-By Warner Todd Huston
Several news sources have been working for days to get to the bottom of a story that might end up revealing that the head of one of Democrat Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s police security details was involved in a racist attack on several black students in downstate Carlinville. Worse, the story seems to be undergoing a political cover up as news agencies are being stymied in rooting out the details.
Several Illinois newspapers have already printed stories on the alleged incident, but to date no one seems to have been able to pin down all the details. But one thing is sure, Kenneth Snider, a trooper with the Illinois State Police, definitely and rather suddenly resigned from all his political jobs last week.
Until he resigned on March 23, Snider was the head of Democrat Governor Pat Quinn’s southern security force, a $132,000 a year state-paid job. Snider had other political jobs, too, until he resigned from all of them. Up to last week he was chairman of both the Carlinville school board and the Macoupin County Democratic organization. Macoupin County is just north east of St. Louis in Illinois’ south western corner.
The story seems to be that on March 18 Snider entered an establishment called the Anchor Inn in Carlinville and made a loud comment that the bar was too “dark” inside appearing to be talking about the bar’s black patrons. Snider is said to have returned not long after leaving and began loudly remarking that there were a lot of “ni**ers” present in the place. Snider apparently got belligerent when he was shushed by people trying to quiet him down.
At some point some black students spoke up to Snider and he went ballistic, threatening to get his gun and kill them. Witnesses then claim that some of the students ran off with Snider chasing them on foot.
Earlier this year Snider was involved in another incident which ended when Snider agreed to pay a woman $300 to repair her car’s windshield. Apparently in January Snider was “playing in the snow” and jumped onto the woman’s car breaking her windshield.
The Illinois State Police have taken over the investigation and neither the police nor the Governor’s office are commenting on the story or helping reporters nail down the details. Snider has also refused to make any public statements.
And there might be a cover up being employed to keep a lid on this story. Dan Riehl reports that some reporters have been warned to stay away from the story.
Sources at the Enquirer-Democrat were said to be optimistic about getting to the bottom of the matter, at first. Instead, their offices received a visit from police the next day after contacting Pride and their reporter was told to stay away from Blackburn College. It was claimed they were reported to have been harassing Blackburn students. Additionally, another source claims the college was trying to keep the incident quiet.
One thing is sure. If Governor Quinn were a Republican this racist outburst would be the top news of the day in every corner of this nation.
Quinn is a Democrat, though. So the story flies under the radar.
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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 2001 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, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.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.
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