Hundreds of thousands attend Tax Day Tea Parties.(Inside Track)

On April 15, the deadline for U.S. taxpayers to mail their income tax returns, hundreds of thousands of Americans from coast to coast participated in approximately 2,000 nationally inspired but locally organized "Tea Party" protests. Fox News featured live TV broadcasts from four cities--San Antonio, Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.--featuring Fox personalities Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren.

Tea Party participants and their signs reflected a variety of ideological outlooks ranging from constitutionalist and libertarian to populist and neoconservative. The New York Times reported that in downtown Houston, a crowd of 2,000 filled the Jesse H. Jones Plaza and that, among them, were some who wanted Texas to secede. The Times noted that the tax protesters were joined by "anti-abortion activists, Libertarians, and fiscally conservative Republicans." Amidst a sea of American flags, hand-painted signs bore messages such as: "Abolish the I.R.S.," "Less Government More Free Enterprise," "We Miss Reagan," and "Honk if You Are Upset About Your Tax Dollars Being Spent on Illegal Aliens."

The "Don't Tread on Me" Revolutionary War-era flag was prominent at a number of the Tea Party rallies (including the one in Appleton, Wisconsin, where THE NEW AMERICAN is located), as were signs to end the Federal Reserve.

The event generally credited with inspiring the Tea Party movement was a February 19, 2009 broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by CNBC financial commentator Rick Santelli. During his broadcast, Santelli criticized the Obama administration's plan to use federal funds to refinance troubled mortgages as "promoting bad behavior," and he suggested the idea of staging a "Chicago Tea Party." Almost immediately afterwards, websites began to spring up promoting the idea and a new movement began. The clip of Santelli's impassioned outburst has been ...