Eideard

Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.

“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order…

An intense, silver-haired firebrand, Walsh, 49, has taken cable TV by storm in recent weeks, becoming the unofficial spokesman for the “No compromise” faction of the Republican majority in the U.S. House — refusing to consider any debt crisis solution that includes raising taxes on the wealthy.

Walsh admits he is not wealthy. Some of his financial problems — including losing his Evanston condo to foreclosure — were documented before his out-of-nowhere victory last fall in the 8th Congressional District in Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs…

Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.

“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself…”

Walsh lives with his new wife and children in McHenry. He has not paid any of the $117,437 yet, Laura Walsh’s attorney, Jack Coladarci, said Wednesday.

My lifetime political dicho still stands: Republicans would have invented hypocrisy if Christians hadn’t beaten them to it.

A Georgia man who spent a year in jail for nonpayment of child support — despite the fact he has no children — has been cleared of the debt, his attorney said Tuesday.

Frank Hatley, 50, spent 13 months in jail for being a deadbeat dad before his release last month. In June 2008, a judge ordered him to jail for failing to reimburse the state for public assistance that was paid to support his “son” — a child who DNA tests proved was not fathered by Hatley.

Last week, Cook County Superior Court Judge Dane Perkins signed an order stating, “defendant is no longer responsible for paying any amount of child support.” The order permits the state’s Office of Child Support Services to close its file on Hatley.

“We’re satisfied with the result for Mr. Hatley, but still troubled by the state’s monumental lapse of judgment in this case,” attorney Sarah Geraghty…told CNN…

A DNA test in 2000 proved he wasn’t the father of the child in question.

The argument for keeping Hatley liable for the back payments, according to the attorney who represented him in 2000, was that he signed a consent agreement with the Office of Child Support Services.

Before he learned that the child wasn’t his.

The court agreed that Hatley had to comply with the consent agreement for the period he believed the child was his son, said attorney Latesha Bradley…

Two things still remain to be cleared up for Hatley, Geraghty said — lifting the child-support holds on his driver’s license and his income tax. It remains unclear whether he will be reimbursed for the $6,000 in payments he made since 2000, she said — so far, he has not been.

I hope you don’t think the question of justice will ever mean anything to Georgia jurisprudence. Cynical would be the kindest description of the contempt deserved by the bureaucrats and black-robed brainless thugs in this case.