My gawd, you're chortling over the success of the organized campaign of sedition. Yes Tom, we know it worked, that's the problem. Just because sedition is legal in America, doesn't make it right. And, it appears, lack of legal restraints in fact makes sedition a potentially rewarding political tactic.

Let's be clear: I'm not abandoning my longstanding passion for freedom of speech. I'm not going to suggest that we reinstate the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1803, or invoke the Smith Act of 1940. A belief in self-determination, if it's serious, has to include the right of a people to commit national suicide. If teabaggers can infect a majority of Americans with their nascent idiocracy, we'll have shown that we deserve the government we get. So let the chips fall where they may.

Despite your self-serving plea, we really haven't seen that many examples of genuine sedition in American history; by "genuine" I mean narrowly-defined, to try to avoid the deadly minefield of broad definitions like "oppose the government". It's been understood until recently to have been the political equivalent of a nuke and that only a madman would use it, and a vestigial sense of responsibility has kept it in check for the most part. But the teabaggers appear to have slipped off the leash of adult supervision, and they're beyond the steadying influence of the GOP now. (Edit: God help me, did I just call the GOP a "steadying influence"? The world's gone mad, I tell you!)

Just to be clear: Are you defending the "tea party movement(s)" as legitimate representatives of the Conservative brand? Do they speak for you?