The resounding victory of Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock over six-term Senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary resurrected the Tea Party movement as a potent force in much of the public mind. Yet some regarded Mourdock's victory as a re-affirmation of their belief that "Big Money" determines all outcomes, and that the Tea Parties had little to do with it.

In IREHR's analysis of these recent events, by contrast, three factors were relevant: the Tea Parties' unanimous choice to support Mourdock; a decision by the Tea Party to begin campaigning more than twelve months before the election date; and the movement's choice of a ground game rather than an air war significantly impacted the low-turnout election. In short, a year of coordinated efforts between national and local Tea Party groups organizing around a set of Tea Party ideas led to a primary victory and put them back into the center of the national conversation.

The following article was written last summer for the academic journal Critical Sociology, and it will appear in print later this year. It describes the specific form of racism that manifests itself in the Tea Parties, a belief by white people that social gains for black people are, in fact, attacks on the standards for white people. Thus Tea Partiers subjectively believe that they are an oppressed or exploited social grouping. This article also warns against the mistake of prematurely counting the Tea Parties down and out. There is, of course, more. You, dear reader, will find that yourself in the reading.

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As further evidence of the growing influence of Christian nationalism inside the Tea Party Patriots, several speakers are scheduled to bring the culture war to center stage at a big Massachusetts Tea Party rally later this month.

Believe it or not, the so-called birthers are back. As if the post Citizens United world of campaign finance wasn't sketchy enough, along comes a new super PAC created specifically to regurgitate racist conspiracy theories claiming President Obama is not a natural-born American, and thereby supposedly barred from holding the presidency.

The group has already started running ads.

The first full Federal Election Commission report for the new Tea Party super PAC, FreedomWorks for America, just became available to the public. The report indicates that in its first five months, the super PAC brought in serious cash, $2,697,973 to be exact. What the new report doesn't say is almost as informative as what does.

National Tea Party groups are gearing up for an influx of unregulated campaign cash this year. On Monday, January 23, the Tea Party Express became the second national Tea Party faction to dive into the big money world of super PACs with the formation of the Tea Party Express Presidential Campaign PAC. The Tea Party Express joins FreedomWorks, which formed its super PAC last summer.

While all eyes were focused on the Republican Party primary in South Carolina, and commentators were proclaiming the Tea Party movement finished because it had not yet picked a single presidential candidate to act as its standard-bearer, five hundred Tea Partiers gathered in Myrtle Beach on January 15 and 16, as if to prove its naysayers wrong. They came from 23 local Tea Party and "constitutionalist" organizations. The speakers' list was a who's who and what is what among the Tea Partiers and Republican politicians. And anti-immigrant fever ran high.

In this special report the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) delineates the intersection of two trends. One is a measureable drop in the number of local and national anti-immigrant organizations that were established prior to the presidency of Barack Obama. Along the same lines, those organizations which remained experienced a noticeable decrease in the size of their membership and financial support.

 This has led to a relative decline in what IREHR describes as the Nativist Establishment. It should be noted that IREHR is not arguing that these organizations have disappeared altogether. Neither does IREHR contend that such organizations have ceased to be a danger to human rights. Rather, the data suggests that their size and power have fallen relative to the strength they had achieved at their height during the period 2007-2008.

An Open Injunction Against Bigots & Conspiracy Mongers.

Is a Canadian Tea Party in the offing?