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A quick review of democratically-elected dictators:
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany
Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq
Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe
P. W. Botha, President of South Africa
Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines

You certainly dont know your history if you beleive that Hitlers rise to power was the result of free elections.

You seem to omit the key ingrediant to a fascist state "The Dictator".
Its hard to be a dictator when you have free election every 4 years.

Well, Potsdam was a PR maneuver

How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p299_Degrelle.html

By February 28, 1933, less than a month after his appointment as chancellor, Hitler had already managed to free himself of the conservative ballast by which Hindenburg had thought to weigh him down. The Reichstag fire of the previous evening prompted the elderly President to approve a new emergency law "For the Protection of the People and the State," which considerably increased the powers of the executive.

Hitler meant, however, to obtain more than just concessions ruefully granted by a pliable old man: he sought plenary powers legally accorded him by the nation's supreme democratic institution, the Reichstag. Hitler prepared his coup with the skill, the patience, and the astuteness for which he is legendary. "He possessed," historian Fest later wrote, "an intelligence that included above all a sure sense of the rhythm to be observed in the making of decisions."

Hitler, von Hinderburg, and von Papen, in the Garrison church at the solemn "Day of Potsdam" ceremony.

At first, Hitler carefully cultivated Hindenburg, the elderly First World War Feldmarschall who was fond of tradition. Accordingly, Hitler arranged a solemn ceremony in Hindenburg's honor in Potsdam, historic residence of the Prussian kings. This masterpiece of majesty, beauty, tradition and piety took place in Potsdam's Garrison Church on March 21, 1933, just days before the Reichstag was to reconvene.

Hindenburg had served as an army officer for half a century. So that the old soldier might be reunited with his comrades, Hitler had arranged for veterans from all the wars in which Hindenburg had served to be present on this solemn occasion. From all around the country they came: veterans from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 (62 years before), from the war of 1866 against the Austrian empire (67 years before), and even from the war of 1864 against Denmark (69 years before!). For someone on the retirement list of 1911, it must have been a heartwarming occasion to be reunited again with comrades from so long ago.

With deference and apparent humility, and attired in formal dress for the occasion, Hitler bowed his head before the old man. In the stately church where the ceremony took place, Hitler had arranged that the chair of the former Kaiser, Wilhelm II, which had been unoccupied for 14 years, remained empty, so that Hindenburg could halt before it and make his salute, his marshal's baton raised, as if the monarch were still there.

Hitler also quietly led Hindenburg down into the church crypt, to place wreaths on the tombs of his old master, Kaiser Wilhelm I, and of Frederick the Great. The President's old eyes were rimmed with tears.

On that 21st day of March at Potsdam, the octogenarian President relived the glorious past of the German monarchy. This somber homage was his hour supreme. Hindenburg had always been a loyal servant of the Emperor, and this reminder of his former sovereign, and of the great days of his own long career, deeply moved him. Hitler was the first chancellor since the defeat of 1918 to so honor the tradition of Prussia and Germany. The young revolutionary chancellor had touched his heart.

A month and a half earlier, Hindenburg had commissioned Papen, Hugenberg, and Neurath and other conservative ministers to pinch in Hitler "until he hollered." Now that was over. Hitler had won him over: in front of an empty armchair and before the tombs of Prussia's greatest kings.

A year and a half later, as he lay dying, the old Feldmarschall would believe that he was back in the time of Hohenzollern dynasty, and in his delirium would address Hitler as "Majesty."

This "Day of Potsdam" ceremony also won Hitler new support from among the country's many monarchists, giving them the impression that he has not altogether insensitive to the idea of restoring the monarchy. But the new chancellor's temporary prudence was calculated with precision.

June 30, 1934: The Night of the Long Knives, which I didn't call a PR maneuver. Hitler purged the SA.

March 5, 1933: Elections (last elections under Hitler)...the National Socialist German Workers' Party won 43.9% and 288 of 647 seats in the Reichstag. They were elected as a minority government. They allied with another party to form a majority.

Its just too different. Bush is a potato head, not an evil mastermind. I don't see this country headed the way of Nazi Germany just yet. Something similar, or at least just as bad, could happen. But I see it taking awhile. You can't just roll over the entire US Government in one night.

And unlike Nazi Germany no American citizens have been locked up for protesting the Government.

Anti-War Protesters Call Police 'Stalinists'

By JACOB GERSHMAN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 20, 2005

After she delivered a brief speech before a couple of hundred people at the south end of the park, New York City police officers seized the sound equipment used in the event and arrested one organizer, Paul Zulkowitz, charging him with unlawful use of a sound device and disorderly conduct.

Police said the organizers, a coalition of anti-war groups, did not obtain a sound permit for the event, which is required to use amplifiers for gatherings in public parks. Police were heard warning the organizers to turn off the sound equipment.

A spokesman for the parks department said organizers had a permit for tabling but not for a demonstration. It was the third time Mr. Zulkowitz has been arrested in the past six months. His most recent arrest was on August 29 at Union Square, for leading a similar demonstration without a proper permit.

http://www.nysun.com/article/20283

Six Protesters Arrested At Baywalk

(Including three teenagers, one aged 13)

Two St. Pete for Peace members were being arrested without cause, when instead of just allowing this injustice to happen, a small contingent of members chose to try to prevent their arrest through nonviolent civil disobedience.

http://stpeteforpeace.org/baywalk.html

An undercover DeKalb County Homeland Security detective was assigned to conduct surveillance of the protest and the protestors, and take the photographs. The detective arrested Childs and another protester after he saw Childs approach him and write down, on a piece of paper, the license plate number of his unmarked government car.

"They told me if I didn't give over the piece of paper I would go to jail and I refused and I went to jail, and the piece of paper was taken away from me at the jail and the officer who transferred me said that was why I was arrested," Childs said on Wednesday.

As for Caitlin Childs' protest against meat eating, the files obtained by the ACLU include the DeKalb County Homeland Security report on the surveillance of Childs and the others. The detective wrote that he ordered Childs to give him the piece of paper on which she had written his license tag number, telling her that he did not want her or anyone else to have the tag number of his undercover vehicle.

The detective did not comment in his report about why his license tag number was already visible to the public.

The detective wrote that Childs was "hostile, uncooperative and boisterous toward the officers."

Childs said today that the agents shouldn't have been there in the first place, squelching legal dissent.

"We have the right to gather and protest and speak out."

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=75151

After the march protestors gathered on the sidewalk in front of the
recruiting station. While speakers addressed the crowd, a freelance Fox News
cameraman was allegedly shoved. He complained to the police who then chased and
arrested several people. Officers fired pepper spray at the crowd, which included
young children. Later a police dog bit a sixty eight year old woman from behind.
Without warning one officer fired a taser several times at demonstrators. Deanna
Caliguiri, who was hospitalized after being shocked by a taser, described her
experience:

"I was taken to the ground by a police officer during that time
I was pepper sprayed the officer picked up my glasses sprayed my face
with the pepper spray. Once I got to the ground I was then tasered in
the thigh for what felt like an eternity. It was the most excruciating
pain I have ever felt. I felt like I was burning. My hand reached
down to feel what was on my leg and I felt an electrical shock running
through my entire body. I could not stop myself from screaming. It was
horrifying. I could not believe that after I had already been sprayed
and on the ground they would then proceed to taser me."

The use of tasers on demonstrators is unprecedented in Pittsburgh. But while
activists called the taser guns "torture toys", Taser international describes them
as a safer weapon for police use.

The Taser x26c fires two probes up to a distance of 15 feet
transmitting patented shaped pulse energy into the cenral nervous
system of the target safely causing immediate incapacitation

David Meieran of People against Police Violence disputed Taser
International's claims.

"These so called less lethal weapons have been responsible for
more than 150 deaths. There are five suits pending of taser
international we demand an immediate moratorium on the use of tasers"

Also, protest organizers have called for the suspension or dismissal of the officer
who fired his taser three times, and for all charges to be dropped. At least nine
people have filed complaints with the city's Citizen Police Review Board for
excessive force and unbecoming conduct.

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/20117.php

Virginia Drops Charges Against Tariq Khan
By Matthew Rothschild
November 14, 2005

Tariq Khan, the George Mason University student who was arrested while peacefully protesting against military recruitment on campus, is now in the clear.

As we reported previously in McCarthyism Watch, Khan’s case had created a stir on campus. The university, under pressure, ultimately decided to recommend that the DA drop charges, and that’s what happened on the morning of November 14.

“This arrest should never have occurred,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU, which represented Khan. “Mr. Khan stood quietly in a public place expressing his opposition to actions taken by our government. This is precisely the kind of expression the First Amendment was designed to protect.”

http://progressive.org/mag_mc111405

Santorum’s People Toss Young Women out of Barnes & Noble, Trooper Threatens Them with Prison

A state trooper in full uniform, including hat and gun, was in the store, and, according to Shaffer and Galperin, he met with the person who didn’t care for the Dan Savage joke, along with a few others, including one of Santorum’s people.

Galperin says she heard the trooper ask, “Do you want me to get rid of them?”

And then the trooper, Delaware State Police Sgt. Mark DiJiacomo, who was on detail as a private security guard, came over to the group of women.

Here is the conversation, as Galperin remembers it: “You guys have to leave.”
“Why?”

“Your business is not wanted here. They don’t want you here anymore. If you don’t leave, you’re going to be arrested. If you can’t post bail, you’ll go to prison. Those of you who are under 18 will go to Ferris [the juvenile detention center]. And those of you over 18 will go either to Gander Hill Prison or the woman’s correctional facility. Any questions?”

Shaffer remembers the conversation basically the same way.

“I said, ‘Sir, we’re not doing anything wrong. We’re sitting in a bookstore. On what grounds would we be arrested?’ ”

“He said, ‘This is private property. Are you going to leave on your own, or are you going to leave in cuffs?”

Shaffer decided to leave with her friends.

Galperin and Rocek decided to stay.

“That’s it,” he told them, according to Galperin. “You’re under arrest. Give me your ID. You’re going to prison.”

Sgt. DiJiacomo led the two out to his police car.

“You’re going to embarrass your families,” he told them, she recalls. “Your names are going to be all over the paper.”

He told Rocek to put her hands on the squad car, and then told both of them to call their parents and tell them to bring “at least $1,000 in bail money,” Galperin says.

Galperin reached her father, an attorney.

“I told my dad, ‘I’m under arrest for expressing dissenting opinions.’ ”

Her father asked to speak to the sergeant.

“Your dad says get out of here,” the sergeant told her. “He’ll meet you at home.”

And so they both left.

By this time, Hannah Shaffer managed to reach her mother on the phone, who was planning on going to the event anyway.

“She came and said whoever wants to return to the bookstore should come with her and we would talk respectfully to the police officer and to Barnes & Noble about why they had kicked us out and threatened to arrest us,” Shaffer says.

“Six or seven of the braver kids got in the car and we drove back over to the parking lot of Barnes & Noble,” she recalls. “We were standing outside in the parking lot and my mother went into the store. Just as she entered, the officer came out, and he saw us, and he drove over in his car very fast.”

Here’s her account.

“You’re under arrest. Get into the car.’

“But my mom took us over here and wanted to speak to you.”

“Do I look like your mother? You’re not wanted here. You had your chance. You showed up again. Now you’re under arrest.”

Shaffer said he then asked the ages of everyone in the group, and he used this information to further threaten her.

“Not only will you be arrested for trespassing, but I’ve got you on the counts for contributing to the delinquency of one, two, three, four, five minors,” he said, according to Shaffer. “Those are serious charges. Is that really something you want on your record? Is that something that will make your parents proud?”

And he warned them, she says, that they would be arrested if they ever showed up at the bookstore or the mall again.

At that point, he let Shaffer and the other young women leave.

“I was pretty upset,” Shaffer says.

So was her mother.

“These are the cream of the crop--the outgoing student class president, students who had given hundreds of hours of community service, kids who wouldn’t know how to cause trouble in a public place much less in their own basements,” says Heidi Shaffer, who had encouraged her daughter to go to the book signing. “This is unconscionable.”

Heidi Shaffer says she approached Sergeant DiJiacomo.

“I actually tried to talk humanely to the policeman,” she says. “He told me if I took any of the underaged kids in, I would be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

http://progressive.org/mag_mc081905

Secret Service Searches Home of Protester

Jensen, who at the time was running for city council, asked why they were there.

"Apparently someone had made a statement that I'd been canvassing door to door and had said I wanted to cut President Bush's head off," she says. "I told Agent Lanham that I was running for city council, but I hadn't started my door-to-door campaign yet and I never had said anything like that."

This didn't satisfy them, though.

"They conducted an extensive interview about my background, my family, and any political organizations I belonged to," she says. "I told them I belong to the ACLU and that's about it."

They continued to pry, she says.

Agent Lanham "asked me several times to sign a form about releasing my medical records, and I refused," she says. "That was kind of annoying. And he asked to search my house. He didn't have a search warrant, but I said go ahead. And they took some pictures of me and some pictures of my signs."

Before they left, she says, "I had to sign a statement that I never threatened the President?s life."

The Secret Service office in Charleston refused to give a comment to the Gazette, and a phone call from The Progressive to the Secret Service in Washington was not returned.

Though she hasn't heard from the Secret Service since, Jensen is not happy about the power citizens have to rat their neighbors out for merely expressing political views they disagree with.

"It's very easy for other people to call up the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security," she says, "and say things about you and have you investigated."

http://progressive.org/node/203

Wausau Police Drop Charges on Man with “Bushit” Sign
Almost every Friday night for the past two years, Mike Wallschlaeger has been protesting the Iraq War. Usually, he and other activists hold their demonstration outside the courthouse in Wausau, Wisconsin.

That’s where they were on Jan. 7.

But this protest ended differently than their previous ones. Wallschlaeger, 41, got slapped with a police citation for obscenity.

Wallschlaeger was using a sign he’d carried many times before. It said, “This War Is Bushit.”

He says he placed it in a snowbank so the traffic could see it. And he also had a sandwich board that read: “Today’s total: US Dead 1,358, Wounded over 10,252.”

A man in town did not take kindly to the “Bushit” sign.

“You’ve got to take down that sign. It’s profane,” he said, according to Wallschlaeger.

“And I said, ‘No it isn’t. It’s not a real word.’

“And he said, ‘If you don’t take it down, I’m calling the police.’

“And I said, ‘Go ahead.’

He did, and a police officer, M. LaPorte, showed up, and, according to Wallschlaeger, he said: “There’s a person who complained, and he had a granddaughter in his car, and he didn’t know what to say to his granddaughter.”

Wallschlaeger said he responded: “He probably should have said this is this gentleman’s way of expressing his political opinion of the war, and that probably would have ended the whole conversation.”

Then Officer LaPorte said, “You need to remove the sign or we’re going to give you a citation.”

But Wallschlaeger stood his ground.

“I know my constitutional rights,” he recalls saying, “and I’m not going to remove my sign.”

LaPorte was trying to remain neutral, says Wallschlaeger, who added that the Wausau City Attorney, William Nagle, had given the officer explicit instructions to cite Wallschlaeger for obscenity charges if he didn’t remove the sign.

“I don’t want to tell you your job, but you might want to call the city attorney back because I’m going to fight this as far as I can take it,” Wallschlaeger says he told LaPorte. “This is not going to stand.”

LaPorte, according to Wallschlaeger, said the dispatcher told him to issue the citation anyway and to confiscate the sign, which he did.

The citation charged Wallschlaeger with obscene language and fined him $102.

http://progressive.org/node/2354

Evicted from Bush Event, Denver Progressives to Sue

When Bauer and Weise approached the metal detector, "a man checked the women's drivers' licenses against a paper, then asked them to stand aside," the Rocky Mountain News reported. Another man, "dressed in a dark suit, with an earpiece and a red lapel pin," approached Bauer. "You two have been ID'd, and if you have any ill intention, you will be arrested," he said, according to the paper.

The man let them in, but before the President arrived, he returned and ordered all three to leave, grabbing one of them by the arm.

"We were forcibly removed," they told the blog Daily Kos. "We were shocked."

The following week, the three, along with their attorney, Dan Recht, met with the Secret Service in Denver to discuss what happened.

"The Secret Service revealed that we were "ID'd" when local Republican staffers saw a bumpersticker on the car we drove which said "No More Blood for Oil," they told Daily Kos.

It turns out that Young, Bauer, and Weise, members of a group called Denver Progressives, had T-shirts hidden under their top shirts that said, "Stop the Lies." And they had considered revealing those shirts during Bush's speech, though they said they had second thoughts about that.

In any event, they weren't given the opportunity.

Attorney Recht told The Progressive that when they met with Ron Garner, the head of the Denver Secret Service office, Garner said it was not the Secret Service that forced the three to leave but a Republican staff person. Garner "specifically told us that the only reason this happened was because of the bumpersticker," Recht said.

http://progressive.org/node/9

“Do Not Admit” List Lifted in Fargo for Bush Event

The Fargo Forum broke the story, noting that “Fargo City Commissioner Linda Coates is among more than 40 area residents included on a list of people barred from attending President Bush’s speech.”

On February 1, the people who were distributing tickets had “copies of the list at their tables” to check names against, the Forum reported. Among those on the list were people who “wrote opinion page letters to The Forum criticizing Bush or the war in Iraq. Others wrote letters in support of gay rights or of Democratic policies.”

(A subsequent Forum article noted that three quarters of those on the list were “members of the Fargo-Moorhead Democracy for America Meetup Group, which formed in the wake of the Dean campaign.”)

Coates told the paper she was “creeped out” by the list.

http://progressive.org/node/2353

1783 days since the last attack on US soil.

2 281 days between that attack and the previous one, and without the benefit of the Patriot Act.

1783 days since the last attack on US soil.

2 281 days between that attack and the previous one, and without the benefit of the Patriot Act.

Too be more accurate, it's was 3,116 days (8.5 yrs) between successful attacks

Too be more accurate, it's was 3,116 days (8.5 yrs) between successful attacks by international terrorist organizations without the need for a Patriot Act, a "war on terror" or any other violations of the Constitution.

Okay, I can't believe you guys actually went back and counted the days

Okay, I can't believe you guys actually went back and counted the days

White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 2006; Page A04

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

An early draft of the new measure prepared by civilian political appointees and leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from uniformed military lawyers. But the provisions allowing a future expansion of the courts to cover new crimes and more prisoners were retained, according to government officials familiar with the deliberations.

The military lawyers received the draft after the rest of the government had agreed on it. They have argued in recent days for retaining some routine protections for defendants that the political appointees sought to jettison, an administration official said.

They objected in particular to the provision allowing defendants to be tried in absentia, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the deliberations. Another source in contact with top military lawyers said, "Their initial impression is that the draft was unacceptable and sloppy." The source added that "it did not have enough due-process rights" and could further tarnish America's image.

The military lawyers nonetheless supported extending the jurisdiction of the commissions to cover those accused of joining or associating with terrorist groups engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities, and of committing or aiding hostile acts by such groups, whether or not they are part of al-Qaeda, two U.S. officials said.

That language gives the commissions broader reach than anticipated in a November 2001 executive order from President Bush that focused only on members of al-Qaeda, those who commit international terrorist acts and those who harbor such individuals.

Some independent experts say the new procedures diverge inappropriately from existing criminal procedures and provide no more protections than the ones struck down by the Supreme Court as inadequate. John D. Hutson, the Navy's top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said the rules would evidently allow the government to tell a prisoner: "We know you're guilty. We can't tell you why, but there's a guy, we can't tell you who, who told us something. We can't tell you what, but you're guilty."

Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general during the Reagan administration, said after reviewing the leaked draft that "the theme of the government seems to be 'They are guilty anyway, and therefore due process can be slighted.' " With these procedures, Fein said, "there is a real danger of getting a wrong verdict" that would let a lower-echelon detainee "rot for 30 years" at Guantanamo Bay because of evidence contrived by personal enemies.

But Kris Kobach, a senior Justice Department lawyer in Bush's first term who now teaches at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said he believes that the draft strikes an appropriate balance between "a fundamentally fair trial" and "the ability to protect the effectiveness of U.S. military and intelligence assets."

Administration officials have said that the exceptional trial procedures are warranted because the fight against terrorism requires heavy reliance on classified information or on evidence obtained from a defendant's collaborators, which cannot be shared with the accused. The draft legislation cites the goal of ensuring fair treatment without unduly diverting military personnel from wartime assignments to present evidence in trials.

The provisions are closely modeled on earlier plans for military commissions, which the Supreme Court ruled illegal two months ago in a case brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni imprisoned in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It is not evident why the danger posed by international terrorism, considerable though it is, should require, in the case of Hamdan, any variance from the courts-martial rules," the court's majority decision held.

No one at Guantanamo has been tried to date, though some prisoners have been there since early 2002.

John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped draft the earlier plan, said Bush administration officials essentially "took DOD regulations" for the trials "and turned them into a statute for Congress to pass." He said the drafters were obviously "trying to return the law to where it was before Hamdan " by writing language into the draft that challenges key aspects of the court's decision.

"Basically, this is trying to overrule the Hamdan case," said Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who was Hamdan's lead attorney.

The plan calls for commissions of five military officers appointed by the defense secretary to try defendants for any of 25 listed crimes. It gives the secretary the unilateral right to "specify other violations of the laws of war that may be tried by military commission." The secretary would be empowered to prescribe detailed procedures for carrying out the trials, including "modes of proof" and the use of hearsay evidence.

Unlike the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the commissions could rely on hearsay as the basis for a conviction. Unlike routine military courts-martial, in which prosecutors must overcome several hurdles to use such evidence, the draft legislation would put the burden on the defense team to block its use.

The admission of hearsay is a serious problem, said Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, because defendants might not know if it was gained through torture and would have difficulty challenging it on that basis. Nothing in the draft law prohibits using evidence obtained through cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that falls short of torture, Malinowski said.

The U.S. official countered that a military judge "would look hard" at the origins of such evidence and that defendants would have to count on "the trustworthiness of the system."

To secure a death penalty under the draft legislation, at least five jurors must agree, two fewer than under the administration's earlier plan. Courts-martial and federal civilian trials require that 12 jurors agree.