Matthew Balan at Newsbusters is unhappy because a CNN chryon identified Shawna Forde's killer-Minuteman gang "extremists", while Rick Sanchez talked a bit about how Forde had been a player in the movement:

A chyron which accompanied a report on CNN’s Newsroom program on Wednesday about the arrest of a leader of an organization inspired by the Minuteman Project, referred to her and her accused accomplices as “extremists.” Despite qualifying how the largest Minuteman organization had distanced itself from the suspects, anchor Rick Sanchez questioned how she became a “player in the anti-immigration movement.”

OK, so if Balan doesn't want to call Forde's gang of thugs "extremists," what would he call this?

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

... "She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

Oh, and then they shot a 9-year-old girl and her father to death in cold blood.

And yes, Forde indeed was a player in the Minuteman movement, appearing on TV as a Minuteman spokesperson and onstage with Jim Gilchrist here in the Northwest.

What, exactly, does Balan think Sanchez should have reported?

Now, Sanchez never suggests that the larger Minuteman movement might be riddled with extremists, but that seems to be what Balan is accusing him of doing. Or at least sidling up too close to that proposition.

Well, tell ya what, Matthew: We'll gladly say it here. The Minuteman movement is and always has been an extremist movement, and so it is no surprise to see it devolve in its decaying phase into a radical and violent one.

Oh yes, and you know what else? It's a big moneymaking scam, too.

But I guess you're unhappy unless they're described as a big "neighborhood watch." Yeah, that fits 'em to a T, eh?

Here's what's actually noteworthy about all this: Unlike CNN, you'll never see this story reported on Fox. In fact, I haven't seen a single mention of this story on Fox TV. Gee, I wonder why that is. Well, no I don't.

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Remember how all those right-wing pundits proclaimed the Minutemen as being just like a neighborhood watch? Michelle Malkin called it "the mother of all neighborhood watches." Lou Dobbs labeled it "this country's biggest neighborhood watch program". Bill O'Reilly declared: "Talking Points applauds the Minutemen. They are in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups."

Boy, that sure is some neighborhood watch:

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

Here is a recording of the 911 call made by the victim who survived -- the mother of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, who was shot "two or three times" while her mother lay nearby. As she's on the phone, you can hear the killers return and open fire on her again, and hear her return fire:

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[Courtesy Arizona Star]

The accused shooter, Jason Eugene Bush, was charged Friday in the 1997 murder of a sleeping, homeless Hispanic man in Wenatchee, Wash.
"Bush has had long-standing ties to the Aryan Nations," Sgt. John Kruse of the Wenatchee police wrote in a statement filed in Chelan County Superior Court.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department arrested Forde, Bush and Arivaca resident Albert Robert Gaxiola on Friday and accused them of killing Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia, 9, during a home invasion. Flores' wife was injured during the attack and returned fire, wounding Bush, investigators said.

Forde, 41, who has lived primarily in Everett, Wash., was the executive director of Minutemen American Defense, and she had named Bush the "operations director" for the group's border-watch activities along the Arizona-Mexico border.

... Forde's brother, Metzger, worked for the organization at its inception years ago, but he quit, he said, "when it started to get too deep."

He and other family members grew suspicious of Forde and started talking to police about her after her husband was shot in their Everett home in December.

That's why, Metzger said, he had an audio recorder running when she visited his Northern California home in early May.

"She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

She also spoke of the venture to her brother, he said.

"She was telling me that they were going to start some sort of militia that was going to go overseas and aid and abet those who are kidnapped. She said she was going to go to Syria," he said.

I warned some time back that this was precisely the arc of flight that the Minuteman movement was taking:

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