HUTCHINSON -- That reckless applause you heard last week in response to the Supreme Court’s lifting of rules against union and corporate campaign advertising came from the boardrooms and stockholders of those who will benefit most: television stations and newspapers. It might even save some jobs in both sectors.

Locally, Hutchinson News Managing Editor Mary Rintoul offered an indignant editorial denouncing the decision, and I share her disdain. I don’t know whether you can literally buy an election these days, but you can bet supporters on both sides are sure as hell going to try.

But I’ll wager her bosses at Harris Enterprises weren’t as nearly as disappointed. That’s a lot of money being put up for grabs, Those who have it and are willing to spend it call it “free speech,” and the Supreme Court agrees -- if you want to call a 5-4 decision “agreement.”

And that means a lot of attack ads are headed our way -- the kind of stuff that will turn Super Market “exposes” into legitimate political campaign advertising. My hunch is we’re going to be teabagged unmercifully -- from the NRA, the teachers, the blue-dog Democrats and the Christian Right Wing.

Speaking of which, let’s face it: the Teabaggers have gained some legitimacy, some power, something to boast of and flap their skinny, white wings about … or at least, that’s the perception.

Of course, most middle-of-the-roaders kind of snickered at them before. Now they’ll get a taste of boastful, smirking Teabaggers, and they’re going to like them even less. So, who knows? Maybe the Teabaggers will self-destruct from an overdose of free-lance grinning.

 To the Editor:

Sexism and hypocrisy is alive and well in Massachusetts, on talk-radio and within the ranks of Teabaggers nationwide.

There is no chance that, had this been a woman who posed nearly nude in a national magazine, that she would have won the election.

Cheryl

Reno County

"I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan"
-- Warren Zevon

Three groups with different agendas but a common enemy gathered in the southeastern New Mexico community of Alamogordo recently for adjoining protest rallies.

The Otero County Tea Party Patriots, the Alamogordo Second Amendment Task Force and the Sons of Liberty Riders united on the busiest corner in town to rail against all things Obama and revel in all things ballistic.

Certainly, Tea Party protests are nothing new. Angry, middle-aged white folks have been wailing they that they want "our country back" ever since the election of our nation's first black president.

But this rally had a twist. Protesters were encouraged to come armed. The Second Amendment folks thought it would be a dandy idea to dispell the nonexistent notion that all gun owners are psychopaths.

For Leslie and Ben Feilner, it wasn't enough that both of them were packing heat -- he with a .375 on his hip and she with a .454-caliber handgun. They also strapped a 9 mm pistol to their dog Rocky, along with a sign around his neck proclaiming "Bring it on Obama!"

The Tea Party Patriots -- and really, what could be more patriotic than challenging the sitting president of the United States to a gunfight with your dog -- rattled off their tiresome list of complaints.