TEA PARTY UPDATE: Tea Party accepts parade apology: Float won’t be ‘banned’ from future parades.

The Bristol Fourth of July Committee and the Rhode Island Tea Party put down their sabers Wednesday, a week after a phone call between two Bristol residents unleashed a torrent of nationwide anger upon this town and the state of Rhode Island.

The Tea Party accepted an apology from Fourth of July committee chairman Dave Burns, and assurance that the citizens activist group has not been banned from future July 4 parades. The Fourth of July Committee also made it clear that their Float Committee chairman, Jim Tavares, had no authority to “ban” the Tea Party when he called float organizer and Bristol resident Marina Peterson last Wednesday, July 8.

I suspect that the “torrent of nationwide anger” had something to do with the apology.