Americans for Prosperity Foundation recognized Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina this month with the third annual Washington Award, given to an individual “who has contributed in a powerful and unique way to defending our economic freedoms,” said Foundation Chairman David Koch.

“Sometimes there’s more to being a political leader than simply saying no to a bad idea or even presenting your proactive solutions. There are times when a true leader has to be willing to take an action, on principle, that angers all of his colleagues. Jim DeMint is always prepared to do just that,” Koch said, praising DeMint for his stands against government overreach.

DeMint received the award “For your consistently principled leadership in the Senate, for your sterling free-market voting record, for your willingness to be an oftentimes lonely voice in the wilderness and for your demonstrated commitment to defending the American dream,” Koch said.

Accepting the award, DeMint said it was activists like those with AFP Foundation that keep him going.

“I don’t mind who’s against me up here,” he said. “As long as when I leave this Washington Beltway and go out across the country and people keep doing what they’re doing and they say, ‘DeMint, keep fighting, we got your back’ and they grab my arm and they say ‘What can I do? What can I do?’”

He said Americans have the common sense to know when Washington is going in the wrong direction: “When they try to convince us that government works, we know that government’s the problem. We know government can’t run our auto companies, our health care system, our education system. We know what works.”

DeMint encouraged the crowd of more than 1,500 to stay active. “What you’re doing really is our only hope, but it’s the only hope we need. Because when Americans stand up, things change.”

DeMint accepted the award at Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s Defending the American Dream Summit, which took place October 2-3 in Arlington, Va. Video of the presentation and his acceptance speech can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeTteTtqq3U.

As the debate rages on in Congress over cap-and-trade legislation, the free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity is taking its 2009 Nationwide Hot Air Tour to South Carolina on October 26-28 to give citizens of South Carolina the opportunity to make their voices heard by Senator Lindsey Graham.

The tour will bring its 70-foot-tall hot air balloon to grassroots rallies in Spartanburg, Columbia, Mt. Pleasant, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina from October 26-28.

“This cap-and-trade scheme is nothing more than a tax on energy—plain and simple,” said AFP President Tim Phillips. “Senator Graham now joins liberal members of Congress like Senator John Kerry in supporting the biggest energy tax in American history. We think American families need to know what these proposals will cost them – lost jobs, even higher energy prices, and less freedom.”

The Hot Air Tour has the goal of building grassroots pressure against costly state, local, and federal climate change policies. AFP has pledged to mobilize citizens in order to fight off any attempts to pass a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, traveling to 15 states this year and hosting grassroots rallies with tens-of-thousands of citizen activists.

“As cap-and-trade legislation moves quickly into the Senate, we’re asking citizens at each event to urge Senator Lindsey Graham to sign our No Climate Tax Pledge,” said Phillips. “The pledge asks legislators to reject any form of the bill that increases the burden on taxpayers.”

Over 270 lawmakers and candidates have already taken the pledge. Citizens can send letters urging their legislators to sign the pledge at www.NoClimateTax.com.

Below is the schedule of Hot Air Tour events:

Monday – October 26, 2009

*Spartanburg, SC – 5:30-7:00 PM

Tuesday – October 27, 2009

*Columbia, SC – 9:00-10:30 AM

*Mt. Pleasant, SC- 5:30-7:00 PM

Wednesday – October 28, 2009

*Myrtle Beach – 9:00 – 10:30 AM

More information about the Hot Air Tour, including a full schedule of events, is available online at www.HotAirTour.org. Look for updates and photos from the road.

Media contact: Mary Ellen Burke, (703) 224-3200 or mburke@afphq.org

As important as all the fights are that we're in right now, perhaps the biggest of all is the fight over whether the government will take over the Internet.  That's because as long as the Internet is free, we can use it to communicate, educate, and organize.  Tea parties, townhalls, and AFP events would be very difficult to organize if government owned and controlled the Internet and chose to interfere with it.  That's what's at stake this week as the Federal Communications Commission decides on Thursday whether to move forward with so-called "net neutrality" regulations.

The net neutrality movement is an outgrowth of the larger so-called media reform project of radical left-wing activists like Robert McChesney who seek to destroy private control of the country's communications systems. 

I discussed McChesney and the so-called media reform movement last night on the Glenn Beck show, and you can watch that clip here.  I'll be on with Glenn again tonight at 5PM and 2AM Eastern, 2PM and 11PM Pacific to discuss net neutrality specifically.

As the Internet Freedom Coalition shows on our Net Neutrality Scare Ticket it has now been nearly 7 years since the November 19, 2002 letter that started the net neutrality scare, without a single significant incident of the kind of egregious behavior by evil phone and cable companies we're told require government intervention.  It's a solution in search of a problem.

Net neutrality sounds simple--force phone and cable companies to treat every bit of information the same way--until you realize that modern networks are incredibly complex, with millions of lines of code in every router.  Making sure services like VoIP, video conferencing, and telemedicine (not to mention the next great thing that hasn't been invented yet) get priority may be necessary to make the Internet work. But the government is working to do just the opposite.

These networks cost billions of dollars to build and maintain, and if there is uncertainty whether there will be a good return on that investment, private investment will dry up.  And then government will step in, spending billions of our tax dollars on a government-owned and controlled Internet.

That's their plan.

The push for a Washington takeover of the Internet is coming from the White House.  It includes Susan Crawford, the so-called Internet Czar, who told The Wall Street Journal in April that the $7.2 billion of stimulus money for broadband she is helping spend is a "down payment on future government investments in the Internet."  She went on to say: "We should do a better job as a nation of making sure fast, affordable broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity, water, snail mail or any other public utility."

It comes right from the top.  President Obama himself said on the campaign trail: "I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to Net Neutrality."

The FCC will vote Thursday on what it calls a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Net Neutrality.  If it passes, it will start a public comment period and I'll be emailing you again with instructions on how to file comments.  But for the next couple days, we need to make our case against the FCC even taking that first step down the road to a Washington takeover of the Internet. 

Here's what you can do to help: The FCC created a website at www.OpenInternet.gov where you can comment on government regulating the Internet under so-called net neutrality rules.  The left has been flooding it with comments.  Please take a moment to head over to www.OpenInternet.gov and click on "Join the Discussion" to make your voice heard for keeping the Internet in private hands.

AFP President Tim Phillips discusses the federal deficit with CBN News.