In his column today, Leonard Pitts echoes a tired but familiar theme -- that because crazy people show up at Tea Parties, the movement is itself crazy, and because "conservatism" is reluctant to denounce the nutcases, all conservatives are somehow tainted:

...in the tea party movement, some conservatives finally meet a cognitive disconnect they simply cannot bridge.

A recent New York Times profile found the tea party movement to be amorphous and largely without an organizing principle other than its anger toward government and fear of a supposedly imminent dictatorship. Beyond that, tea partiers are an unwieldy amalgam of tax haters, global warming holdouts, illegal immigration protesters, secessionists, gun rights advocates, white supremacists, militia types and conspiracy theorists, all banging their gongs at the same time.

Like the liberal noisemakers who follow the World Trade Organization around, their lack of message discipline renders them -- that word, yet again -- incoherent. Like them, they have yet to figure out that to protest everything is to protest nothing.

Make no mistake: Every movement or marginalized people has its fringe extremists who threaten to define the whole. Thus, moderate American Muslims are periodically required to rebuke Islamic terrorists, environmentalists are obligated to rebuff eco-terrorists and moderate African Americans are expected to reprove Louis Farrakhan.

But conservatives, outside of a few integrity-driven souls over the years, have not rushed to repudiate the crazies among them, even as the crazies have grown crazier and threatened to engulf the whole.

But I can't spend all of my time denouncing and repudiating everyone I disagree with. For example, last night's Pentagon shooter appears to have been a genuine loon, as well as a Rothbard libertarian, a marijuana advocate, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, a Bush hater, and more. But do I really have to "denounce" and "repudiate" him in order to have credibility? Of course I denounce him, but
are he and people like him really threatening to engulf "the whole"? Whose
"whole" might that be?

If we apply Pitt's standard to Pitt himself, why shouldn't he be held accountable, and forced to denounce and repudiate all crazies on the left? Not merely Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky, but people more recently in the news, like the protesters in Berkeley who say things like this:

"Take a look around you--ages, colors, gender," said Nancy Kato, assistant registrar at Boalt Hall, told the crowd. "All of us are united as workers, students and community members. Our movement is national and international."

Students spoke of emails and letters of encouragement trickling in from their peers and supporters in Moscow, Brazil and Mexico.

"They are going after public schools because they want our youth to join their wars and fill their prisons," Kato said. "We will not let the university or the bureaucracy or the police intimidate us. Tax the rich and the big businesses!"

In a demonstration closer to home, activists in Detroit are protesting in front of DTE Energy (the local power company), which they blame for the fact that power stolen from DTE caused a fatal fire:

In the wake of a fire that killed three young children earlier this week, some protesters Thursday called on DTE Energy to halt the shutoff of gas and electricity during the winter months.

"We want a moratorium from October to April," said Stacey Ross Streeter, a member of Detroit's Downtown Citizens District Council.

DTE spokesman John Austerberry said that isn't necessary.

"We offer protection for customers who are most vulnerable already," he said.

Streeter was among a few dozen protesters who gathered Thursday outside of DTE headquarters in downtown Detroit. The gathering was sparked by the Tuesday night fire that raged through a home on Detroit's west side and killed three children identified by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office as Travion Young, 5, Fantasia Young, 4, and Salena Young, 3.

DTE had disconnected illegal hookups for gas and electricity hours before the blaze. Someone illegally reconnected the electricity and warmed the home with an electric space heater, which is being investigated as a possible cause of the fire.

There was an article about this yesterday. In December, the power was turned off at the request of a former resident, following which an illegal hookup was made. Then, after that was turned off, someone broke off the padlocks and hooked it up again, plugging in an electric heater. Seven kids were then left alone by their mother, a fire started, and three of them were killed. Despite the fact that DTE has a program to allow poor people power in the winter, no one apparently called them.

"We can't encourage customers enough to contact us if they're having problems paying their utility bills," said Scott Simons, a DTE spokesman, "but if we don't know about them, it's very tough."

Fire officials said the investigation is ongoing. Sylvia Young told WDIV-TV (Channel 4) that her landlord had supplied her with the space heater.

DTE had disconnected gas and electricity to the home at 3 p.m. Members of the utility's theft-investigation team removed the gas meter and double-locked the electricity meter, Simons said.

Less than four hours later, the home was engulfed in flames.

Seven children were home alone when the fire broke out, said Jarmar Taylor, 18, who lives nearby and said he rushed to the home when he saw flames bust through a front bay window.

Anton Mills, 20, said he lived in the house until December, after which the new family moved in. The property is a rental home that, as of March 1, was $637 delinquent in property taxes, according to City of Detroit records.

Keith Owens, Wayne County director of communications, said the listed owner is Darnell Jackson of Detroit. A woman answering the phone at Jackson's residence said he wasn't available for comment.

Today, the front porch of the home had turned into a makeshift shrine as people dropped off stuffed animals, balloons and candles.

LaTonya Jackson, 42, approached the home and blessed it, then bellowed scripture.

"DTE has got blood on their hands," she yelled. "DTE!"

Simons said a previous resident had DTE cut off services to the home Dec. 11. No one had asked for it to be restored since then, he said.

So where are the denunciations and repudiations?

Anyway, now that I have denounced and repudiated J. Patrick Bedell, I am feeling very morally sanctimonious, and therefore duty-bound to note an obvious connection to the Tea Party Movement that many analysts have missed. And I do mean connection; in this area, DTE supplies power to most of Southeastern Michigan, which means it is beyond dispute that a number of Tea Partiers are on the same fatal grid that murdered the children in Detroit. Moreover, many of them pay their bills on time, and this generates revenue for the same murderers who force people to steal power and who force mothers to leave their children alone in buildings with the illegal power they were forced to steal!

The Tea Partiers have blood on their hands! So who will be the first to denounce them?

AFTERTHOUGHT: Guilt by association really seems to be quite the rage these days.

The more members you have, the more members you have who can do something disastrous to your party's public image.

But are ordinary people that easily fooled? I'm optimistic about what Megan McArdle called "the rise of electronic media," because I think the more we are saturated with guilt-by-association, the less it will sting.

DISCLOSURE: As I've said repeatedly, it's time to confess:

I killed the kids at Columbine, and my collective guns regularly murder hundreds of children in Philadelphia. I have murdered millions of unborn babies. I tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib! I pulled the tube from Terri Schiavo! I also clubbed the baby seals, and probably helped Richard Speck murder all those nurses in Chicago in 1966.

(Oh, yeah, I also owned and transported lots of slaves. Lots and lots of genocide was committed by the "we." I am therefore guilty as charged!*)