As the year winds to a close, here’s one name we haven’t heard in a while. Do you remember the Occupy movement? You know… those folks that were going to be the much needed counterweight to the Tea Party? Seems like they sort of disappeared there for a while. But at least out on the Left coast, they’re back. And they’ve brought their lawyers.

Occupy Los Angeles demonstrators are suing the city for what they said was an unlawful “shock and awe” attack on their civil rights when 1,400 police officers swept nearly 300 demonstrators from City Hall grounds more than a year ago.

The Nov. 30, 2011 arrests at Los Angeles City Hall came after an eight-week encampment aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement calling attention to “bailouts for Wall Street and foreclosures for Main Street.”

Five people are suing in a class action lawsuit that represents 292 people detained by officers in the raid. Court documents said those arrested were denied food and water for hours while being detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown, at a jail in Van Nuys or on a bus en route to the lockup.

So in the end, I guess it all comes down to people squabbling in court. It’s one heck of a way to spend your holidays. Then again, if I recall correctly, Occupy was more of a summer thing anyway, so they should have been packing up to take the winter off again about now. And perhaps that’s all for the best, since it turns out that the Feds had their eyes on them anyway.

According to internal documents newly released by the FBI, the agency spearheaded a nationwide law enforcement effort to investigate and monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. In certain documents, divisions of the FBI refer to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a “criminal activity” or even “domestic terrorism.”

The internal papers were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice fund via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The fund, a legal nonprofit that focuses on civil rights, says it believes the 112 pages of documents, available for public viewing on its website, are only “the tip of the iceberg.”

So if you take over public lands, defecate on police cars, provide a breeding ground for rapes, robberies and assault, the authorities begin watching you? Who could have predicted that?