In the online world, people get compared to Adolf Hitler so often that many years ago "Godwin's Law" was created to give a definition to the phenomenon. In politics, Hitler analogies usually aren't quite as frequent, but they are getting much more common these days. It's one thing to see this accusation hurled in an article's comments section, or even by a late-night comedian (trolling for some laughs), but what is new this year is hearing members of Donald Trump's own party comparing him to fascist leaders (as Meg Whitman recently did).

So when political science Professor Kenneth Janda asked if he could write a column making a more academic comparison (instead of just hurling insults), I thought it'd be a great idea. Janda is the Payson S. Wild Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northwestern University, and he's both written a guest article here before and also been an interview subject (in the midst of the 2008 campaign).

Janda makes a pretty good case, drawing on historical data from Hitler's own political campaigns as well as quotes from Donald Trump during the past year.

-- Chris Weigant

Donald Trump, The Apprentice Demagogue

Donald Trump is clearly no Adolf Hitler. Trump does not preach Hitler's most hateful domestic policies, and Trump's foreign policy is not imperialist but isolationist. Trump's slogan, "American First," resembles "Deutschland über alles" ("Germany above all else") more in chauvinistic simplicity than evil intent. But it does underscore that Trump is, as Hitler was, a demagogue, appealing to voters' emotions and prejudices in order to win election.

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Before we begin, we should mention that this week's talking points section consists of a few extended excerpts from President Obama's recent speech on fighting the Islamic State. What he had to say was important, and it counters several insidious talking points that have been used against him in the past, so we felt it was worth taking over this week's talking points. Just to warn everyone up front.

Because these excerpts are longish, we're going to once again have to punt on announcing the winners of our "what playground taunt should we call Donald Trump?" contest once again. Our apologies, and we swear we'll get to it next week (granted, that's what we said last week, but this time we really mean it).

We're also going to have to review the week's news in lighting fashion for an intro, because this column's already approaching Brobdingnagian lengths. Well, maybe not, but it sure is fun to run "Brobdingnagian" through the old spell-checker, and we have to find our amusements where we will in this job. Ahem. Enough meandering, let's just get on with it, shall we?

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President Barack Obama just hit a milestone in public job approval. At Real Clear Politics, his daily rolling average of public opinion polls just went over 50 percent. Unless they are edited late in the day (which sometimes happens), Obama currently merits 50.4 percent approval and only 45.7 percent disapproval from the polled public.

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As I write this, there is a filibuster currently going on in the Senate. Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats launched this filibuster to draw attention to the fact that suspected terrorists in America can still legally buy guns. Murphy represents Connecticut, where the Newtown massacre happened, and thus he feels very strongly about the issue of gun control.

Republicans, at least as of this writing, seem more willing to compromise on the issue than they've ever been before. Bills with a similar objective have been rejected by a (mostly) party-line vote in the very recent past, in fact. But the outrage over what happened in Orlando is tangible, and the GOP seems to actually realize it this time. Even Donald Trump says he's about to meet with the National Rifle Association in an effort to convince them to support banning suspected terrorists from legally buying guns. This is a significant shift from the party that has been refusing to do just that for the past few years.

But I have to say, while all this seems laudable at first glance, the underlying (and bipartisan) disdain for the United States Constitution is extremely worrisome. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the Second Amendment here, but rather the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Here are the relevant clauses: "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...." (Fifth Amendment); and "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...." (Fourteenth Amendment).

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No column today, sorry. I'm working on fixing the comments problem, which (hopefully) seems to be a technical glitch involving memory and the database. Warning: repairs may make the website either unavailable or act strangely for the next few hours. Hopefully by tomorrow things will be sorted out. Again, thanks for everyone's patience.

UPDATE: OK, I think I've got it fixed. Comments seem to be working again. Let's hope for the best, and I apologize again for the interruption in service.

-- Chris Weigant

Something is extremely wrong with the site's comments right now. The problem seemed to have happened over the weekend. I'm currently trying to get things back to normal. Please bear with us, and hopefully we'll get things up and running again soon. Thanks for your patience.

-- Chris Weigant

Newt Gingrich is a smart guy, Washington insiders will tell you. He's certainly smarter than Donald Trump, based on nothing more than vocabulary and the complexity of ideas he is able to comprehend. Newt is currently on Trump's vice-presidential shortlist, which makes sense if you believe what Trump's been saying about his veep pick for months now -- he wants someone with experience dealing with Congress. Newt, being a former Speaker of the House, certainly fits that bill better than most.

But Newt Gingrich's supposed smartness is rather indiscriminate, when examined closely. Newt has what he considers ten or twelve brilliant ideas each day, which he is in the habit of just tossing out for discussion. These ideas are presented in scattershot fashion, and most of them never go anywhere (even Newt admits this, when he's being honest with himself). However, every once in a while Newt will follow through on one of his proposals, so you can't just discount everything that comes out of his mouth.

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Whither the fabled "Party of Lincoln"? That was the question on the minds of many Republicans this week, at least based on how often they used the phrase. Now, we're used to scathing attacks on character being hurled in the frenzy of a presidential campaign. Indeed, it's woven into the fabric of American politics. It's just that in normal years, these attacks are flung across the aisle, at the other party's nominee. It is extraordinary that all of the vicious attacks we're going to feature in our talking points section this week came from Republicans, all aimed squarely at their own party's presidential nominee. Seriously, when in the past have you ever heard the term "unendorse" used? We haven't checked, but we believe it just got coined and added to the political lexicon. It hasn't existed before because the concept hasn't ever existed before (again, in our own memory, at the very least). But we're going to get to all this in great detail later, so let's just move along for now.

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California's relatively new primary system is unfair and needs to change back to the way it used to be. I say this not out of partisanship -- quite the opposite, in fact. The benefits of California's so-called "jungle primary" have all gone to the Democratic side, but basic fairness demands I stand up for the rights of California Republicans, third-party voters, and independents, because theirs are the rights which are being abridged.

Six years ago, California voters passed two major adjustments to our voting system. The first I applauded (and still do), because Proposition 20 guaranteed that the politicians would be completely excluded from the process of redrawing district lines after every U.S. Census. Redistricting is perhaps the wonkiest of all political fights, but it is the process where gerrymandering takes place, so it is an important one. California voters decided they had had enough, and put a non-partisan citizens' commission in charge of redrawing the lines -- a valuable change and one that stands up for the concept of fairness.

However, in the same year, California voters also passed Proposition 14, which gave us our jungle primary. What this did was essentially shift the general election lineup to the primary, and turn the general election into nothing more than a runoff between the top two primary vote-winners. If this doesn't sound so bad, consider that Californian Republicans will have no candidate from their party to vote for in November for a (very rare) open U.S. Senate race. That is simply unfair, and if I were a Republican, I'd be hopping mad about it.

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Senator Bernie Sanders, barring extraordinary unforeseen circumstances, is not going to be president. He has fallen short of his goal of winning the nomination of the Democratic Party. No tricky delegate math is going to save him now. His campaign is now over, whether he wants to admit it or not quite yet. But I for one am thankful he ran, and thankful for what he did manage to accomplish. Because though his campaign is done, his political revolution should continue.

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