La Shawn Barber should get her facts strait or Extreeme rhetoric isn't all it's cracked up to be!

Read this excerpt from one of her latest posts:

The frustrated people of Arizona are taking matters into their own hands. They will do what George Bush refuses to do: protect our southern border. The Minutemen Project is an idea whose time has come!

While we're spending billions to keep the enemy in Iraq at bay, enemies in our own country continue to use our own stupidity and suicidal tendencies against us. But real men are saying, "No more!" [La Shawn Barber's Corner]

Sounds great doesn't it. The truth is something quite different. According to The Sierra Vista Herald, The Minutemen Project is headed by Jim Gilchrist who is from Aliso Viejo, Calif., about 60 miles north of San Diego. Ok, it doesn't have to be lead by an Arizona resident. Problem is when he was in Arizona last month for an Organizational meeting there were only about 20 people at the meeting. At the time, he was claiming 204 people from 33 states had signed up.

If it's starting to sound less and less like, "The frustrated people of Arizona…" and more like a publicity stunt put on by outsiders for outsiders. That's because that is what it is.

Consider:

- In November 2002, Minuteman Project founder Chris Simcox said dozens of people would come out for his much-debated Civil Homeland Defense, the Tombstone-based group that was supposed to patrol the border, gather up illegal entrants, turn them over to the U.S. Border Patrol and show up the federal government for not doing its job.

The group has seized about 150 illegal entrants, a far cry from the 4,000 Simcox contends have been apprehended since he started two years ago, according to Miguel Escobar, Mexican consul in Douglas. The consulate responds to every citizen's encounter.

By contrast, Escobar has tracked at least 65 incidents in which citizens stopped entrants since 1999, when groups and individuals such as Cochise rancher Roger Barnett, American Border Patrol and Ranch Rescue began apprehensions in Cochise County.

- The Border Patrol has had three to five instances in which citizens were standing with a captured group of illegal entrants in the past year, said Tucson Sector spokesman Andy Adame. By contrast, the agency receives 300 to 500 anonymous calls from other civilians each month, he said. The agency has adopted a "wait and see" attitude toward the Minuteman Project.

- A handful of people showed up at the first organizational meeting of the Civil Homeland Defense on Dec. 7, 2002. Fifty were expected.

- On Jan. 1, 2003, two volunteers showed up for the first training session. Four reporters were there to greet them. [azfamily.com]