-By Warner Todd Huston
Representative Mark Kirk (R,IL) has admitted that the bio on his webpage has had to be altered to reflect a change in the identification of a military award it had previously accredited to him.
Kirk’s bio page originally claimed that he had been awarded the U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award. This, however, was in error. It appears that his unit received this award, he did not individually receive the citation.
Kirk told the press, “upon a recent review of my records, I found that an award listed in my official biography was misidentified.” According to Navy records the Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor Award was issued to the entirety of the Intelligence Division Electronic Attack Wing at Aviano.
Kirk’s opponent, Alexi “the mob banker” Giannoulias has played this up as a major transgression, of course. Amusingly, Giannoulias comes from the same leftist wing of the Party that is currently excusing Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal who didn’t just goof up a particular award he was given but completely lied about his service as a Marine in Vietnam… as in he never served in Vietnam.
I’d say that Democrats don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to lies about military service as they have had military poseurs among them for years. Just ask Iowa Senator Tom Harken who has repeatedly claimed to have been a fighter pilot in Vietnam when he never was. Not to mention John “did I tell you I was in Vietnam” Kerry who lied about being in Cambodia during his service. The Democrats have had this problem for some time, yet here is Giannoulias pretending to get his dander up over Kirk’s misstated bio.
This is not to say that Kirk should be excused for his falsified bio, but let’s look at some perspective here. We have in Kirk a guy whose bio had a small award identified incorrectly. On the other hand we have in Alexi Giannoulias a man whose family bank went down the tubes due to loans to members of the mob and other bad banking practices and the candidate as one of the officers of that bank in it up to his neck.
So, employing some perspective Mark Kirk is a guy that got an award wrong on his Internet bio page but is he worse than Alexi “the Mob Banker” Giannoulias whose failures as a professional caused financial collapse of his family business, not to mention his association with mobsters?
You decide.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.
Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.
Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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