There are a few important national stories that seem to be sitting on the backburner these days. One is the coingate scandal, which is getting relatively scant attention from the talking heads within the Beltway. Another, up until today, apparently, is the story of the Denver three, which Elizabeth Bumiller discusses today in The New York Times:

For President Bush, it is bad enough that his campaign to sell Americans on his overhaul of Social Security has not been considered a brilliant success. Now a flap over who got to go to one of the president's recent Social Security events has erupted in a swing state, showing the power of a dogged little anti-Bush group now called the Denver Three to irritate the Goliath of the White House.

Three months ago, the three were thrown out of a taxpayer-financed Bush Social Security event in Denver by a person they thought was a Secret Service agent, reportedly because of a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on one of their cars. Similar incidents have occurred at other presidential events around the country, and the three have not been silent since.

Last week they were in Washington demanding to know the identity of the "mystery man" who ejected them, and they got some unlikely support from Republicans in the Colorado Congressional delegation. One of them was Representative Marilyn Musgrave, a reliable Bush ally.

"I really do believe in free speech, and if you try to quell people it just makes them more determined," Ms. Musgrave said in an interview after meeting with the trio. "So they just want to get to the bottom of this, and I think that's fair."

If you don't know much about this story, read on to get a fuller understanding of the degree to which members of this administration are willing to go to ensure unanimity of message at these events.