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It's kind of funny how Bill O'Reilly can benignly declare a nakedly nativist organization like the Minutemen, despite a clear proclivity for attracting racists and violent extremists, "in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups" -- and indeed assiduously decline to report on it when the violent evidence at hand makes clear they are much, much more than that.

And then he can turn around, as he did last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- assisted by his "internet cop" Amanda Carpenter -- and attack a relatively benign advocacy organization like Presente Action, a project of Color of Change, whose purpose revolves around providing an effective voice on the Web for minorities.

What has his goat, of course, is their campaign to defend Sonia Sotomayor by pointing out the prominent role played by hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. So he dismisses them as merely a "tentacle" of MoveOn.org and the "radical left."

Funny how that standard is a one-way street in O'Reillyland.

You have to wonder if maybe he, like Jeff Sessions, believes that "Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another".



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Last year a Norwegian news crew interviewed Shawna Forde while she was out on "patrol" for illegal border crossers in the vicinity of Arivaca, Arizona -- the same area where, less than a year later, she would be arrested for the cold-blooded murder of a 9-year-old girl and her father.

It's pretty chilling, particularly when she describes their activities in the desert:

And then there's the shot where you see her stick her gun down her pants. (For someone raised around guns in a shooting family, that only confirms her complete and utter dumbassery. What is it about Minuteman types who stick their guns down their pants? This is always the sign of someone too stupid to care whether they shoot off their dick or ass.)

In any event, this is all part of why, as Patrick Young at Long Island Wins notes, the Minutemen and their supporters are scrambling hard to get away their many long associations with Forde:

Shawna Forde, who allegedly cooked up the deadly plot to raise money for political action had close ties to Jim Gilchrist, one of the two founders of the Minutemen. His website had defended her against criticism from other anti-immigrant activists as recently as January of this year. Yet, if you go to his site today, pages that Google says listed her have been scrubbed.

Same thing with VDARE, the homepage of educated racism. The site had an article criticizing a newspaper that had called Forde's claims of having been abducted by aliens (Latino immigrants, not space monkeys) far-fetched. The page was scrubbed. It only exists as a Google cache and will soon disappear. Cowards. If you want to back up a woman her brother describes as a sociopathic liar you should at least leave your endorsement up when she is also shown to be a psychopathic murderer.

Young also adroitly observes:

Jeff Schwilk, the leader of the San Diego Minutemen, in his denial of involvement with Shawna Forde gave the most damning statement about her and his own armed militia: "I've been concerned about her and her impact on our movement... Irrational people with assault rifles at the border is a recipe for disaster."

Exactly what I've been saying since I first heard of the Minutemen.

Indeed. And the above video is ample testament to that fact.

Meanwhile, Chad Shue at the Examiner describes how Forde's extremism helped drive the formation of an organized civil-rights campaign to counter it in the Everett area in the form of the Snohomish County Citizens Committee for Human Rights.

The Colorado Independent points out that Tom Tancredo also had his representatives in attendance at Forde's 2007 "Immigration Summit" in Everett, where a letter was read from Tancredo sending his regrets for not being in attendance.

And Marc Cooper chimes in as well.

Of course, at this point, we're still wondering where the rest of the media are. The national reporting on this has been nearly nonexistent -- particularly at Fox.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, the media reaction under the reversed scenario: If this had been a Mexican drug gang that had murdered a white family in the desert, can you imagine how Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly would have handled it?


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Remember how, a week or so ago, Bill O'Reilly was preoccupied with the idea that the news media had comparatively obsessed over the domestic-terrorism killing of Dr. George Tiller, while "ignoring" the killing of Private Long, a similar act of terrorism? He had numerous segments complaining that the matter proved there was a liberal media bias.

At one point, he complained that CNN had "ignored" the story -- a completely meritless charge. At another, he even claimed that the only place you could find any coverage of the case was on Fox.

Now, compare that to how Fox has handled yet another horrifying case of murderous extremism: the arrest of Shawna Forde and her Minuteman cohorts for the cold-blooded murder of a 9-year-old girl and her father.

Fox simply has ignored the story. There is a single Associated Press story on the Fox website. This AP piece, notably, contains not a single reference to Forde's long history with the Minuteman movement, her close ties to Jim Gilchrist, or the fact that she intended this Minutemen squad to use its ill-gotten gains to "start a revolution against the United States government."

Meanwhile, I've reviewed my Fox News recordings, meanwhile, and cannot find a single instance of the story being reported anywhere on the news channel. (I could be mistaken about this; the recordings are only partially complete, and it's possible something ran in the occasional gaps in my record. But not likely.)

Meanwhile, have O'Reilly, or Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity -- all of them big fans of the Minutemen -- even mentioned the story a single time?

No. That's a big fat No.

Of course, you have to wonder if it's not because this case demolishes O'Reilly's take on the Minutemen:

"Talking Points applauds the Minutemen. They are in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups."

Now, it's worth noting that the entire mainstream media have largely been missing in action on this story, perhaps for similar reasons. Nonetheless, Anderson Cooper has reported on it, as has Rick Sanchez. (However, Lou Dobbs has similarly been completely mum about it.)

Meanwhile, MSNBC has reported dutifully on the matter, though I have yet to have found any news-channel coverage.

But those stations didn't accuse anyone of under-covering any stories recently. And there's no question that this is a significant story because it exposes so deeply the twisted nature of the Minuteman movement beneath its "neighborhood watch" facade -- a facade erected with Bill O'Reilly's help.

Yet O'Reilly, it seems, can't even live up to the standards he demands his cable competitors meet.

Continue reading »


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We already pointed out this audio recording of the 911 call placed by the lone survivor of that botched home-invasion robbery carried out by Shawna Forde and her gang of Minutemen. But further listening reveals a number of details about the crime.

It begins simply:

"Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband."

The dispatcher begins asking questions and obviously dispatches deputies to respond. As she's asking about the killers, the victim cries out:

"They're coming back in! They're coming back in!"

An exchange of gunfire ensues. When the woman comes back on the line, she explains:

"They told us that somebody had, um, escaped jail or something and they wanted to come in and look at my house or something. And they just shot my husband. And they shot my daughter and they shot me."

"... Oh my God, I can't believe they killed my family."

Brisenia Flores_0df9d.jpgShe explains that the killers walked up cold-bloodedly to her daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, as she cowered and cried, and shot her two or three times anyway.

Later in the call she tells the dispatcher that the shooting began when her husband became suspicious of the invaders and asked them about their guns.

We also learn that the shooters were two men -- both tall, one white with a painted face, the other Latino -- and a "shorter fat woman."

That very much describes the gang that was arrested this week.

Scott North and Jackson Holz have more details on the tape.

Vivir Latino points out that there's been a disturbing theme in some of the coverage -- suggesting that perhaps the family somehow had it coming:

Something that tends to happen when the media covers these types of horrors, is double victimization. In an effort to answer the question why, subtleties, like how immigration has been racialized and how Latinos, painted as immigrants, are criminalized and dehumanized, get swept under the rug.

It certainly does raise the question: Why are the media paying so little attention to this story? Are they still wedded to their favorite narrative, that the Minutemen are just some big "neighborhood watch"?

As we said, that's some neighborhood watch.

I guess they're too busy covering that all-important David Letterman protest.