Anybody inclined to laugh off the current Tea Bag Movement as just a passing fancy involving a few isolated kooks had better guess again.

Analyze what was said at the group's recent convention where Sarah Palin regaled her audience along with the series of preceding rallies cheer led by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others and a disturbing trend surfaces.

These Teabaggers hold some discomforting points in common with the Brownshirts of Germany's pre-Third Reich period.  Many from the progressive movement in Germany during that period laughed off the appearance of "a funny looking little man with a mustache" along with those "kooky guys in the Brownshirts" as one conclusion was clear to them.

This strange breed of crude malcontents could not hope to prevail in a land of rich culture such as Germany.  This was, after all, the nation of Goethe, Bismarck, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller.  Yes, Wagner held some of those same bigoted views of Hitler and the Brownshirts, but that was seen by many as a tragic aberration of a great composer and he had a genius that these presumed misfits did not.

NRC Broadcasting has refused to run the newest campaign ad by Bill Winter, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in CD-6. The ad, that began running earlier this week, highlights Congressman Tom Tancredo's personal and financial ties to a number of leaders and organizations in the "White Power" movement.

Winter's campaign manager, Berrick Abramson, was informed by the General Sales Manager at NRC that the ad was pulled on direct orders from NRC Broadcasting's CEO, Tim Brown, a major Republican donor who has given over twelve thousand dollars to various Republican candidates in 2006 including Marilyn Musgrave, Doug Lamborn, Scott Tipton, Rick O'Donnell, Rick Santorum and Winter opponent Tom Tancredo.

The Republicans are at each other's throats on immigration. Business groups are reacting with outrage to the latest GOP proposal to require them to document that each of their immigrants are here in this country legally and require them to play Big Brother and do the job of the Federal Government.

As Democrats, we believe in individual responsibility. That means that if we pass a law, we provide the resources to enforce the law ourselves, not make other people into the eyes and ears of the government. Furthermore, we support increased immigration, as it would mean more jobs and more revenue for the government. We're the ones who put the money in, and they're the ones who would take the money out by shutting the country's door to most immigrants.