Scott Lee Cohen has withdrawn from the race for Illinois Lieutenant Governor, due to the publicity surrounding his past history of domestic abuse. A tearful Cohen said he was stepping down because he did not want to jeopardize the Democratic ticket.

Boo hoo, Scotty. No sympathy here.

From Washington state:

A 27-year-old soldier at the Lewis-McChord base on Tacoma has been released on a $10,000 bond after being arrested for child abuse. In addition to holding his daughter’s head under water for refusing to say her ABCs, he also stands accused of beating her so badly that the abuse left “severe bruising on her entire back”, along with bruising and scratch marks on her neck, throat, chin, arms, legs, and buttocks.

Joshua Tabor has been confined to base as a condition of his release, and has been ordered to avoid contact with his daughter or his girlfriend. Read the story here.

This entire story is despicable in the extreme. There is a vast difference between occasionally spanking an unruly child for being disrespectful and disobedient, and outright physical abuse. This case is a disgusting example of the latter. Whatever his situation, whatever his “anger issues”, this “man” ought to be dealt with quickly and harshly, prosecuted to the full extent of the law; hopefully a loving and caring environment can be found for his poor daughter. Even the best children can cause their parents grief from time to time, but this type of reaction is inexcusable.

As upset as I was reading about this, a comment posted on the story moved me to another kind of anger: the kind of anger I feel toward ignorant, foolish people that use any excuse to continue deride things they obviously don’t understand.

A certain “Natasha_R” made this comment:

“So what is the problem? The previous government, from the President down, sanctioned waterboarding. I’m sure this guy voted for Bush, so he’s just continuing policies he believes in. Or is there some age restriction the I’ve not been told about when it comes to torture? Or is it, as I suspect, that the child is American and not some foreign national that is the problem?”

To use the abuse of a 4-year-old girl, at the hands of the one man that should never violate her trust, as a soapbox for one’s appalling ignorance is…well, quite frankly, incomprehensible to me. For this Natasha person to equate an effective method of gathering intelligence that saves the American lives fighting to protect her right to be an irritating dolt to horrible child abuse is disgusting. It flat-out raises my hackles. Not only does it spit in the face of the American military, it is a cold, callous mockery of the suffering this poor little girl endured.

More from Chuck the Yeti, in a telephone interview* with Your Spectral Cavalier:

* Well, sort of. There was a cell phone on the desk at the time.

Ghost Knight: Thanks for calling me back, Chuck. What can you tell us about the latest climate-buzz out of India?

Chuck the Yeti: It’s true, GK. India has decided to form its own panel to study the climate-change issue.

GK: Really? But isn’t the head of the IPCC one of their own scientists?

Chuck: Dr. R.K. Pachauri, yep. But he made such a putz out of himself on the Himalayan glacier-gate thing that Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has decided that India needs to form a panel, independent of the U.N., and look into things for themselves. Here’s a quote from him:

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused the IPCC report, the IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses…they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.” (emphasis Chuck’s)

GK: Wow, that’s got to be a slap in the face to Pachauri. His own government doesn’t think his panel is doing a proper job. How is he taking that?

Chuck: Pretty much like you’d expect a guy like Pachauri to take it: he’s calling these challenges to his work “voodoo science”.

GK: (laughing) That’s funny, Chuck. Seriously, what did he say?

Chuck: “Voodoo science.”

GK: Bullsh*t.

Chuck: Truth. One Hawks fan to another.

GK: Let me see if I understand this: a guy who is a fully ordained Bishop in the Church of The-Glaciers-Must-Be-Melting-Because-My-Bong-Won’t-Cool-Off** is saying that the actual observations and field reports about the glaciers are “voodoo science”? (**may or may not be really true, but would explain quite a bit)

Chuck: Mm-hmm. That is a C-130 dropping a full payload of irony, isn’t it?

GK: Sure is. So what does Ramesh have planned?

Chuck: He’s set up the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA). They plan to take a look at India’s widely varying climates over the next several months, a combined effort of 125 research institutions throughout India and some international folks, and issue it’s own report in November.

GK: So INCCA will be doing the research themselves, and not cribbing data from whatever happens to be in their mailbox on any given day, or whatever computer program got left running all night? That makes a great deal of sense.

Chuck: That’s right. So maybe they can provide some findings that will actually help the environment where it’s needed, instead of trying to scare the hell out of everybody with ridiculous and unfounded claims for Al Gore to spout off on.

GK: Well, good luck to them. Maybe that kind of thinking will rub off on other countries, so they can provide their own citizens with reliable, relevant data instead of relying on the high-priced PR machine the U.N. jobs out to the highest bidder.

Chuck: Let’s hope so. You can read the article in the British newspaper Telegraph.

The IRS Western Field Operations Branch plans to purchase 60 Remington Model 870 Police shotguns for its Criminal Investigation Division. (h/t Jawa Report)

Why does the IRS need an armed CID? Can’t they used Treasury Agents or Federal Marshals if they’re expecting that kind of trouble?

The idea of armed IRS agents kicking in someone’s door because of alleged tax issues seems very creepy to me.

An article in today’s Chicago Tribune states that a Democratic candidate for Illinois lieutenant governor, Scott Lee Cohen, was arrested in 2005 on a domestic battery charge. He was taken into custody after allegedly holding a knife to his then-girlfriend’s throat and pushing her head against a wall. He denies the events, and the case was dropped a month later when the woman failed to show for court. The woman, a 24-year-old massage therapist, was arrested six months before the incident in Glenview, and later pleaded guilty to a charge of prostitution. Cohen, a pawnbroker, was in the relationship as he was going through a divorce, and denies knowing the woman was a prostitute. The arrest was previously disclosed but barely noticed until now.

So what we have is a pawnbroker, in a relationship with a hooker as he was going through a divorce, arrested for domestic battery in a case that was dropped not for lack of evidence but because the hooker failed to show up in court.

Cohen doesn’t think the incident should have any bearing on his possible election in November.

SPQA asks: Why not?

When are the people of Illinois, and for that matter the United States, finally going to stand up and demand that the men and women who represent them in government be people of character and morality? Granted, many public servants are just that: decent, moral, well-meaning people. But far too many are not. And that needs to change.

This is from a teenage American girl…even our youth is starting to get it!

link here

In a recent tirade during a meeting with GOP officials, Obama made sure to point out that he wasn’t an ideologue.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word thusly: ideologue – n. An advocate of a particular ideology, especially as an official exponent of that ideology.

In layman’s terms, then, an ideologue is someone that goes around talking up a particular agenda. Which is exactly what Obama is doing, and has been doing since he took office: pushing a radical, neo-bolshevik agenda aimed at challenging and ultimately dismantling the very things that have made America the great nation that it is.

Which makes the current president the very definition of “ideologue”.

Economy in the tank, jobs disappearing, national debt clearing the stratosphere and heading for deep space…none of that should be cause for concern. There really is plenty of money, especially at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. They’re rolling in dough.

So much so, in fact, that the Obama administration plans to lend $2 billion (that’s $2,000,000,000 to you and me, or almost 40,000 times the average U.S. average income of $50,233 in 2007) to…you guessed it…Brazil.

Why? To finance off-shore oil exploration, of course. The Ex-Im Bank has “issued a preliminary commitment” to Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil exploration company, and the 8th largest company in the world. (Only the 8th largest? Poor guys…they must really be strapped for cash.)

Well, it’s an investment in America’s future, right? Nope. China has exclusive rights to this oil. The only way America will see any of this oil is if we buy it.

Okay, so this means that off-shore drilling in U.S. territorial waters will be moving ahead, right? Not really. The Bush administration’s five-year plan for off-shore exploration, that was supposed to be in effect from 2007-2012, is still being blocked by lawsuits filed by “environmentalists”. Technically, leases in the Gulf of Mexico will be going on sale starting in August of this year, but that still leaves out Alaska, and both the East and West Coasts (not to mention all the oil still locked away in the ANWR). The potential oil reserves in American territory dwarf the reserves of the Middle East by almost every estimate.

How did all this happen? Maybe we should ask the largest stock-holder in Petrogras: “American” billionaire George Soros, he of the “one world government”, “no private ownership of firearms”, and “subject U.S. sovereignty to U.N. laws” fame. He’d be up to his elbows in this, if he ever got his hands dirty.

So let’s recap:

America is so broke Obama is printing more useless money to cover the enormous bills his administration is racking up, but has two billion dollars to lend to a foreign power for the development of a badly needed resource that the U.S. will have to buy back from a third foreign power. This despite restrictions on the very same development possible in American territory.

Lifting these restrictions, based on imagined and inflated environmental concerns, would not only provide tens of thousands of jobs to unemployed Americans, but could totally eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Yet this progress is still being stalled by frivolous lawsuits.

The major player in this scheme is a man noted for his sympathies to any cause that undermines the American people’s ability to govern themselves and live freely as guaranteed by our Constitution. And he’ll be making millions upon millions of dollars on it.

So the question is this: is this a shrewd, logical, practical business investment being made on behalf of the American people, or just another example of the anti-American, anti-capitalist policies of the Obama administration?

Story here. (h/t to our reader Valkyrie)

For what it’s worth, the Legionnaires of SPQA endorse these candidates for the upcoming Illinois primary on February 2nd:

Governor: Dan Proft

Lt. Governor: Jason Plummer

U.S. Senate: Patrick Hughes

As for the more local elections, all we can say is do your homework: figure out what issues matter the most to you, find out where your candidates stand on them, and vote accordingly. And be thankful you don’t live in the Congressional district that RangerHoffa and I do: we have the incumbent, convicted felon Bobby Rush, running against token opposition from the Democrats with NO Republican candidate on the ticket, in a voting area that is so gerrymandered it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so appalling.

And, as always, we don’t expect you to take our word as gospel on our endorsements; click on these links to visit websites:

Proft

Plummer

Hughes

And remember this: whether you agree with our opinions and assessments or not, GET OUT AND VOTE!!!

Refuse to let arrogant, apathetic, and disconnected career politicians control your lives.