Cass Sunstein has always been a favorite maniac of mine.

He believes animals should be permitted given legal status equal to humans, that Americans should celebrate tax day (they do –– it’s called the Tea Party) and that every website with any inkling of any opinion should be mandated by federal law to permanently embed a list of opposing links on its every page.

Naturally, President Obama made him the regulatory czar. Other crackpots who failed the sanity test, for whatever reason, include Erroll Southers and the Communist Van Jones.

The public hasn’t demanded Sunstein’s head on a platter yet, but as more of his utterly totalitarian views come to light, he might be driven from his post like Southers and Jones.

His most recent contribution to legal thought is a 2008 paper titled “Conspiracy Theories,” in which he and his co-author, Adrian Vermeule, argue that the government should hire credible, “independent” actors to “cognitively infiltrate” any group of people who question official government history, whether these groups meet formally in real time or just chat over the Internet.

Clearly the idea of citizens developing opinions contrary to the presumptions of the entrenched political class rattles Sunstein to his bones.

Glenn Greenwald, a noble man of the left, thoroughly examines Sunstein’s scheme in his Salon article, “Obama Confidant’s Spine-Chilling Proposal” and finds that it advocated a repeal of the First Amendment at the very least.

Liberals usually claim that they are staunch defenders of civil liberties, and to an extent, they do a good job beating back the creeping police state in the court room. But now totalitarian, illiberal liberals wield the sword of the executive branch against their political opponents.

This time, they have no formal opposition-submissive Republicans only bleat feebly in response to the Democrats’ mantra: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Their main opposition, roaring back in response, is populist and-for now-happily unmanageable.

Liberals want to cow Tea Partiers by calling them “racist,” and now, after Time magazine’s Joe Klein’s gibbering on Chris Matthew’s show, “seditious.”

Sunstein’s paper definitely deserves more attention in light of these recent, frantic efforts of the left side of the corporate media to discredit the nascent Tea Party movement.

Who’s to say that Sunstein’s plan of discrediting and infiltration haven’t already been put in motion?

Reporter William Douglas and Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat, fabricated an entire news story back in March, claiming a crowd of health care reform protestors yelled racial epitaphs as civil rights veteran John Lewis passed through them.

Reality doesn’t make much of an entrance into the story. As it turns out, the activists were chanting, “Kill the Bill,” which black Tea Party member William Owens affirmed.

The charge of “sedition” is one stab closer to the heart of the conflict. Joe Klein charged Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin with “virtual sedition,” or a revolt or incitement to revolt against established authority.

Never mind that this country was born from sedition. Never mind that distrusting the government, as Lew Rockwell puts it, is as American as apple pie, that 80 percent of Americans currently distrust the government according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, and that peaceful, civil disobedience has been a successful tactic for movers and shakers on both the left and the right.

Just how many government officials have read and implemented Sunstein’s plan? Despite all the fanfare about the supposed transparency of the Obama administration, we will probably never know.

At least now the battle lines are drawn: It’s obvious that this is war between tax-takers and the tax-payers. Cass Sunstein, watch your back. The public is watching you.