Now, Sarah Palin's enemies have scored a limited victory in their vicious campaign to smear, bankrupt, and force this dedicated public servant and conservative leader out of politics. They have successfully questioned her prior legal defense fund--a fund that mirrored John Kerry's fund and Bill Clinton's fund. So a new fund was necessary to make sure Sarah Palin can continue to speak the truth to Americans.

"The recently formed Florida Tea Party political party is a Tea Party in name only," grassroots organizer Jason Hoyt said, but his speech was interrupted by a Florida Tea Party member who yelled, "you lie!"

Bob Hazen has video of the anti-"Tea Party" tea party conference; here's video of the "Tea Party" candidates who showed up, fighting back.

And here's the latest on the "Tea Party" versus Tea Party lawsuit.

*I hope you're following this.

Libertarians gather for Porcfest.

Limbaugh loves Christie.

Palin takes a hit over her legal defense fund.

Really shouldn't admit how much I like this song.

The legislation split conservatives and had activists griping about the NRA, which -- while not endorsing the bill -- got a carve-out that was written in a way that exempted them from campaign finance restrictions.

Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., appeared together Thursday on Fox News to discuss the effort. "We're just going to keep the pressure on the congressmen," Murdoch said. "I think we can show to the public the benefits of having migrants and the jobs that go with them."

Does this represent a shift for the owner of Fox News? Not really, says Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian.

"Yes, I watched Murdoch on Fox," says Krikorian. "Interviewed on his own network by one of his employees! Come on! Would you ask tough questions?"

Krikorian points out that Murdoch, whose News Corp. has owned the Wall Street Journal since 2007, has made no changes to the immigration position of a newspaper that pro-restriction conservatives consider hopelessly biased toward open borders.

"Honestly, you'll hear complaints from immigration hawks that Fox News itself is squishy," says Krikorian. "They were way behind on the 2006 and 2007 immigration bills. It took them a long time to catch up with the outrage out there."

Immigration activists might know this, but the Murdoch hook is obviously the best thing Bloomberg has going for this project.

RN: Do you agree with the president's decision to accept Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation?

PAUL: Ultimately it is the prerogative of the president to decide who his generals are. My first thought was, going back to the historic controversy between Truman and MacArthur, but the thing is I'm not sure I'd call this insubordination, but he had a public disagreement and I think -- I don't think anybody questions that it's the prerogative of president, whether it's a small or big disagreement, to decide who generals are at the top level. I haven't read all his comments nothing specific to say.

RN: You've started to take heat for your approach to the BP escrow fund. Do you support the fund, the way it's set up?

PAUL: Well, I don't think there are many people who don't believe in any regulations, myself included, and even my dad -- I don't think you'll hear him say he doesn't believe in any regulation. But I'm not sure I have the answer to that, sincerely. I think everyone in the country wants BP to pay for the clean-up, myself concluded. I've never had any argument with that -- it's amazing how you say things and they get blown into things you didn't say! I'm not even sure I can talk to some people anymore because they take things out of context.

RN: But do you support the set-up of the fund? Do you oppose regulating offshore drilling?

PAUL: There should be some regulations, but I want to do it in a rational, reasonable way, and ask: Did they obey the regulations? Do we not have enough regulation, and do we need two blow-out preventers from now on? These are the things scientists and inventors should tell us. Should we be drilling at that level? There are a lot of issues, but we shouldn't react in an emotional way and say no more drilling. I see some of that emotionalism happening because the president feels trapped -- his advisers say you've got to be tough, you've got to have tough language. I'm not sure that's a rational way to handle this.

RN: To finish up, though: Do you oppose the fund? I'm not going to trap you and ask whether or not it was a "shakedown," but do you think it's legal and legitimate?

PAUL: I was listening to some people on the Hill today, and they were looking for the justification for setting it up. I don't know what the legal justification is -- I'm not an expert in whether Congress has to give you authority or the president has authority to do it. Those issues take research and time, and I'm not going to make an off-the-cuff response.

Below the fold are quotes from me e-mailing the list that day -- quotes that I'm told a gossip Web site will post today. I apologize for much of what I wrote, and apologize to readers.

I apologize to Matt Drudge for this -- I was incredibly frustrated with the amount of hate mail I was getting and lashed out. If he wants to link to this post with some headline accusing me of wishing death on him, I suppose he can do so. But I don't wish that. I was tired, angry, and hyperbolic, and I'm sorry.

- "Follow-up to one hell of a day: Apparently, the Washington Examiner thought it would be fun to write up an item about my dancing at the wedding of Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman. Said item included the name and job of my girlfriend, who was not even there -- nor in DC at all."

I stand by this -- I was offended by the way that item was written. I do apologize for reacting like this against the entire Washington Examiner, as my gripe was with one reporter, and the person who gave them this item was apologizing to me.

- "I'd politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it."

I stand by that reaction but apologize for belittling Byron York.

- "It's all very amusing to me. Two hundred screaming Ron Paul fanatics couldn't get their man into the Fox News New Hampshire GOP debate, but Fox News is pumping around the clock to get Paultard Tea Party people on TV."

I stand by this, although I apologize if people find the word "Paultard" offensive. It was a neologism coined during the 2008 campaign to describe fanatical supporters of Paul -- I used it in this case to convey how Fox covered those supporters in 2008.

"Little baby with ink on their foot," said King, "stamped right there on the birth certificate -- there's one in this country we haven't seen -- but, the footprint on those we have seen owe Uncle Sam $44,000."

I've asked King's office exactly what he meant here, but it's hard to tell what this is if not a joke about "birtherism." What's the "one" birth certificate he hasn't seen?

National pundits talk of “spending cuts.” Some enthusiasts have gone as far as starting a “Christie for President” chant. So many words. But as the big government spin machine rolls on, what is really happening? Sweep away the bluster and the attitude, and behind it all is the largest property tax hike New Jersey has ever seen.

He knocks Rush Limbaugh twice, and points out that Christie -- who has to wrestle with a Democratic legislature -- has acquiesced to spending increases and reversals on some planned tax cuts. And really, when I talk to conservatives outside of New Jersey, there's less interest in the details of this than the fact that Christie is attacking the state's unions and sounding great doing so.

Remember last year when the Democratic-Media Complex reported that the tea party protesters were waving Obama-Hitler signs? What the media purposely omitted from their stories was the fact that the protesters waving these astroturfed Obama-Hitler signs were radical left-wing extremists. They were radical activists from the LaRouche organization. But, this didn’t fit the state-run media’s narrative that tea party activists were radicals and racists so they omitted this from their reports.

For the record, Hoft published this the day that Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) approvingly quoted from Thomas Sowell's column comparing President Obama's quest for power with Hitler's. Regardless! Combine this with the effort by South Carolina Republicans to tar the state's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Vincent Sheheen with now-infamous accidental candidate Alvin Greene and I think you're seeing conservatives get revenge for a year of being painted as allies of "birtherism" and conspiracies about the president.

Below the fold, a Rogers video that explains my confidence in using the "c" word in this headline.

In the run-up to his D.C. trip, Paul had generated headlines by scheduling meetings with senators who supported the Troubled Asset Relief Package -- in the primary, he declined support from anyone who did so. Bunning, who met with Paul before the event, said the candidate had yet to meet with the offending senators, and generally shrugged off the story.

"Rand met with the steering committee today," said Bunning, "the ones who are supposed to be conservatives. I don't follow what the NRSC does, or what Senator McConnell does. I just follow what I do. I don't know what they're going to do."

In short remarks at the fundraiser, Bunning explained why he backed Paul in the primary over party favorite Trey Grayson -- he was worried, said the senator, about Grayson's past support for Bill Clinton. And while he was "proud" of Paul, he warned him to be more careful about talking to the press.

In his own remarks, Paul took his own shot at the media.

"You'll see that they want to paint me -- the Courier, the Herald, even some of these national newspapers up here -- as being 'extreme,'" Paul said. "One of the answers I learned from my dad, because they tried to do this to him, is flip it around and ask, what's extreme? It's extreme to have a $2 trillion deficit."

Paul also criticized Republicans who voted for TARP, and thanked Bunning for opposing it. That led the Post's Felicia Sonmez and me to ask why Paul had decided to accept support from the senators who supported it.

"I think the Republican Party, as you've seen, after the new administration came in, has been fairly unified in saying no more bailouts," said Paul. "And even some who voted for it will quietly say I don't think it was a good vote, and I might not have done it again. Some still say we don't know what would have happened, it would have been calamity if they didn't do it. I don't think they're bad people -- I disagree on the vote but we disagree on a lot of things."

Paul emphasized that by accepting the support of pro-TARP senators, like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), he had not changed his stance on the issue.

"I think it does show that I will work together with other Republicans I don't necessarily agree with," he said. "I think them endorsing me and giving me money shows that they are endorsing my candidacy; it's not me endorsing their candidacy. It shows the party does want to retain this seat in Kentucky."

[O]nly 6 percent have a favorable rating of BP. In the history of the NBC News/Journal poll, Saddam Hussein (3 percent), Fidel Castro (3 percent) and Yasser Arafat (4 percent) have had lower favorable scores, and O.J. Simpson (11 percent) and tobacco-maker Philip Morris (15 percent) have had higher ratings.

Less popular than O.J. Simpson! Years of happy-go-lucky BP TV ads down the drain; any chance that Republicans will defend the company, long gone.

“I really do think it’s a very tragic thing that Gen. McChrystal was released. When I go back in history and look at some of the confrontations between American generals and American presidents, this is a very minor thing,” said West. ... “I don’t think there was a threat to this president’s authority or strategy,” West said. He said McChrystal’s remarks in Rolling Stone “could have been handled off-line.”

Not surprisingly it's candidates -- who need to keep their base revved up -- who are saying this, not current GOP members of Congress. It's also the conservative media. The American Spectator's Phil Klein compares the McChrystal response to the one Democrats gave generals who quit during the Bush years; George Neumayr straight-up endorses McChrystal.

Jonathan Martin previews the (potential) mini-DeMints who'll join the Senate in 2011.

Glenn Beck's "Stu" attacks the Weekly Standard.

Tim Lee introduces Eric Balderas.

Tabitha Hale dissects the primaries.

A song for Stanley: