Michael Fumento

"The Tea Party is still taking shape," says the front page headline in today's Washington Post. The Post is a liberal paper, but that sounds like a fair headline. The story may or may not be fair, but there were some quotes in there that if representative are worrying.

Thus Jim Linn, an electrical engineer from San Diego, allegedly told the reporter that, in her paraphrasation, "the Constitution must be interpreted in ways that match his understanding of the Founders' intent. That would mean scrapping a lot of the amendments, he acknowledges, but not Nos. 2, 10, 16 and 17."

Of course, the Founders enacted all ten of the first Amendments as the Bill of Rights. That includes Nos. 1 and 3-9. But it's possible those were just his favorites. It's also entirely possible that the Post reported played the old game of interviewing tons of people and just quoting the most outlandish ones. Let's just hope this fellow isn't representative.

More worrying was this regarding former U.S. representative Tom Tancredo (Colo.), who ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. "When Tancredo said, 'His name is Barack Hussein Obama,' the audience booed loudly."

Let's be clear on this. Obama did not choose his middle name. He did not choose the parents who gave him that name. O! would that we could have chosen our own parents. Among other things, mine would have been wealthy.

Here's an explanation of why that middle name is used against him.

Debbie Schlussel, self-identified "conservative political commentator, radio talk show host and columnist," blogged in 2006 that:

And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that's not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he's a Christian, but they do not.