California's raid on the pro-life activists who conducted a sting against Planned Parenthood for selling baby parts and the FEC attempt to crack down on an anti-Obama documentary both reflect the growing criminalization of political activism on the right.
Much like the imprisonment of Dinesh D'Souza after making a successful anti-Obama documentary or the jailing of the man behind the Innocence of Muslims movie, the common denominator is that government officials seek out a violation of some sort, often one that is not ordinarily enforced, let alone with this much resources and prosecutorial vigor, and then throw the book at the targets.
This should not be confused with following the law. When you free drug dealers and lock up political critics, you may be following the letter of the law that you have made for yourself, but what you are doing has nothing in common with justice.
Dictatorships often "legally" imprison their political opponents. But it's not just the technicality of the case that matters, but the motives of the system and the procedures that were followed.
When there is a pattern of finding a pretext to target political opponents, that isn't justice. It's tyranny. It's a deliberate attempt to impose a chilling effect on the political opposition.
What Obama and his party are doing is not Nixonian. Nixon never went this far. Neither did McCarthy. The closest parallels can be found in places like Venezuela or Iran.
When the justice system is treated like the regime's secret police, then the Republic is in peril. When the authorities make a special effort to crack down on political opponents, then democratic elections become a mere technicality.
The law is not merely procedural. It is also moral. A corrupt system can selectively use the law to destroy the political opposition. The Democratic Party has begun traveling down that dark road.