Triumph of the Would
One of the most destructive aspects of today's world is 'virtual news', the replacement of plain facts by speculation. Watch CNN or Fox or CNBC, and you may pick up a genuine fact once every few hours. The lonely little fact is completely overwhelmed by a toxic soup of absolute lies about global warming and economics; computer models predicting disaster based on total falsehood and bad math; free-floating bull sessions posing as "debates"; and medical studies that tell you nothing.

Rush has often -- and accurately -- slashed the cable channels for replacing is with could, and even Saturday Night Live has run a pointed parody.

So you'd think Rush and his colleagues might use some actual facts when stirring the public to action?

Nope. Yesterday's tea parties were complaining about something that could happen. Income tax rates are presently at their lowest point in living memory. Yet the participants were shouting about high taxes.

"Petitioning for redress" supposedly means you're complaining about a genuine grievance, and you're asking the gov't to take steps that it has been refusing to take.

In this case the tea parties are complaining about the nonexistent problem of high taxes, and asking Congress to cut taxes. Well, Congress has been cutting taxes for the last decade, and Congress is always deliriously happy to cut taxes. Nothing is easier.

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`Take some more tax,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice.

`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off.

`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tax-party I ever was at in all my life!'

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Seriously: If you really want to protest against tyranny and propose a solution to tyranny, you should be protesting the tyranny of litigation and proposing "loser pays" plus "no punitive damages". That would be a one-stop no-cost solution to a hundred problems at once. Medical costs, obstacles to innovation and small business, restrictions on free speech. These problems have NO connection to taxes. All of them would be tremendously eased if lawsuits became the last-resort option instead of the easiest way to make big money.
  ¶ 9:39 AM