Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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• Tuesday's column: Southerners scoff at shoveling sidewalks

April 15th's Tax Day Tea Party might be a distant memory for some. But Lee Carter is not among them.

The Roanoke businessman, who admits to more than a bit of anti-government fervor, is making plans to do it all over again later this week. So is Christy Bowles, a registered nurse.

Along with Chip Tarbutton, they're planning what they hope will be a bigger and better tea party later this week.

They have arranged for a sound system and a bigger space -- Elmwood Park in downtown Roanoke. And a band. Carter says he's hoping that as many as 2,000 people turn out for the tea party redux.

The event is slated for Saturday, Independence Day, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

"Our government has to be stopped," Carter told me recently. "It's out of control." He means stopped peaceably, he emphasized later in the conversation.

Carter, 40, who owns a retail mattress and furniture store, was psyched by the April 15 event, which he helped organize. So was Bowles, 36. This is her first foray into activism.

They hope to keep the anti-big government momentum growing Saturday.

At the very least, hundreds of people turned out in Roanoke on April 15. One of that event's organizers, Elena DeRosa, said she believes there were 1,000 or more attendees.

Crowded onto a sidewalk in River's Edge Park on Tax Day, they passed around a single megaphone (the other one malfunctioned) and gave speeches about taxes, spending, big government and abortion.

Scores of people showed up with handmade signs. Some of those condemned President Obama, gun control and the Federal Reserve.

Saturday's tea party isn't the only one in Virginia. Others are scheduled for Centreville, Danville, Blackstone, Charlottesville, Front Royal, Newport News, Staunton, Woodbridge, and Orange, according to teapartypatriots.org. And that's just Virginia.

One thing the organizers don't have this time around is the backing of Fox News, which promoted the April tea parties with great gusto. The network has spent comparatively little time promoting the Independence Day events.

"I think some people don't want folks to know that we're here," Bowles said. "But we don't plan on going away. We plan to be a presence in the Roanoke Valley."

DeRosa, a blogger from Southwest Roanoke County, will be a no-show, however.

"I'm not involved," she told me. "I feel July 4 is a day to celebrate with my family, not hold a protest."

Reader contest No. 3

The term 'hiking the Appalachian Trail' has taken on a new and somewhat unfortunate meaning in the wake of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

"Hiking the AT" was Sanford's original, and phony, excuse for leaving South Carolina to be with his mistress in Argentina. His public confession was the latest in a long line of national Republicans and Democrats who have publicly confessed to infidelity.

The challenge for you today is to predict what national political or religious figure will be next to publicly confess to "hiking the Appalachian Trail."

I'm offering two prizes. One is a copy of "The Best of the Appalachian Trail Overnight Hikes -- Second Edition" by Victoria Logue, Frank Logue and Leonard Atkins. Atkins, an outdoors writer and five-time AT though-hiker who blogs at habitualhiker.com, will sign the winner's copy.

The runner-up will win a copy of "Sex Scandal America -- Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming" by David Rosen.

Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.