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Look up the phrase “police state” in Webster’s: “a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures.”

It doesn’t have to be Stalin’s USSR to be a police state. Obama’s and Cass Susstein’s ideal is a benign police state.

Anyway, consider Webster’s definition:

— repressive governmental control of political life - Check. Read up on the IRS scandal, if you have any doubt. Or perhaps consider that Obama has applied the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers than any President in history. There are numerous documented examples of political oppression without even considering the some of less credible conspiracy theories touted on FR. Check out the SWAT raid on Gibson Guitar, which was owned by a guy who did not pay proper fealty to Obama and his union buddies.

— repressive governmental control on economic life - Check. Read upon on recent actions by the EPA, or the Fed’s “financial repression” (Google it), or Dodd Frank, or ObamaCare, if you have any doubt. Remember TARP? People were over 9:1 against it, but their “elected representatives” voted for it. There is very little that the government cannot control in the economic realm with the USSC interpretation of the commerce clause. And, when I earn an extra $100, the government tells me that it is the majority partner in my life, and demands that I fork over $52. Wanna run a business, but have moral objections to abortion? Too bad. Wanna open a foreign bank account? Good luck with that: you are not a welcome customer simply because you are an American and American law has made you more trouble than you are worth. That is economic repression.

— repressive governmental control on social life - Check, though Americans are much more free in their social life than in the economic and political. But look at what is taught in US public schools if you don’t think the US government is trying to corrupt traditional American civic society. Or just consider that the government mandates what kids eat in school, and imposes all sorts of prohibitions old and new. By the way, what do you think your great-grandfather would have said if a potential employer said he could go to work, but only if he could watch your great-grandfather urinate in a bottle? I know my grandfathers would have probably punched him. But maybe it’s all worthwhile since Cheney, Obama, and life-appointed judges are having so much success in pushing gay marriage over the objections of voter majorities.

— arbitrary exercise of power by police - Check. Been to an airport recently? Traveled within a 100 miles of the border? Ihre papiere, bitte .... but usually without the bitte pleasantry. Did you watch what happened in Boston after the Marathon bombing? You see, I am old enough to remember what America used to be like. There were bombings in the 1970s, too, and the police did not go into Gestapo mode. And I could get on an airplane without showing an ID, traveling privately, and without all of the security theater. Hell, even the buses are getting the TSA treatment.

— secret police - Check. Your phone records, your credit card records, your bank records are no longer your business, but also those of various agencies that act in secret.

— “in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures” - Check. Shoot the guy’s dog = nonjudicial punishment outside of publicly known legal procedures. Lard up felony charges to bargain against civil damages = operation of police outside of publicly known legal procedures. Stymie formation of liberty-oriented groups by the IRS = the same. Google three felonies per day.

Having read every Solzhenitsyn novel and numerous non-fiction works on the USSR, the revolution, and biographies of its early founders, I know how awful the USSR was. It was a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship. And it was a police state. But a state need not be so brutal to be a police state.

If in doubt, reread the definition.

Maybe it would help to know the definition of “repressive”:
“inhibiting or restraining the freedom of a person or group of people.”

By the way, I lived six years in police state back in the seventies and eighties: Saudi Arabia. It was was different, definitely more socially and politically unfree, but more free economically than the US is now. My experience with cops there was not unlike my experience with cops and other agents of the government here. And they were much less frequent when I lived in Saudi, and much less annoying because the Saudis didn’t make any pretense about something other than a police state.