Groundswell and Judicial Watch strike again, this time with help from Alex Jones. Today's faux scandal concerns a Department of Defense training manual which is specifically aimed toward training about Equal Opportunity and Treatment Incidents. In civilian-speak, that means identifying and classifying acts which occur on military installations which could possibly undermine the good order of the military.

The specific passage in the documents which got Alex Jones' panties in a twist is on page 42 of this training document, where extremism is defined for students taking the course.

As noted, an ideology is a set of political beliefs about the nature of people and society. People who are committed to an ideology seek not only to persuade but to recruit others to their belief. In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.

That was all it took to set the...um...extremists off. They didn't bother to read forward where examples were given of extremism on all sides of the political spectrum, including nationalism, supremacy, separatism, anarchism, religious extremism, or eco-warriors. No, no. The US Military just said that our founding fathers were extremists, dammit, and that's OBAMA'S fault.

Sally Kohn, to her credit, does a great job of making it clear they're making a mountain of a molehill in her 'debate.' But never mind, because it's all over the blogs and the Internet as the new meme, and the Group Formerly Known As Groundswell, featuring Ginni Thomas and her band of extreme conservatives is spreading the news fast and furiously.

Make no mistake. These people are extreme. Here are a few excerpts from their email and public writings:

• Anita MonCrief (TrueTheVote) to the group regarding a blogger call taking place: "This call is to inform the bloggers that there is a shift in the movement and that we will no longer stand by while our country is attacked."
• Frank Gaffney's never-diminishing stream of anti-Muslim screeds alongside the "Bomb them all, God will know his own" cries to obliterate most of the Middle East. Let's not forget John Bolton, either.
• Then there's Jerry Boykin and his hairbrained 'theory' that nothing's really going on in Syria or Egypt. It's all just a ploy to make sure the "scandals" go unnoticed.
• TrueTheVote's Catherine Engelbrecht got a big boost from Groundswell pal Phyllis Schlafly this week when Schlafly admitted all of the action around Voter ID and limiting voting hours is really just to keep Democrats from voting. Nothing extreme about that at all, right?

I could go on and on, but it certainly wouldn't be a complete list without mentioning Ginni Thomas, the wife of a United States Supreme Court Justice, who also works hand in hand to promote FBI snitches, European extremists, voter suppression advocates (and fearmongers about the New Black Panthers), and anti-Islam extremists like Brigitte Gabriel.

Those views are extreme and should be identified as extreme. If Tom Fitton over at Judicial Watch wants to characterize them as "mainstream conservative principles" he can be my guest. It just means the mainstream conservatives are extremists.