The car was loaded first thing Wednesday morning —well almost loaded, the suitcase was filled with clothes, the computer bag filled with everything needed to transfer my base of operations was already in the trunk, and as soon as I  donned the traditional fedora, I was fully packed and ready to go.  It was time for the annual trip to Washington DC, for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

I was going not as a participant but as an observer  joining approximately eighty other bloggers invited to cover the event.  CPAC is more than a gathering of conservative-minded people; it is part educational, part salesmanship, and part celebration.

For the bloggers involved, CPAC is more than just an opportunity to meet key political figures, and report on politics as it happens, but it’s also something like a Star Trek Convention for political citizen journalists. Instead of carrying phasers and putting on pointy ears, we carried laptops and wore fedoras.

From the bloggers vantage point we could see everything in the main auditorium.  There were two large screen TVs in our work room and we were just a few steps away from a balcony that allowed us to see the main events very live.

The Mainstream Media had the same setup on the other side of the auditorium but their TVs and terrace must have had some sort of filter because from what I read/saw about CPAC from the mainstream press they got so much wrong. These are the biggest things the mainstream media didn’t tell you about CPAC…

And we’re starting with: fabricating a controversy involving momma grizzly…