"Occupy the Police State"

Jason Leopold:

Important questions have been raised about what role, if any, the federal government has played in dismantling the Occupy encampments around the country and what the protesters and civil liberties groups say is ultimately an attempt to stifle dissent.

While we wait for those answers, Kolin, a political science professor at Hilbert College in Buffalo, New York, has done a masterful job of tracing the origins of the "political repression of mass-based movements" and the rise of the "police state" in his exhaustively researched book, "State Power and Democracy: Before and During The Presidency of George W. Bush." (Click here to read an excerpt.) MORE...

Police officers in riot gear form a line near Occupy Los Angeles protesters outside City Hall in Los Angeles, November 30, 2011. (Photo: Ted Soqui / The New York Times)