This story, it sounds familiar

Ah, the good old days, when the government had to invade your privacy the old fashioned way. Howard Zinn, the great historian died earlier this year, TPM's Muckraker section (personally I always read TPM's sports section first) did some digging and discovered:

...the 423-page FBI file that the FBI kept on Howard Zinn, who was a life-long activist and political science professor at Boston University from 1964-1988, we discovered something interesting: someone in the upper echelons of the university's management was an FBI informer who reportedly plotted to oust Zinn in 1970.

They wanted Zinn to go, because he was against the war we were fighting then. Sadly there were plenty more stupid wars to oppose and be punished for doing so to come.

Of course, the effort to oust Zinn went nowhere, and he was right about the war too (again, sound familiar?). Those were the old days.

In contemporary America, some a-hole releases a heavily edited videotape of you and you're out before Fox & Friends is over.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]