The recent tasering of a student after he questioned John Kerry during a university appearance was a painful example of misjudgment by police officers. In "ganging" up on him both physically and psychologically, they instigated his shock, disorientation, then panic. Yet he was never a threat; nor was he vicious. He was not an "enemy combatant." His questioning was passionate but salient, his only "crime" being wordiness.

Such passion is not unheard of at these events. An aide will usually move in to focus the person's attention on time and decorum. Occasionally it will accelerate to a warning about calling security. No such preliminaries occurred here. The overkill in numbers and brutish behavior created a crisis of fear and an unjustified, wrongful tasering. There was NO justification for introducing this weapon.

For the past two years, cable TV watchers have been force-fed endless anti-immigration propaganda by most of FOX News (led by Hannity, O'Reilly, and John Gibson), CNN's Lou Dobbs, and MSNBC's Pat Buchanan. Their go-to guy on immigrant-bashing is Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who is threatening to run for President.

This right-wing immigrant-bashing led to Jim Sensenbrenner's (R-WI) bill to make 12 million illegal immigrants into felons, which in turn produced massive immigrant rallies and caused large numbers of legal immigrants to vote for Democrats. But it also led to the revivial of violent hate groups, as AP reports:

Update 12:40 pm ET: Comcast is getting the message - keep calling 215-665-1700 (and be polite of course)!

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David Neiwert follows the neo-Nazi right carefully from Seattle, near some of their most fertile breeding grounds. On July 3 he visited Olympia, where a dozen neo-Nazis served notice on their plans for a fascist America from the steps of the State Capitol.

Today Neiwert connects the dots between the July 3 rally and the shocking (and under-blogged) report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) about hundreds - possibly thousands - of neo-Nazis in our military. Neiwert writes about Shawn Stuart (photo left), an Iraq War veteran who spoke at the Olympia rally.

Now that we know Bush has recruited "thousands" of "neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists," the incomprehensible un-American atrocities committed by some U.S. soldiers start to become comprehensible.

And behind these atrocities lies a profound, hateful, and unquestioned racism that is no different from that of Nazi Germany. Here is Prof. Andrew Bacevich:

NY Times reports:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.