We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator David Blank* burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Schackleford asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank the shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

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As the Tea Party movement approaches its first “birthday”, the leadership is taking it to new levels.  The metamorphosis, which has been deliciously organic, has seen it go from street protests, to active demonstrations to serious political action.  All along the way, Big Media and Big Political Parties have failed to truly grasp what it is all about.  As Missouri lawmaker, Chris Kelly once famously said to another during Floor debate, “I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you”.

At the end of the month, Richard Viguerie — legendary conservative activist, direct response fundraising pioneer, and currently chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — will deliver the keynote speech at the inaugural Leadership Tea Party training event to be held at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Westin Hotel.  In addition to Mr. Viguerie’s keynote speech delivered on Friday night January 29, the event will consist of 11 sessions of grassroots leadership training over 14 hours on Saturday and Sunday, January 30-31. Mr. Viguerie’s speech is free and open to both the press and the public, though a limited number of seats are available. (You can request a ticket online here .)

Viguerie, who was hired by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1962 as the director of Young Americans for Freedom, worked for the Goldwater campaign in 1964, pioneered the direct response fund raising techniques that financed the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, and has been a key leader in the movement for limited government for decades.  Tea Party activists of varying levels of political experience, most rigorously eschewing party labels, are hungry to learn the tactics to win on the political battlefield.  Like latter day militia men, the Tea Party activists have seen the whites of the eyes of the red coats reds, and they are trading their microsoft office suite applications for html and eblogger and are training in the dark political arts for the battle that will shape their Country for the sake of their children.

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