SOME REPORTING FROM YESTERDAY’S PHILADELPHIA TEA PARTY over at Blonde Sagacity. Turnout was about 1500 people.

TEA PARTY NATION is a social-networking site for the Tea Party crowd. It’s set up by Judson Phillips, who organized the Tennessee Tea Parties movement.

WELL, THE E.P.A. WILL MAKE SURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS: “OK, this is big news. A research team has worked out a way to nearly triple the efficiency of the Fischer-Tropsch process. This means cheap synthetic hydrocarbons from coal are on the horizon.”

MALWARE UPDATES: Now it’s Zombie Macs!

TEA PARTY FOLLOWUP: What a handful of people can accomplish. Try showing up a a Congressional meet-and-greet and asking some questions. Then YouTube the response.

THE HILL: Obama Defends Interactions With Chavez.

CLIFF MAY: Romancing the Jihad.

GET 100 MPG with a Hybrid Hummer.

IN THE MAIL: From David Ignatius, The Increment: A Novel.

NOTES FROM behind the Tea Party lines.

TWO CONGRESSMEN WITH ONE PROBLEM:

In Illinois, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Chicago, has been best known for getting federal funds to improve impoverished areas of his district in both Chicago and the south suburbs and for his push to develop a third Chicago-area airport near Peotone.

In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., has worked long and hard on behalf of the steel industry, the major economic engine in his Northwest Indiana district.

But within the past few months, both men now find themselves better known as being under the microscope of federal investigations into whether they have crossed an ethical and perhaps legal line.

Read the whole thing.

MURTHA UPDATE: Murtha’s Earmarks Keep Airport Aloft: State-of-the-Art Pennsylvania Facility Sees Few Travelers but Lots of Funding. “Murtha, dubbed the King of Pork by critics, consistently directs more federal money to his district than any other congressman — $192 million in the 2008 budget. His pattern of steering millions in earmarks to defense contractors who give to his campaign and hire his allies as lobbyists is being scrutinized by the FBI as part of an investigation of a lobbying firm led by one of Murtha’s closest friends. The lawmaker, who uses the airport frequently during his campaigns, has steadily steered millions of taxpayer dollars to it to build a new terminal with a restaurant; a long, concrete runway sturdy enough to handle large jets; and a high-tech radar system usually reserved for international airports. The airport’s passenger count has fallen by more than half in the past 10 years. When Johnstown native Bill Previte arrived on a recent morning, he lamented that his plane was half-empty and that the terminal was deserted.”

JERRY POURNELLE ON OBAMA AND THE PIRATES: “Reagan famously delegated control of this kind of event to the on the scene commanders. I have no evidence that Obama did not do much the same thing, although this purports that he did not. Colonel Beckwith told me about the failed hostage rescue in Iran; I believed his story, so I have some evidence that Jimmy Carter did not delegate authority to local commanders, but in fact insisted on being involved all the way down the line. I have absolutely no evidence regarding the current situation. The pentagon scuttlebutt I have heard gives Obama good marks on this incident.”

MARK STEYN on the Tea Party movement. “Doing the job the Boston Globe won’t do, Glenn Reynolds, the Internet’s Instapundit, has been posting many photographs of tea parties. For a movement of mean, angry old white men, there seem to be a lot of hot-looking young chicks among them. Perhaps they’re just kinky gerontophiliacs. Or perhaps they understand that their generation will be the principal victim of this grotesque government profligacy.”

As I get older, the notion of kinky gerontophiliacs becomes steadily less troubling. . . .

UPDATE: Nice to be appreciated.

PATTERICO: CNN the Latest Corporate Thug to Use Copyright As a Weapon to Eliminate Embarrassing Clips from YouTube. “If CNN wants to sue me, we can make this a test case.”

HOPE AND CHANGE: “U.S. venture capital investments sank 61 percent in the first quarter, dropping to the lowest level in 12 years as financiers became even warier about sinking funds into startups during a deepening recession.”

HEH: Chris Dodd: ‘Fighting for Consumers’ While Taking Cash From Pawnshop Owners. “The Democratic senator raised more than $44,000 from pawnshop owners and other businesses that provide high-interest loans, often to those with bad credit, according to campaign finance reports.”

THE RAPID GROWTH OF NOTEBOOKS AND NETBOOKS. “In 2004, only 2 percent of notebook computers sold in the United States cost less than $800. In 2008, some 35 percent did, according to data collected by the NPD Group, another research firm.”

QUESTION OF THE YEAR: Are losers attracted to Facebook or does Facebook addiction turn people into losers?

“OBAMA SILENT ON ORTEGA DIATRIBE.” I thought once he was elected everyone was going to love us . . . .

UPDATE: Actually, Obama said “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” That rhetoric sounded familiar. Remember this?

SO I FINISHED WILLIAM FORSTCHEN’S One Second After, and it’s pretty good — sort of an Alas, Babylon for the 21st Century. Forstchen hopes to attract attention to the danger of an EMP attack, and I hope he does. I’m somewhat less positive about whether that will produce any actual, useful preparation.

Meanwhile, there’s also the worry about EMP problems from solar storms. We need to be hardening up our infrastructure in all sorts of ways; this is one.

ERIC POSNER ASKS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS: “Why doesn’t the Obama administration prosecute CIA officials who violated laws against torture? Could it really be indifferent to its obligation to prosecute under international law? And why have the prospects of a “tap on the shoulder” receded in Spain? I answered these questions in the course of predicting these developments, in earlier posts, here, here, and here.”

I’m still waiting for the promised Jane Hamsher pitchfork mobs to go after Obama.

I WONDER IF ANY “TEA PARTY” PROTESTERS WILL SHOW UP? U.S. Rep. Schakowsky will speak at May Day Dinner. “U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a leading advocate for women’s issues in Congress, will be the featured speaker during the Peoria County Democratic Women’s annual May Day Dinner on May 3 at the Lariat Steakhouse.” There were 3,000 Tea Party protesters in Peoria. They might take exception to her calling them despicable and shameful.

A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR ARTICLE on the Tea Party movement. “Yet the idea of non-traditional protesters using bottom-up organizing to foment a national movement in the span of 60 days may have marked a turning point for the tea partiers – especially since the high attendance estimates rivaled the estimated 500,000 or so protesters who converged on New York City and several other major cities to oppose the Iraq War on Feb. 15, 2003.”

JERRY POURNELLE:

It was obvious to me at the time DHS and Patriot Act (and TSA!) were bad moves. Aside from the fact that amalgamating many inefficient bureaucracies into one multiplies not divides the inefficiencies – efficient government is not an overriding concern of mine – centralizing power to meet a crisis leaves the centralized power available for abuse long after the crisis is forgotten. The chances that a future Democrat administration would disband DHS and repeal Patriot Act were patently zero even at the time. Expand, politicize, and abuse now are the order of the day, and I am not surprised in the least.

Both major parties seem now irredeemably statist. Many Republicans are starting to say the right things once more, but I doubt 51% will trust the party again soon enough to help. Nor should we, on the record. I attended the public signing of the Contract With America, and I watched as it was abandoned by Republican “realists” who seemed to think that absolute power in *their* hands was kinda neat.

What becomes of the Tea Parties looks crucial to me. “Federalist” might be a good name for the result – small-f federalism would be far better than what we have, and regardless of the details of the history the name has an intrinsic respectability that would make the new alliance somewhat harder to demonize in the bitter political warfare it would instantly face.

A third party? I see that as possible, but I’m not sure whether it would be a good thing or not.