Another Helping of Schadenfreude Sundae

I never get tired of serving this menu item

Mad Max Kennedy, one of the few members of the Minuteman Project who actually lived at the border and who I featured in a recent profile, called to let me know he has left Campo and probably won't return. His disgust with some in the leadership finally drove him off.

Meanwhile, the other major faction of Minutemen, called the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, is also imploding. Last week, its founder, Chris Simcox, tried to quell a coup by dumping several members of his inner circle. A Simcox statement reads in part: "Regrettably … after reports to national headquarters from state and chapter directors around the country it became clear that a very small group of volunteer administrators within the organization had become ambitious of power, ineffective and distracted from our primary mission, and were in fact determined to attempt to defame and oust the (board of directors and executive director). Local leader reports, intercepted emails and phone calls revealed plans to attempt to install their own Board and to take over the organization."

As Salon noted, the Simcox statement reads as if it were "copied directly from a press release dictated by Joseph Stalin to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Or by Jim Gilchrist in dealing with his own rebellious Minuteman faction.

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And that's just the Califas strain of vigilante'ism. Check out what's going on here in the Grand Canyon State.

A man who mortgaged his home in order to help the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps build border fencing on private land in Cochise County is suing the group and its president, Chris Simcox, for fraud and breach of contract.

In a complaint filed May 22 in Maricopa County Superior Court, Jim Campbell, a retired homebuilder and Air Force veteran from Fountain Hills, accused Simcox and the MCDC of falsely promising to build a multi-layered Israeli-style security barrier on the Palominas ranch of John and Jack Ladd. Campbell alleges that, after hearing the MCDC publicize the plan in April 2006, he had three telephone conversations with Peter Kunz, project manager for the effort, in which Kunz promised the Israeli-style barrier would be built along 10 miles of the Ladd ranch.

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Only in this current political climate can it be reported that the Minutemen vigilantes are being sued for not building the Great Wall of America™. I wish I could say that I felt sorry for Mr. Campbell - but unfortunately he's yet another example of a Valley of the Sun resident meddling with the affairs of Baja Arizona.

Anywho - ¡Buen provecho!