Tea Party: 57% GOP, 28% Ind, 13% Dem

Four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents, according to a new national survey.

The findings provide one of the most detailed portraits to date of the grassroots movement that started last year.

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people -- said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.”

One Hutaree defendant is a Dem, others unknown

Most of the indicted militia members accused of being anti-government extremists have active voting records, a check with area voter registration offices showed yesterday.

One is a registered Democrat, and the party affiliations of the rest could not be determined.

Jacob J. Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio, voted as a Democrat in the 2004 and 2008 primary elections, and in 10 other elections since 2000. Voters' political affiliations in Ohio are determined by which party's ballot they request during even-year primary elections.

Alleged ringleader David Brian Stone, Sr., 45, of Clayton, Mich., registered in Lenawee County, Michigan, in 1998, and last voted in the 2004 general election.

Film makers make a startling discovery: many of our well educated think Lincoln was a Democrat

While interviewing people on the streets of L.A. and N.Y. for our documentary about the legacy of the Civil War, we came to the staggering realization of how many allegedly well-educated people assumed that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat fighting slave-owning Republicans in the South.

Confronted with the uncomfortable truth that Lincoln was a Republican, many people became enraged at their own ignorance and projected their angst on our unsuspecting and bewildered crew. To fully grasp the pain of big-government liberals' realization of Lincoln's true party affiliation, imagine Sean Hannity discovering one day that Reagan was a Communist.