Racist satire earns Tea Party faction the boot

Good.

The National Tea Party Federation, an organization that represents the Tea Party political movement around the country, has expelled conservative commentator Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express because of an inflammatory blog post he wrote, federation spokesman David Webb said Sunday.

Appearing on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Webb said that Williams and the Tea Party Express -- which has held a series of events across the country to generate support for the movement -- no longer were part of the National Tea Party Federation.

"We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote," Webb said of the blog post by Williams that satirized a fictional letter from what he called "Colored People" to President Abraham Lincoln.

Williams' alleged satire was not funny enough to be good, nor bad enough to be funny. It read like something dredged up from a usenet sewer. Thanks to this, more people will wonder if the Tea Party is not a pro-liberty movement, but rather the (barely) acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff. No, this particular spat was definitely not fought on the plane of ideas....