From the WashingtonPost.com:
First, a truck was to dump a million bags of tea onto tarps in Lafayette Square. But it ran into permit trouble and was turned away.
Then rally organizers showed up outside the Treasury Department. But authorities told them they lacked proper permission and could not set up a stage there.
Then it started to rain.
Next, somebody threw a box of tea over the White House fence, and the police evacuated the park.
Finally, the truck's driver, who had been wandering around town for hours after an overnight drive from Georgia, found a place to unload the cargo: 12 floors up in a downtown advocacy group. Without much of an audience.
The tea party protest of 2009 was a comedy of aggravation, but no matter. Hundreds of demonstrators ignored the missing truck, the dreary weather and the red tape and gathered in Lafayette Square yesterday for a rain-soaked but boisterous rally to protest high taxes, congressional earmarks and government bailouts.
They carried flags and signs bearing such sentiments as "Blackbeard Obama, King of the Tax Pirates" and "Obama Lied, Capitalism Died." In ponchos and under umbrellas, they cheered speakers and gave voice to a sense that the administration has the country on a path to ruin at the expense of the average taxpayer.
"I want my grandson to have as good a life as I've had and have the same opportunities," said JoAnn Abbott of Dale City, one of the rally organizers. "I don't want him stuck with a $12 trillion debt."
