The Tea Party knows that continuing to delay charting a course to spending reform hurts everybody.

Accepting federal funding undermines state sovereignty as states become beholden to federal requirements in order to keep the money flowing.

People and organizations other than doctors increasingly are assuming power to decide which medications to prescribe or procedures to undertake. More and more, decisions about personal healthcare are no longer made by the treating physicians in consultation with their patients, and based on the doctors' expertise.

People come up to me and tell me they support me because I never left my principles.

Let us not rush into a vast expansion of government power in a misguided attempt to protect freedom. In doing so, we will inevitably erode the very freedom we seek to protect.

Looking down the road, space exploration and the benefits it yields - in medicine and information technology - should not be overlooked.

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties - from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.