The other shoe begins to drop

The long-running half of the Bush plan to impose its views on the rest of us is exemplified by the efforts on George Deutsch, the 24-year-old NASA Zampolit who tried to muzzle a NASA climate scientist and edit discussions of the Big Bang. (After being fired for falsifying his resume, he's singing the victim song here.)

As bad as that is, far more ominous things are happening. The other half of the plan is the silencing of the opinions they don't like. From The Progressive:

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years.

Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.

After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the letter on that computer, and accused her of “sedition.”

Berg was an early target because she is a government employee. But by their definition, this blog is sedition squared.

What our government is doing to stifle dissent looks like isolated incidents now, but that's how it starts. Dictatorship will come in indiscernable increments. And how it ends will be much worse. The GWOT will be used to justify the smothering of politics on the Internet -- mark my words. It will be used to justify wholesale dismantling of the Constitution, including, perhaps the 22nd Amendment. We throw around police state epithets now, but today is just the appetizer. The main course is being prepared right now, and its odors are starting to spread.

If you think 2008 is going to be just another fair election and orderly government transition, I've got a lightly blowtorched bridge over the East River to sell you.

Update: the 22nd Amendment is showing up on other radar screens today, too.