. We realized that GOP is not synonymous with conservatism. Some of us are preparing to run for offices ourselves, we’re launching our own conservative groups and organizing petitions, rallies, and lobbyist efforts all around the country.

The tea party movement has challenged the GOP to get back on track or risk losing its grip on the right wing. It’s reminded Democrats that a slick marketing campaign coupled with paid activism isn’t the same as a groundswell of real change and the reason that Democrats are so hostile towards it is because they’ve never before encountered it.

This movement celebrates its last big hurrah of 2009 before marching headlong into a midterm year. The tea party is far from over and for the sake of checks and balances, I hope it never ends.