But there are other things he can do and he’s doing them. This is so brazen that Obama obviously could not care less who you are or what you do. If you are his enemy then you will be done over and what are you or anyone else going to do about it?

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that the IRS audit of Dr. Ben Carson can’t be a mere coincidence. . . .

Carson on Wednesday told Fox’s Bill O’Reilly that the IRS began examining his real estate holdings after his speech to the National Prayer Breakfast in February, in which he used tithing in the Bible to make a compelling case against progressive taxation. A humiliated Obama sat steaming a couple of seats away.

Then there’s the NSA Surveillance program that not only can but does track phone calls and emails. I just tried googling “NSA Surveillance” to find a statement of the problems it causes and it creeps me out to find that I could not easily locate a posting that was critical of the program. This is the best I could find and this was in an article defending the NSA:

The NSA has been in the centre of a firestorm since the Snowden leaks, which revealed wide-ranging programs which scoop up data on telephone calls and Internet activity.

I’m sure we all feel protected by governments that know what we are saying to each other by phone, fax or email.

And then, with the closing of non-essential government services there are many instances just like this:

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.

‘It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,’ an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. ‘We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.’

Sure it’s disgusting but it’s not just politics as usual or at least it wasn’t until now. The full resources of the American government are being used in a punitive way against individuals and groups, against American citizens who disagree with the President. In reading not just the American media but even the right side blogs, the most astonishing part is the absence of expressions of genuine outrage. Maybe with the American media as latently totalitarian as it is there is nothing that can be done, and maybe no one writing a blog wants to be done over by the tax office, but if it doesn’t make you seriously angry, and not just a little frightened, I don’t know what would.