The owners of Urban Tea Loft in downtown Chandler have announced they will be closing their doors on Saturday, July 21.

The party is over for those “Tea Heads.” After listening to their diatribe of rants and railings against the evil federal government over the last three years, they have finally met their match in the Occupy movement.

Thanks to the tea party movement all across the USA for having the negotiating skills and the guts to tell politicians that this nation is heading rapidly toward bankruptcy. Its conservative members in the U.S. House of Representatives have been adamant at pushing through the debt ceiling measure and a no tax increase that meets their ideological requirements. Spending must be brought under control now.

Tina Dupuy

Le Templar: I was impressed by the enthusiastic turnout and general attitude of Wednesday’s TEA parties across the U.S., which included a noontime crowd of more than 1,000 people in Gilbert and up to 5,000 people at the state Capitol later that afternoon. This was the beauty of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly in action. 

“Family Matters” exhibiting artist Jane Kelsey-Mapel teaches participants how to create a family tea set with polymer clay.

“Family Matters” exhibiting artist Jane Kelsey-Mapel teaches participants how to create a family tea set with polymer clay.

A somewhat condensed restatement of tea party principles taken from teaparty.net follows:

I found the letter to the editor "Tea party should practice what it preaches" (Aug. 19) by Edward Murphy to be very entertaining. Mr. Murphy states the tea party are the ones that never get their facts straight and they need to tone down their rhetoric.

Tea Party Patriots, the nation's largest grassroots organization, will hold its first-annual national policy conference in Phoenix on Feb. 25 to 27. The Tea Party Patriots' American Policy Summit - Pathways to Liberty will bring tea party supporters, national speakers, 2012 presidential candidates and public policy analysts together for briefings, discussions and policy debates. The summit will celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the founding of the tea party movement, one of the fastest growing and most dynamic grassroots movements in American history. The conference is open to all Tea Party Patriot supporters. To register, visit http://www.summit11.org.

The Ahwatukee TEA Party may have begun only about three months ago, but its meetings already bring in more than 120 people at a time, according to A.J. Wells, one of the group's founders.