Over the weekend I saw a photograph taken at Saturday's "One Nation under Ed Shultz" rally, and because I like to know what people are thinking (and if possible why), it continues to fascinate me.

Fox News is "unconstitutional"? Initially, that made me laugh, and it seemed so absurd on its face that I thought the woman might be a lone crank. Under what possible theory might anyone think that a news network -- regardless of its editorial stance or degree of bias -- was unconstitutional?

I dismissed the sign as ridiculous, of value only for purposes of humor, until I read Paul Krugman's latest column. It turns out that Fox News has carried out a coup d'etat while no one was watching! The network is in charge of the Tea Party movement, conservatives are not allowed to criticize it, and they have become the Ministry of Propaganda and seized control of our precious Politburo!

I kid you not:

Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O'Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there's not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.

As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox" -- literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

To think that it took an economist to finally figure out what happened while the rest of us slept!

The United States Constitution has no provision for a Ministry of Propaganda, nor does it say anything about a Politburo. For Fox News to have both created and seized control of these things ought to terrify everyone.

Fox News has no right to create and run entirely new ministries or branches of government. No news network does. And even the federal government lacks power beyond that given to it in the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And if Krugman is right, we need to overthrow Fox News right now before it's too late.

I'm glad I was told about this important development, because I hardly ever watch Fox News. On those rare occasions that I'm in the mood to watch the government, I usually go to C-SPAN. Little did I know the real government was on another channel.

And I should be very careful what I say lest Fox shut me down and silence me as they did David Frum.

What I want to know is why does the Ministry of Propaganda allow Krugman to continue to operate? What gives?

Might the man be actually be a Fox fabrication?

We can't be too careful.