Moe Lane

Yes.  Yes, there really is no good answer to that question…

…which is why, of course, I am asking it.  The background… comes in three parts:

• Vice President Joe Biden, when he was Senator Joe Biden, happened to be a sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act.  We’ll pass to one side for a moment the current (as in, this week) controversy over the latest iteration of the law – it’s up for reauthorization – to specifically note, again, that this was Biden’s baby, as it were.
• Charlie Wilson is known mostly for three things (four, if you count the fact that he’s often confused with the infinitely better Democratic Charlie Wilson from Texas); he was the former Congressman from OH-06; Charlie Wilson of Ohio is an admitted wife-beater; and Charlie Wilson of Ohio is unaccountably running for Congress again.
• Guess where Joe Biden will be stumping for the President, this week?  That’s right! OH-06! Also OH-17 (Youngstown), but Thursday Biden will be making a speech Thursday at an auto dealership in Martin’s Ferry.

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Not the patriotic Charlie Wilson from Texas.

Judging from what that group has been tolerating in its endorsees lately, surely a little wife-beating won’t be a disqualification. Or not so little, at that. From Charlie Wilson’s (D, OH-06) 1990 divorce proceedings:

Charles admits that early in the marriage he kicked and struck Plaintiff and accused her of adultery (Defendant’s Desposition, pp. 190, 192, 194). Clara shall confirm the beatings, slappings, and kicking at the early stage of her marriage to the point where she was afraid to anger the Defendant and instead yielded to his demands. She also lied to third parties as to the causes of her injuries. Mrs. Wilson was the typical battered wife.

…And Mrs. Wilson eventually ended up in the emergency room as a direct result of her attempts to finally assert herself (all of this is admitted to by Charlie Wilson, by the way). Her attacker went on to have a ten-year career in the state legislature, prior to being elected to Congress in 2006. No word of whether he regretted anything; the campaign clammed up the second this document came to life. Still, if the female members of Wilson’s staff were in the habit of wearing sunglasses indoors and long sleeved shirts all the time surely we would have heard by now; so that’s something at least, right? (more…)