From Big Government. See also Andrew Brietbart’s post:
No More Beer Summits: Tea Party ‘N-Word’ Incident Didn’t Happen, And the Congressional Black Caucus Owes America an Apology
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National Tea Party Federation
1801 Sawtelle Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
Via Federal Express and Email
Chairwoman Barbara Lee
C/O Congressional Black Caucus
2444 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairwoman Lee,
The National Tea Party Federation (the “Federation”) is comprised of approximately seventy-five local and national tea party groups, which collectively represent over 500,000 individual members. The Federation was formed primarily to create a unified message and media response amongst key leadership and their affiliates.
The Federation does not and will not tolerate any form of racism, violence or hate speech; in fact, its charter expressly rejects the same, and its membership rules specifically require that each member and its leadership comport themselves accordingly. It will not surprise you, therefore, that we treat each and every allegation of racism lodged against the Tea Party with the utmost concern, which is the reason we write you today.
As you are no doubt aware, on March 20, 2010, the Tea Party held a “Code Red Healthcare Rally” (the “Rally”) on and around Capitol grounds in Washington D.C. Both during and subsequent to the Rally, members of your Caucus, including Congressmen John Lewis, Andre Carson and Emanuel Cleaver, but in particular Congressmen Carson and Lewis, alleged that members of the assembled Tea Party crowd hurled racial epithets at them multiple times, i.e., the N-word, 15 times.
We believe to our core that racism and hate speech have no place in civil political discourse and debate – and, we are sure you agree. So, it is no doubt in our mutual interest to drill down on this incident and identify those persons alleged to have used the N-word at the Rally, so that they can be appropriately isolated and personally condemned.
Unfortunately, despite weeks of searching, we have been unable to find any evidence corroborating Mr. Lewis’ and Mr. Carson’s allegations.
We therefore turn to you, and respectfully request that you provide us with any and all evidence – video, audio, interviews, first-hand accounts, etc. – of the N-word being hurled against your members (or anyone else) during the Rally. To this end, we also ask that you also make available to us Congressman Carson (or that you encourage Congressman Carson to make himself available to us) in order to be interviewed about his allegations. In particular, we think it would help if Congressman Carson could resolve the discrepancies in his conflicting accounts of the location of the alleged incident.
You can fully expect that the Federation will condemn any instance in which corroborating evidence is produced that a Tea Party member hurled a racial epithet at anyone, much less Congressman Lewis.
We thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter, and we look forward to your help getting to the bottom of this unfortunate incident.
Sincerely,
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