The chairwoman of the DNC's Black Caucus told a town hall in Detroit over the weekend that she is a former member of the notorious Black Panthers, a radical extremist activist group formed in the 1960s.

Washington Examiner:

"I'm a former Black Panther and, when we talk about the movement , as a former Black Panther with Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver, it was important ... to make people understand it was about the movement for us," said Rollins.  "Educating us.  We got out and we taught kids, we fed the hungry, and we clothed the naked."

At the end of Rollins' statement, which was secretly taped and posted online by the GOP War Room, she asks blacks to vote for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and help take Congress back from the Republican Party.

"We got to turn back to the revolution!" Rollins yelled.

Sitting near Rollins was Democratic National Committee Deputy Chairman Keith Ellison, D-Minn.

Noted political scientist Norm Ornstein wrote that Republicans are no longer conservatives; they are radicals.  Perhaps Ornstein should train his famous powers of observation on the Democrats to find real radicalism.

By any definition, the Black Panthers were far out of the mainstream in the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s.  They were even out of the mainstream among blacks.  They were radical "community activists" who have been accused over the years of everything from extorting money from black shopkeepers to murder.

Conservative intellectual David Horowitz details, in his conversion from far left to the right, the murder of his bookkeeper, Betty Van Patter, by the Panthers as one of the defining moments of his life.  Van Patter had been doing the books for a Black Panther school when she disappeared, only to be found a few weeks later floating in the bay.

Black Panther-defenders point to all the good work they did in trying to make blacks self-sufficient and instill pride in people living in inner-city communities.  But their radical agenda was doing blacks no good, and the violent and extreme nature of many Black Panther members wipes away any good they may or may not have done.

The Democratic Party is far more radical than the GOP.  Prominent radicals include not only Ms. Rollins and DNC vice chairman Keith Ellison, but also the radical socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and many others in Democratic party leadership positions. 

That's the difference.  The GOP has its share of loons and right-wing nuts.  But they are mostly shunted to the sidelines.  Democrats feature their radicals, give them power, and allow them to set the party's agenda. 

They are a far more dangerous party, and God help us if they ever achieve power.