-By Warner Todd Huston
On Friday, April 8, I attended the 4th Annual Sammies Awards, a yearly event that brings together reform-minded folks from across the country to celebrate the best of America. The winners are all recognized for their engagement as watchdogs, reformers, messengers, and strategists and rightfully so.
This year’s keynote speaker was Fox Business Network’s John Stossel. Other featured speakers were such luminaries as Andrew Breitbart, The New York Times bestselling novelist Brad Thor, Jack Fowler, publisher of The National Review, and more. Also in attendance was John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of Chicago area notables.
The event was sponsored by the Sam Adams Alliance, a free market and liberty minded policy organization based in Chicago. The group’s stated goal is to engage in the battle to restore self-government to America.
“Once again, the Sammies brought together the freedom lovers and freedom fighters who love their country and, in their way, engage to advance our freedom,” said Yvonne Ralsky, executive director of SAM. “The winners tonight would make Sam Adams proud. They are creative, strategic, impactful, and tenacious.”
This year’s event was held in the great hall of Chicago’s historic Union Station and what a beautiful presentation it was.
With purple as the theme color, the event was well furnished with some excellent settings and centerpieces. You might remember this setting as that from the 1987 movie The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro… though not nearly as much blood was spilled in the making of the 2011 Sammies, to be sure.
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Report: The 4th Annual Sammies”
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The Sam Adams Alliance is looking for students and recent grads with a passion for advancing free-market principles and policies.
Unfortunately, on the right we neither “join” well in coordinated efforts, nor do we have very many people or entities that help fund us directly. Nor do we even see organizations on the right that try to engage in efforts to help train and organize the conservative new media to disseminate the conservative, free market message via the New Media.
But the Sam Adams Alliance has stepped up to the plate to do just that and this is why the Second Annual Sammies, has come about. The Second Annual Award ceremony was held on April 18, 2009 in Northbrook, Illinois, just north of Chicago, at the Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel. So, with the cash prizes awarded to worthy bloggers at the Sammies, we find the Sam Adams Alliance fulfilling at least in some ways the effort to encourage conservative voices in the New Media as well as vote fraud watchdogs and good government activists. Money is always in short supply on the right, for sure, so this is a help. But even more importantly are the things that Sam Adams does behind the scenes to help coordinate bloggers, train them, and offer resources to further the message.
The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore took the podium to give out the Sunshine Award to William Carlin Walker.
Next up was Mary Katherine Ham of 
Jonathan Hoening “The Capitalist Pig” was next up to give the award for Tea Party activism.
The room erupted for the next presenter, a man that has become ubiquitous as the champion of the common man, Joe Wurzelebacher, better known as Joe the Plumber.
John Fund presenting the Voter Watchdog Award to Ruth Bendl.
Tonight, April 18, I am sitting on blogger’s row for the 2nd Annual Sammies sponsored by the 
Our host for the evening is local talk show host