Rights group: 'Extremism' behind Jeffco official's guide

The Anti-Defamation League has expressed outrage that Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall has used his elected status in distributing handbooks that urge jurors to follow religious beliefs and not established law.

"The belief that he is espousing is consistent with extremist groups that we have concerns about," said Bruce DeBoskey, the regional ADL director.

"This is extremist, this is the Patriot movement, this is the anti-government movement," DeBoskey said Wednesday. "He is using his official position to add legitimacy to an extremist philosophy that undermines our government."

The pocket-sized guides promote "jury nullification," a concept that politically conservative groups argue means jurors have the right not only to decide guilt or innocence but also whether laws are just and are in keeping with God's law.

I am flabbergasted that a so-called "rights group" can claim with a straight face that jury nullification is a religious issue. But then, their credibility as a rights group was completely destroyed when they started to talk about "extremists" and "Patriots".

What we really have here, folks, is not a "rights group", it's a cult-watch group -- the same sort of crowd that insists militias are really racists. There are some legitimate cults out there, to be sure, and some legitimate groups to raise awareness of them -- but the extremists are more interested using the cult label against their political opponents.