In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) compared the federal government’s decision to reclaim some of its own property to Nazi Germany’s confiscations of Jewish-owned art.

Paul’s comments concerned a recent court decision holding that the United States is permitted to repossess ten rare coins that were illegally taken from the U.S. Mint decades ago. In 1933, the mint produced hundreds of thousands of gold coins that were never circulated due to the United States’ decision to go off the gold standard. Ten of these coins were illegally removed from the mint, allegedly by a mint employee who passed them to a coin dealer. When the coins, which are estimated to be worth over $7 million each, later turned up in the hands of that coin dealer’s daughter, the federal government confiscated them. Last month, a federal judge agreed that the government acted properly, writing “[t]he disputed double eagles were not lawfully removed from the United States Mint and . . . remain the property of the United States.”

In the Hannity interview, Paul (R-KY) claimed the federal government acted just like Nazi Germany when it repossessed its own property:

HANNITY: Did you hear about the case today? It was a couple and they found these gold double eagle coins from 1939, I think, is the year. And they’re worth like $80 million. Now a court case it was in, because they had, I guess, confiscated them or asked people to turn them in . . . but [the government] had the ten coins or whatever it was. And they said “no, we’re taking them, and you don’t get a penny.”

PAUL: It’s sort of like the Nazis taking paintings from Jewish families during the war and saying you don’t get them back. Well they’re yours, they’re still yours even if you find it 60 years later.

For reasons that should be obvious, the federal government actions here are nothing like Nazi Germany. Nazis stole artwork that did not belong to them from Jewish families. The U.S. government, by contrast, reclaimed property that always belonged to it.

Neo-Nazi Shooter J.T. Ready and Former State Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ)

Ready’s beliefs were extreme even among extremists. In 2007, for example, he wrote that illegal immigration occurs because “negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in.” Yet Ready traveled surprisingly close to the center of power in his state. Ready claims he was a protégé to former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the author of Arizona’s harsh immigration law who was recently removed from office in a recall election, and there is ample documentation that the two men knew each other and that Pearce once supported Ready politically.

Pearce and Ready’s relationship stretches back at least to 2004, when Pearce ordained Ready as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By 2006, when Ready ran for Mesa City Council — a campaign that sputtered after the public learned that Ready was once court-martialed and kicked out of the Marine Corps — he received Pearce’s endorsement. Ready also claims that he was with Pearce’s son Josh when Josh Pearce got a tattoo of an iron eagle with a swastika on his neck and chest, but that he also talked Josh out of joining a skinhead group.

Pearce later tried to distance himself from Ready, but Ready insisted as recently as last year that Pearce was a seminal figure in his life. In an interview with a local Fox station, Ready called Pearce “a surrogate father” who “enlightened him,” that they spent time together at Pearce’s cabin, and that they were “around each other quite a bit.” In the same local news segment, Pearce admits that he had an association with Ready, but denies that it was as close as Ready suggests. Watch it:

Ready is dead, and Pearce obviously has an interest in downplaying his relationship with Ready if a deep bond did once exist between the men. So it may never be known with certainty whether Pearce was the father figure Ready claims he was. Ready, however, does admit to one divide between him and the former Arizona senator. He claims that Pearce taught him to stay “more covert” for “long term strategy aims,” but Ready ultimately chose to ignore this advice.

The National Socialist Movement flag, as featured on their website

The Fox Orlando affiliate, WOFL, aired a shockingly uncritical report of the group’s activities. The Fox reporter introduced the group by saying, “There’s another civil rights group in town.” She also conducts an interview with the group’s leader, Jeff Schoep, without challenging any of his claims about the nature and mission of the group. Watch it (via Little Green Footballs):

An article with a brief summary of the segment first appeared online with the headline: “Civil rights group patrolling Sanford.” (It was subsequently removed without explaination.)

The Southern Poverty Law Center has more details about the group:

[T]he National Socialist Movement (NSM) is one of the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The group is notable for its violent anti-Jewish rhetoric, its racist views and its policy allowing members of other racist groups to join NSM while remaining members of other groups. Until 2007, NSM members protested in full Nazi uniforms, now traded in for black “Battle Dress Uniforms.” [...]

The group openly idolizes Adolf Hitler, described in NSM propaganda as, “Our Fuhrer, the beloved Holy Father of our age … a visionary in every respect.” NSM says only heterosexual “pure-blood whites” should be allowed U.S. citizenship and that all nonwhites should be deported, regardless of legal status. As Schoep put it: “The Constitution was written by white men alone. Therefore, it was intended for whites alone.”

The Fox reporter, Jennifer Bisram, includes none of the group’s Nazi ties or incindiary history in her report. She concludes: “They say they are just a civil rights group tyring to protect people in case things get out of hand. They say they intend to follow all the Florida laws while patrolling.”

Harry Reid: Not Hitler

As BuzzFeed points out, however, Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) had quite an odd reaction to this effort to keep Enron’s friend off the federal courts, which he expressed in a speech given back when Republicans falsely claiming that no one had ever filibustered a judge for the first two centuries of the Republic:

I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is how we confirm judges — broken by the other side two year ago. And the audacity of some members to stand up and say “how dare you break this rule!” It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying “I’m in Paris, how dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city?” This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster.

Watch it:

To the extent that Republicans ever actually believed that there is something wrong with filibustering, they sure abandoned that belief fast the second they found themselves in the minority. Without a doubt, the obstructionist era of Mitch McConnell proves that there are strong arguments to be made against filibusters in general and judicial filibusters in particular.

But blocking a confirmation vote is absolutely nothing like Hitler.