Summary of Evidence that the St. Louis Tea Party WAS Trying to Intimidate

The St. Louis Tea Party, after a weekend of chest-thumping and saber rattling, is now trying to portray themselves as victims of a Lefty and Media conspiracy to make them look like extremists. I think there is overwhelming evidence that their actions over the past week were specifically intended to intimidate members of congress and/or rile up their followers, potentially into violence. I present it here.

To start with, check out Bill Hennessy's blog post from a week ago when he was trying to scare congress into not voting for the bill:

Today, the House of Representatives voted 222-203 to dispense with yea and nay voting on the most important laws. That action effectively ends the contract between the United States and the People. “Screw you, America. We’re Congress. We’ll do whatever the hell we want. And you’ll gladly pay for it, you swine!”

But if Congress cut the ties to the contract WE wrote, aren’t we, the people, free from any obligations to the federal government? It would seem that we are citizens of our states and we owe no allegiance, legal or moral, to the government in Washington...Now, what do we do about it?

He then cites the Declaration of Independence, and specifically bolds the following:

it is their right,
it is their duty,
to throw off such Government,

Two more notable quotes from his post:

If Congress continues on its present course – to inflict socialized medicine on America by decree – the reaction from the people will be something that we have never seen before.

But if this bill passes, all bets are off. Every aspect of the government in Washington is fair game.

In a different post, Hennessy said the following:

It would seem that the American Experiment is over. It’s time to choose between freedom and tyranny, and no one will be spared the decision.

Then, on Saturday, the Tea Party had a rally outside of Congressman Russ Carnahan's office. At the rally, the tea party (1) used shoes to whack a picture of Russ Carnahan, (2) kicked the photo of Carnahan, (3) set up a game where people would throw boots at a picture of Carnahan, (4) even encouraged small children to throw the boot at Carnahan, and (5) finally ended by setting the picture of Carnahan on fire while Dana Loesch said things like, "This is how a fire smells when it's burning Tyranny".

They used a photo of Carnahan with blood dripping from his mouth:

(photo from Sharp Elbows).

Jim Hoft titled his post "Russ Carnahan Gets Booted and Torched," and said:

The protesters torched Russ’s photo while they chanted “Death to Dictator.”

After the rally, Bill Hennessy unleashed a series of tweets calling for "revolt:"



So then we get to Sunday evening, where the tea party decided to bring a coffin to Russ Carnahan's office, and then to his home. If they had just kept the coffin at the office, then fine, it would have been a somewhat silly service marking the deaths of people who they mistakenly believed would die because of the new healthcare bill. But they decided to go to Russ Carnahan's home. There is absolutely no reason why they had to have a "prayer service" at Representative Carnahan's home rather than his office. As Karen remarked on Twitter, it was intended to send a clear message of "we know where you live." That, combined with all of the other extremist rhetoric of the past week, shows that all of the claims of victimization by the St. Louis Tea Party are completely bunk. They were definitely trying to intimidate, and they should be called out for it.