"You Lie!"

I'll admit straight off the bat that I have my doubts about emulating the tactics of your enemies, particularly when both their means and ends are inherently idiotic. Nevertheless, it felt great to disrupt Rep. Doug Lamborn's Town Hall meeting on health care today, if only to use the tactics the tea-partiers have used so effectively in the past.

Why be a jerk? Because Colorado Springs, while populated with many cool people, represents a closed community with closed politics and closed ideas. It is controlled by a tight clique of Libertarians, and its representative in Congress, Doug Lamborn, is the kind of guy who flew down to Honduras to support the coup. Frankly, I don't want no stinkin' dialog. I want to piss people off.

And in the end, the range of issues discussed regarding the public option and the role of health insurance companies was broader due to a rude intrusion than it would have been for playing nice. And I will give Doug Lamborn credit where credit is due. At one point, he said to his conservative supporters, "Well, turnabout is fair play. Some of those tea parties have been pretty rowdy."

Special award to good friend Pat Hill, who gave a dynamite speech on her health-insurance experience to a rally last week, and took on a prime role at the Town Hall. The Gazette ran a great photo of her here.