The DCCC had some choice comments to make about it:

Not only has John Boehner recruited, embraced, and financed a disgraced Nazi enthusiast running for Congress, but now Boehner is pouring gasoline on the fire by throwing a campaign rally for him," said DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer. "Thumbing his nose at our nation's veterans, women, and people of the Jewish faith, all the while refusing to stand up for basic American values in order to try and win an election, apparently this is what Boehner meant when he said, 'We're not going to be any different than what we've been.

Taking out the hyperbole that tends to dominate the final week of any election cycle for a minute, I just have to sit back and wonder about how it can be that Republicans are so confident about sewing up the House majority. If they really think they've got it in the bag, why send the future Speaker of the House on the campaign trail with a guy who thinks SS officers were interesting enough that he spent his weekends pretending he was one?

Hmmm. Things to ponder.

This is starting to look like a pattern. First Mark Kirk, now Jan Brewer. Governor Brewer's effort to stir sympathy for her cause seems to have backfired on her.

Via the Arizona Guardian:

Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended.

During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California.

Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that... and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced," Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.

How exactly does one stretch work for a munitions depot stateside into "fighting the Nazis"? Evidently by making the claim that the lung disease that killed her father was caused by toxic fumes at the munitions factory.

Her claim that she didn't mean to embellish the story rings hollow to me. The phrase "my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany..." clearly intends to convey the impression that he fell in combat in Germany fighting Nazis. If she had intended to convey otherwise, she would have framed it as the result of the country's war with Nazi Germany. She did not.

Of course, she is now trying to spin as a simple misinterpretation on the part of the reader, which points directly to my overall problem with the faux patriotism candidates put on under the guise of military service. We live in a country where service is voluntary (despite our unenforced draft laws). Serving or not serving is not a benchmark measure of anyone's patriotism.

As far as I'm concerned, military service should not be a marker of a candidate's qualification to run for or hold office. When it starts being pimped as some kind of extra qualifier, or when candidates use their family's service as a qualifier (as Brewer did), it's an insult to every member who is or has served in the military today.

Brewer just keeps proving her ambition and lack of qualification for office. Arizona, you can do better than this.

Let’s say that you’re a run-of-the-mill teabagger looking to set yourself apart from the mob. Nazi/Hitler signs tend to go over well, but that’s so not original. You could strap an assault rifle to your back – like this guy did outside an Obama speech – but that’s so not subtle.

Do not fret. Thanks to Zazzle.com, you can find just the right product to push you over the edge from workaday winger to racist extremist.

Want to encourage, or joke about, President Obama’s death? Check out this line of "Bullet holes anti Obama Bumper Stickers:"

Don’t forget to pick up a t-shirt for that special woman in your life:

Maybe you’re a little paranoid about the Secret Service and would rather joke about killing the president’s supporters rather than Obama himself, no problem:

Or maybe you’d prefer to have your dog joke about killing the president instead. What’s the Secret Service gonna do, arrest Fido?

If you’d prefer to be a little more oblique about threatening Obama, while no less offensive, these are for you:

The above designs are all the handiwork of a single user of Zazzle named NOBAMAMAN (thanks go to the Active Art blog for discovering them). Bad taste isn’t against the law, but many of these designs are clearly beyond the pale – especially in an environment of heightened threats against the president.

Last month Zazzle banned a line of products which called on people to pray for Obama’s death. The company said the so-called Psalm 109 products “may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest physical harm to the President of the United States.” In light of this, we should be sure to call Zazzle’s attention to some of the above products. You can email Zazzle here, post in their forum, comment on their blog, or use Twitter.

UPDATE: Zazzle appears to have taken down the offerings.

[X-posted from Right Wing Watch]

We have been documenting the increasingly violent and threatening protests at Democratic town hall events around the country, and now it seems things are reaching the boiling point. The Secret Service has finally gotten involved:

There were signs comparing President Barack Obama to a Nazi and showing him with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache, but federal officials believe another sign referencing the president and his family went too far.

A man who was holding a sign reading "Death to Obama" Wednesday outside a town hall meeting on health care reform in Hagerstown, Md., has been turned over to the Secret Service.

Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich said the sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids." Read on...

As many have said on blogs and the tee vee, these protests have nothing to do with health care reform, and they never did. They are temper tantrums being thrown by small minded, uneducated, racist white people who are angry about having a black Democrat in the White House. I'm encouraged to finally see the Secret Service getting involved in a public way.

BeggarsCanBeChoosers: A rather large flaw in the fervent condemnations of pro-choice advocates as 'Nazis' is that Hitler himself, and the Nazi doctrine he created, were unequivocally opposed to any individual right to abortion. Guess it's time to take another look at that much maligned DHS report on right-wing extremism.

Truthdig: War Is Sin

We are respectable negroes: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Black Privilege in the Age of Barack Obama

Election Law: Live blogging the Coleman/Franken oral argument

Jesus' General: Tancredo PAC's Executive Director goin' all Chuck Norris on the Brown! 

Surviving the World : Lesson 132 - Twitter (h/t swimgirl)

After Alberto Gonzales’ humiliating and painful tenure as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, I was beginning to get my hopes up about Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey.

Right off the bat on Wednesday, he rejected the infamous Bybee memo, and compared U.S. torture policies to Nazi Germany. The rest of the day was nearly as encouraging, with Mukasey vowing to end Justice Department “stonewalling,” and insisting he would resign if Bush tried to do something unconstitutional. No more partisan considerations in employment, Mukasey said. No more “unilateralism,” he promised.

Everyone was impressed, and said so. And then Day Two happened.

Arthur Silber finds Santorum coming apart at the seams.

Likening the times to the late 1930s as Nazi Germany was rising to power, Sen. Rick Santorum said last night that if he loses his re-election bid, it could set the stage for terrorism to become more of a threat than the Nazis ever were....read on

Thanks to Jamie at IntoxiNation.net for this.

AP via El Paso Times:

Keith Olbermann's tipping point came on a tarmac in Los Angeles six weeks ago. While waiting for his plane to take off he read an account of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's speech before the American Legion equating Iraq War opponents to pre-World War II appeasers.

The next night, on Aug. 30, Olbermann ended his MSNBC "Countdown" show with a blistering retort, questioning both the interpretation of history and Rumsfeld's very understanding of what it means to be an American.

It was the first of now five extraordinarily harsh anti-Bush commentaries that have made Olbermann the latest media point-person in the nation's political divide.

"As a critic of the administration, I will be damned if you can get away with calling me the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser," Olbermann told The Associated Press. "No one has the right to say that about any free-speaking American in this country."

Since that first commentary, Olbermann's nightly audience has increased 69 percent, (emph. added) according to Nielsen Media Research. This past Monday 834,000 people tuned in, virtually double his season average and more than CNN competitors Paula Zahn and Nancy Grace. Cable kingpin and Olbermann nemesis Bill O'Reilly (two million viewers that night) stands in his way. Read on...

Still, we must never forget that speaking out against the Republican noise machine can be a livelihood-threatening thing. Jeff Cohen at HuffPo warns Keith that the "suits" at corporate have not always been so accomodating.

Pam's House Blend: 'Homosexual agenda'= Nazi agenda. Anyone confused about what constitues fascism should take this this quiz.

Tristram Shandy: Why are the warfloggers so upset? G-Dub outlined the program in 2001.

Carbon Paper: A letter conservative newspapers refused to print

Liberal Country Fan: Reba pulls a Bill O'Reilly while trying to explain her beef with the Chicks

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Alito v Civil rights: A foreshadowing

The Sideshow: Avedon Carol has an excellent roundup every day...as does the 'all-roundup-all-the-time' Progressive Blog Digest.

Churchill

Andrew Sullivan finds this quote by Churchill on November 21, 1943 while discussing the Hamden case and the President's role in it:

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."