Where Were the Tea-Baggers During Bush?

Wendy Kaminer at The Atlantic asks a good question: "What Constitutes A Police State?" Lots of the people protesting against Obama are making the bizarre and absurd claims that he is trying to impose some kind of a police state. This would be laughable if there weren't so many of these people, and they weren't so serious. The fact that many of them are carrying guns is also a little worrisome.

But where were these people during the Bush administration?

Driving civil libertarians crazy is probably not a goal of this month's town hall protesters, but it may be one of their signal achievements. Having openly applauded, tacitly supported, or simply ignored the Bush/Cheney national security state and the unprecedented expansion of unaccountable executive power, the right wing now defends freedom against the spectre (and it is only a spectre) of universal health care?

Of course, the real threat from Obama is that he might affect their God-given right to all the health care they can get, and their right to buy and keep all the guns that they want.

How do the town hall protests define repression? Apparently it comprises any government regulation perceived as a threat to any constitutional right or federally mandated benefit that the protesters enjoy.

All of this is fairly obvious to me, but it's nice to see it all put together in one piece.