One of the most hated organizations in East Germany was their secret police, the STASI. I've heard estimates that a quarter of the citizens were informants--on their neighbors, families, wives and husbands. All the knowledge gathered made for a fearsome engine of oppression, and a culture of suspicion and tyranny which was used by the state to enforce a totalitarian regime where the arts were utterly controlled, the press was controlled, and all free communication was done in private and at great personal risk.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck wrote and directed, in English, The Lives of Others, a movie about the STASI and the culture of spying and suspicion. It's one of the most moving movies that I've ever seen, right up there with Paul Greengrass' United 93, which was so powerful that a friend and I could not talk for a few minutes after watching it. You can see that my taste in movies is no longer Mary Poppins.

The Lives of Others details the awfulness of a socialist, totalitarian regime, where all power flows top-down from the state. Out of shame a woman takes her own life; other lives are ruined in less spectacular fashion, and throughout it is the dark web of oppression and political thuggery which can be exposed only by the efforts of brave people to tell the truth and to keep from being caught telling the truth, until it is out and then they are martyred. This is all in the teeth of the secret police, bugging houses, following people, and leveling threats. And carrying the threats out.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously made a world-wide reputation in the Russian samizdat press, revealing the truth about the Soviet totalitarian state. Where communication that was not approved by the state had to be passed around clandestinely.

On the White House web site (which I have copied and stored against its possible removal) Linda Douglass, one of the miscreants of this administration, has a blog post entitled, "Facts are stubborn things," which Ms. Douglass wants to impart respectability to by acknowledging they're a quote from our second president.

Anyone reading a line about facts from this administration would be well advised to lock the doors--you know you're going to be spun faster than a Tilt-a-Whirl. Ms. Douglass has a short video, in which she lies like a nurse to a stupid child about to get a shot, "This won't hurt a bit," but not lying condescendingly would be remarkable in this administration, which I think must have as a qualification for employment a history of failing a lie detector test. In the now-classic leftist rhetorical attack of projection, she accuses her enemies, the American people exercising their first-amendment rights, of "cherry-picking" things, which is just what she does with this 0bominable 0bamacare bill.

She delivers herself of

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Get this? They're monitoring your email in case you do something against the state.

The United States Government is reading your email in case you are disloyal. In case you are not blindly accepting the farrago of lies being told. In case you want to exercise your first-amendment rights. In case you question what you're being told. In case you're not docile. In case you're an American.

Yes, comrades, this administration is engaged in a full-on assault on your first-amendment rights. In case you hear something which is not parroting the official lie, er, line coming out of the White House you are supposed to inform on your fellow citizens. If you speak your mind, you could be a martyr. Here. In America. Notice to all government goons: I have no drugs, don't do them, and have by mistake overpaid my taxes. And after Jimmy Patterson's article you can't blackmail me for "crimes against nature." Thoughtcrime--eh.

Here is a verified report from the Department of Homeland Security which worries that returning military could be dangerous. Their training with weapons and their tendencies might lead to right-wing extremism. Oh yeah. The extremism that made these volunteers risk their lives for that goblin Janet Napolitano's bureaucrats at DHS.

Rahm Emanuel sends a dead fish to Democrats who do not vote the Party Line. Did he run out of horse heads?

From forcing money onto businesses to control them, to having DHS warning the government against the military who make it possible, to Emanuel's base political thuggery to making the citizenry into secret police.

I will repeat myself: This government is encouraging the citizenry to inform on others who use their first-amendment rights to be disloyal to this administration's Current Truth.

The jury is no longer out. This is a fascist administration.

Well, at least Jimmy Carter knows that he's no longer the worst president in American history.