Residents of my beloved St. Louis generally are not a protesting lot.  If we had a basketball team, our winning the NBA title would result in nothing more dramatic than a bit of a mess left along the streets after the big game.  Protesting of the sort you see in other cities just isn't done here.  In fact, we don't care for protesters much at all.  Police Chief Mokwa, despite his tribulations, has a permanent place in my personal hall of fame for bringing a good old-fashioned roust down upon troublemakers who came to protest a bio-technology conference.  These same clowns made a terrible mess of west-coast cities destroying windows and the like.  Here, they learned that protesting requires a modicum of respect for property and propriety.  The marched, banged their little plastic buckets and moved on, grumbling but chastened.I learned of the St. Louis "Tea Party" less than 24 hours before the actual event.  As reticent as St. Louisans...(Read Full Post)