Earlier today, Barack Obama made sure to call on a teenage girl who decried the use of “mean signs” at townhall forums, allowing Obama to amplify a fine whine coming from Democrats during the debate over ObamaCare. John Dingell compared his constituents to the KKK while Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer called opponents “un-American” for their vocal opposition to the health-care reform bill that creates a government takeover of the entire industry. Evan Coyne Maloney brings us this flashback to January 2005, a simpler, more gentle time in political protests … or maybe not:

A couple of points. First, it’s great to see people criticize Bush for spending $40 million on his second inauguration in the middle of a “recession” (actually, we had already recovered from a recession and had begun rapid economic growth more than a year earlier). Barack Obama spent $170 million during one of the worst economic periods since the Great Depression on his inauguration. The protesters in 2005 openly spouted conspiracy theories about Bush’s legitimacy. Some of them talked openly about revolution, which sounds a lot more un-American than people wanting government out of their health care.

And note those nice Nazi swastikas. They make several appearances in this seven-minute video, on more than one sign. Those were the days ….