Is Web site traffic a meaningful measure of political clout? Are you asserting that the threat from the tea party movement has been hyped by the media? I happen to agree with you, but I'm astounded that you would admit to the mirage-like nature of teapartyism. Why do you simultaneously sing the praises of teapartyism while downplaying its significance?

Speaking of opacity and its opposite, transparency: While the DU conducts its policy deliberations in the open and publishes its terms of service where you can read it, tea partiers are allergic to that kind of openness; they prefer to scuttle in the shadows. I can't quote from the Tea Party Nation equivalent TOS because it's behind their registration wall (so you don't know what you're signing up for until you sign up for it...typical rightwing thought patterns). I can only describe their TOS as brutally hateful, practically spitting venom, and puts DU's draft TOS to shame. But you'll have to take my word for it, or ask Rob to confirm it now that he's also joined TPN.

Tea partiers have a thoroughly primal, violent, and antiintellectual way of expressing themselves. Ask Rob for an estimate of how many pictures in the TPN photo gallery depict either people brandishing weapons, or weapons in fetishistic poses (partially-disassembled automatic rifles displayed fetchingly on a blanket, for example). The DU's proposed TOS is a model of civility by comparison.

But I will observe that it's a bitch when chickens come home to roost, isn't it TB?