The North County Times played fast and loose with the facts in its Sept. 12 editorial, "MEChA issue is a red herring." Readers were entreated to believe that raising the issue of Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's membership in MEChA, by Republican opponents Tom McClintock and Arnold Schwarzenegger, was divisive and amounted to race-baiting.

The same editorial put forth the opinion that MEChA ---- the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan ---- is not a racist organization.

The Democrats are spinning like mad on the MEChA issue. There's more to this than meets the eye. A simple Internet visit to a MEChA site would prove in mere moments that MEChA is not a benign student group. MEChA has a list of objectives and their comrades in Sacramento are hard at work making those dreams a reality.

Among MEChA's objectives are: driver's licenses for illegal aliens (already accomplished through SB 60), open borders, Spanish as an official language, voting rights for illegal immigrants and tuition-free college for illegals. These objectives are not only real, they are racist.

I take issue with the editorial for leaving out pertinent facts about MEChA. The burning passion that ignites the members of MEChA is to liberate and return to Mexico the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of other states.

MEChA does not recognize the legitimacy of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, the agreement that ended the war with Mexico and established the boundary between the two countries. The United States paid Mexico $15 million in 1848 for this disputed land that MEChA refers to as "Aztlan."

The editorial did mention the smoking-gun slogan, "For the race everything, for others nothing." This was cleverly explained by stating that the slogan was created by another Latino group, United Mexican American Students.

This is true as far as it goes, but MEChA's "Plan of Aztlan," which is racist and revolutionary in itself, contains the Klan-like phrase. UMAS members wrote the Plan of Aztlan. Many UMAS members joined MEChA and brought the plan with them. MEChA has always used it as its own.

Only the editorial, as far as I know, has tried to deny this was vintage MEChA.

The discussion of MEChA has only begun. A one-sided, factually bereft editorial and a couple of benign sound bites by defensive Democrats do not tie up all the loose ends and put the issue to rest. We are looking at the proverbial can of worms and the lid is off.

Worst of all, it's hitting us way too close to home. Temecula Valley and Fallbrook high schools have their very own chapters of MEChA right on their taxpayer-supported campuses.

The Cal State Northridge MEChA chapter organized a field trip to Cuba.

Sol Porras, president of the MEChA chapter at the university, was quoted in a press release as saying, "I want to see for myself and understand how communism contributes to a better way of life." Does that sound like a benign student group to you?

Freeman Sawyer lives in Murrieta.