Breach of Contract With America

One of the provisions of the G.O.P.'s Contract With America was enforcement of child support laws. Newt Gingrich, the man who made the Contract famous, and who in turn got rich off of the Contract, was himself a child support deadbeat.

Democratic Underground (via Yahoo) now reports that Bush Treasury Secretary nominee John Snow was sued in 1988 for failure to pay child support. A Maryland court "found Snow failed to pay child support for his son Ian over a 19-month period, and failed to pay Ian's transportation and allowance costs at college." At the time, Snow was President and CEO of CSX Transportation, so he probably couldn't afford to pony up for such luxuries in the midst of the Reagan-Bush recession.

Speaking through the Talking Penis, Ari Fleischer, Snow is now insinuating that he was railroaded (pun intended). I guess he couldn't afford competent counsel to defend the support enforcement action, and couldn't understand his obligations in the first instance, what with only a Ph.D. in economics and a law degree to assist him.

You gotta love the Party of Personal Responsibility.