Did I mention Democrat law-enforcement goon squads working to suppress the truth about Obama and his agenda? Why yes, yes I did — and Missouri’s governor did too:

JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.

“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.

“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.

“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.

“Barack Obama needs to grow up.”

STACLU says:

Governor Blunt’s press release uses the specific words “using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights,” “intimidation,” and “silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.” We would like any attorneys who read this to weigh in on whether, assuming that Governor Blunt’s allegations are proven, this constitutes a violation of the U.S. Code as shown above.

Meanwhile, if these allegations are indeed true, then Barack Obama can be compared legitimately to Adolf Hitler. Godwin’s Law applies only when a comparison of a political opponent to Hitler or Nazis is a gross exaggeration, and “using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights” is exactly what Hitler and real Nazis once did to Germans.

Pace Reynolds, I think he’s right about that; refs to Nazis and 30’s Germany are usually overblown and hysterical, as we all know. But Obama’s attempts to squelch any debate about his intentions and his past — and especially his willingness to enlist sympathetically partisan law-enforcement personnel in those efforts, even before he’s been elected President — are in truth pretty damned scary. His disciples’ blithe unconcern over their Lord’s assault on free speech speaks volumes about what kind of Reich they’re hoping to see set up. Allahpundit reminds us, too, that nobody necessarily needs to be actually prosecuted for the intended suppression of dissenting views to be effective:

Prosecution will be impossible anyway in most cases thanks to the First Amendment. The point isn’t to jail critics but merely to price the cost of prospective litigation into their decision on whether to publicly criticize The One. Add this to the threatening letters his lawyers sent to station managers over the NRA ads, the flash-mob smearing of David Freddoso, and the appeal to the Justice Department to prosecute the American Issues Project for its perfectly factual yet devastating Ayers ad. Oh, the fun we’ll have with a deep blue Congress and an Obama-run DOJ and FCC. He promised you a “new type of politics,” didn’t he?

Yep – but there’s nothing new about it, really. It’s the same despotic, authoritarian politics we’ve seen throughout history — and fought more than one war to overcome. And now Barrack and his revanchist thugs are trying once again to bring it back. It’s Change! you can be prepared to either fight back against or be run over by — and if it’s a fight Obama’s Brownshirts really want, I suspect it’s a fight they’ll be a-getting.