Earlier this week, Democrat Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke announced that he’s running for President in 2020. O’Rourke has a lot of skeletons in his closet. Will Democrat voters across America overlook his past, and take the failed 2018 Democratic Party candidate for US Senate in TX seriously?
A drunken O’Rourke allegedly attempted to flee the scene of his car crash which led to his 1998 drunk driving arrest:
The Houston Chronicle obtained police records from the scene of the crash in 1998 which, show O’Rourke with a blood alcohol level of .136. O’Rourke was recorded in the police report to be traveling at a “high rate of speed” before he careened his car into the median of an interstate near the New Mexico border.
A witness at the scene of the crash said O’Rourke attempted to flee the scene of the crime in his car after the accident. The crash occurred when O’Rourke was 26, and he has expressed remorse for the incident. The incident has come to light as the Texas GOP attacked O’Rourke with a photo of his mugshot.
“I drove drunk and was arrested for a DWI in 1998,” the congressman said in a statement, adding, “As I’ve publicly discussed over the last 20 years, I made a serious mistake for which there is no excuse.”
The El Paso Times reported that court records showed that O’Rourke earlier was arrested in 1995 at UTEP on a burglary of building charge, which was later dropped. O’Rourke told the paper: “That happened while I was in college. I along with some friends were horsing around, and we snuck under the fence at the UTEP physical plant and set off an alarm. We were arrested by UTEP police. … UTEP decided not to press charges. We weren’t intending to do any harm,” he was quoted saying.
A Reuters article that was published today takes a deeper look at O’Rourke’s disturbing past.
Robert O’Rourke, the teenage hacker.
In his teens, Robert Francis O’Rourke, who now calls himself “Beto,” was a computer hacker. He joined forces with Kevin Wheeler a teen computer hacker from Lubbock, TX. Together, they formed a group called CDC or Cult of the Dead Cow, after an eerie hangout, a shut-down Lubbock slaughterhouse.
When he was a teen, O’Rourke also frequented sites that offered cracked software. The bulletin boards were “a great way to get cracked games,” O’Rourke said, adding that he later realized his habit wasn’t morally defensible and stopped.
Using pirated software violates copyright laws, attorneys say, but in practice, software companies have rarely sued young people over it. When they do go after someone, it is typically an employer with workers using multiple unlicensed copies. Software providers are more interested in those who break the protections and spread their wares.
CDC wasn’t of that ilk. Although some CDC essays gave programming and hacking instructions, in the late 1980s, the group was more about writing than it was about breaking into computer systems.
But its focus on creative expression didn’t mean there were no grounds for controversy. Like many an underground newspaper, the Cult of the Dead Cow avidly pursued it.
His CDC writing from nearly three decades ago, under the handle “Psychedelic Warlord,” remains online.
A CDC member who joined in the early 1990s had previously used real instructions for making a pipe bomb to joke about shedding pounds by losing limbs. Three teenagers in Montreal found the file, and one lost two fingers after he tried to follow the formula, prompting outrage.
Rather than remove similar posts and hide the group’s history, the CDC warned readers not to take the files literally and added a disclaimer that survives on its current web page: “Warning: This site may contain explicit descriptions of or advocate one or more of the following: adultery, murder, morbid violence, bad grammar, deviant sexual conduct in violent contexts, or the consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs.”
Robert O’Rourke, aspiring anarchist?
O’Rourke, too, thought differently. His CDC writing from nearly three decades ago, under the handle “Psychedelic Warlord,” remains online.
One article he wrote as a teen mused how the world would work without money. After changing the system, including the government, O’Rourke foresaw the end of starvation and class distinctions.
“To achieve a money-less society (or have a society where money is heavily de-emphasized) a lot of things would have to change, including government as we know it. This is where the anti-money group and the disciples of Anarchy meet,” O’Rourke wrote under his pseudonym. “I fear we will always have a system of government, one way or another, so we would have to use other means other than totally toppling the government (I don’t think the masses would support such a radical move at this time).”
Robert O’Rourke, author of disturbing fiction.
Another t-file from O’Rourke, written when he was 15, is a short and disturbing piece of fiction. “One day, as I was driving home from work, I noticed two children crossing the street. They were happy, happy to be free from their troubles…. This happiness was mine by right. I had earned it in my dreams.
“As I neared the young ones, I put all my weight on my right foot, keeping the accelerator pedal on the floor until I heard the crashing of the two children on the hood, and then the sharp cry of pain from one of the two. I was so fascinated for a moment, that when after I had stopped my vehicle, I just sat in a daze, sweet visions filling my head.”