These are legal technicalities, Jon. We can debate them ad nauseam, and while I fully agree with you that we should thinks analytically and refrain from unwarranted hyperboles, I also know that I will not be like those Weimar Jews - watching what the Nazis telling they would do, then seizing power, and then starting doing it - while hoping (some of them at least) that this would go away, that they Germans are such a civilized nation, and all that Nazi stuff is hot air. I will not wait hoping the US paper goods - the Constitution, the legal system, the freedom of speech - to protect me. I will buy a one way ticket BEFORE the AA (Ashcroft Abteilung) starts rounding up people like me here.
Anyone who believes that fascism cannot happen here is fooling himself (or herself). It can happen anywhere, especially here - see for example Richard Rubenstein, _The cunning of history: the holocaust and the American future_. The argument there is that every nation has a potential of becoming fascist, all it takes is the government willing to go that road and a small band of zealots willing to follow.
The US has both ingredients. The only curious about the US in this regard is its "asymptotic fascism" - always treading close to it, almost getting there, but to date not actually crossing the line. We can, of course, debate whether or when the US actually crosses that line, but I also believe that it is better to be safe than sorry. Once bitten twice shy, as they say. Hence I already have a European passport.
Wojtek