During Mao's Cultural Revolution, show trials were used to cover-up the evils of the regime. Innocent parties were brought in, tried without justice, then either killed or sent to "re-education" camps.

The U.S. House held its own version of such a trial today, only without the education.

Nominally, the hearings were held to investigate the censorship of the Internet in China, with the connivance of U.S. search companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.

But the hearing was chaired by Rep. Christopher Smith, (right) who has never questioned the Bush Administration’s use of the same firms for the same purposes. To see Smith perform in this role is just like watching Libya heading the UN Human Rights Commission. To hear him fulminating against China on CNBC, as I had to do last night, with absolutely no rebuttal, is to feel like I am indeed living in Mao's China.

Here we have an Administration that claims the absolute right to spy on all its citizens, to record their phone calls and search their Internet files, to imprison American citizens without trial – merely on the assertion they’re an “enemy combatant” – to torture and murder hundreds at secret detention centers all in the name of an amorphous “war” it claims might last generations.

And a chief supporter of that policy is attacking Google on human rights?

Oh, I hear you say, but you’re writing this, and I’m reading this. How can be this be Maoist?

Maybe we’re just not that efficient. Yet.

China, of course, is already firing back. Liu Zhengrong of that country’s Internet Affairs Bureau told the People’s Daily “China manages its Internet market in line with international conventions.” He even pointed to a Washington Post editor’s erasing critical remarks on the company Web site as proving China isn’t so bad. He also noted that China’s chief concern is fighting pornography.

Smith isn’t going to ask about that, nor question the U.S. government’s own clumsy attempts to limit sexual speech on the Internet by seizing Google’s cache. Why? Because he’s for it.

Watching Chris Smith attack Google on human rights is like watching Dick Cheney discuss gun safety. The fact the U.S. media hasn’t pointed this out shows, simply, that it’s complicit. Or afraid.