Van Irion Wins Ten Buck Fridays Week 4: Ten Buck Friday Bloggers Send Their Bucks to Van Irion Week 4

RightKlik announced at midnight EDT Van Irion of Dandridge, Tennessee the winner of Ten Buck Friday donations with  42.3% of the vote for Week 4. Irion is running for the U.S. House seat in Tennessee's 3rd district vacated by Republican Zack Wamp who is running for governor. Irion is facing 10 Republicans in the August 5th primary - one the GOP favorite, and it's not Irion. See three excellent videos below. The first is Irion with Judge Andrew Napolitano, discussing a lawsuit against ObamaCare, and the second and third are Irion at the Bradley Country Court House addressing how he will adhere to the U.S. Constitution.

 Van Irion

Van Irion (pronounced ear-ee-on) is a conservative Republican, a Christian and a patent and constitutional attorney who owns his own law firm in Eastern Tennessee. He has been married to Dawn Erickson Irion for 14 years and has two young daughters, ages 11 and 8. He served 4 years in the U.S. Air Force as an Air Traffic Controller, and is a veteran of Operation Desert Shield.

He has a Biochemistry degree from the University of California and a Law Degree from McGeorge School of Law. He formerly founded a biotech company to research treatments for stroke and acute injury and served for many years as a volunteer fire fighter and EMT. 

Below you will find links to Irion on the issues, and endorsements. Ten Buck Fridays obviously believes he is conservative, so I want to talk about his principal opponent on the ticket for the August 5th primary, Robin Smith. Smith is a former Tennessee GOP chair. She is apparently endorsed by the GOP.  Smith received an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and made the statement that this endorsement removes all doubt of which candidate has the support of conservatives - meaning she does.

Irion answered this by providing links to the U.S. Chamber's lobbying for the "$800 billion Federal Bank Bailout" and for "illegal alien amnesty."  Irion's complete statement is here, and includes more on illegal aliens.

Note the TEA Party endorsements for Irion, along with Congressman Ron Paul, two former Reagan staffers - Doug MacKinnon and Nancy Theis, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the National Fiscal Conservative PAC, Tennessee Valley Sportsman, Tennessee Republican Liberty Caucus, the Chattanooga Tea Party, the Bradley County Tea Party, the American Patriot Taxpayers (East Tennessee Tea Party), Anderson County TEA Party, Roane County Tea Party, Tennessee Tea Party Coalition, the Smokey Mountain Tea Party Patriots, Midsouth Tea Party, blogger melissa Couthier, The Tenth Amendment Center's Lesley Swann, Mari Robbins - member of the Greeneville, Northeast, and Tri-Cities Tea Parties and Campaign for Liberty, David Gidcumb - Board of Directors Chattanooga Pachyderm Club and Board of Directors Tennessee Repubican Liberty Caucus, Dana Cody - President and Ex. Director, Life Legal Defense Foundation, Barbara Meyer - former Executive Director, Pregnancy Crisis Center and Dr. Stephen Wilson - Candidate for US Senate, 1994 Tennessee Republican Party.

Correction: I received an email from Mark West, the President of the Chattanooga Tea Party. They do not endorse during primaries - nothing personal about Van Irion, it just a policy within their organization.

There are a couple of other interesting endorsements. A Republican who is running for the same seat in Congress on the Indpendent ticket, Mark DeVol, says he will drop from the race if Van wins the primary. Frank Cowan is a Republican who dropped from the race to endorse Irion.

He is far behind in fundraising and the GOP supports Robin Smith. Irion has supported Ten Buck Fridays on his website.  Visit him on Twitter and Facebook.

The Van Irion Family

On the issues:

Irion has signed a "death tax repeal" pledge.

Second Amendment: Is a strong supporter of second amendment rights. On June 26th he blogged about the case in front of the Supreme Court, and said they got it right, but just barely, and was disturbed they "did not outright rule in gun owners' favor." More on the Second Amendment here, where Irion asks "what part of 'shall not be infringed' is unclear?

Bailouts: Against all of them. There is no company too big to fail. Read the article - believes what many of us have believed all along.

Abortion: Is strongly pro-life. Irion does pro-bono work for Life Legal Defense Foundation. Read it here.

Taxes: Wants to abolish the IRS and adopt the FairTax. Read how the FairTax would "heal our economy."

Military and Peace through Strength: Wants the military to have clear 'military' goals. Believes the Federal government's duty is providing for the common defense of the U.S. Adequate funding of the military must be a priority.

Healthcare: "Any federal intrusion is unconstitutional. He acknowledges 80 years of "government interference." Wants to repeal ObamaCare, and asks you to be a plaintiff in a class action suit found at
Obama Class Action (OCA). He is litigating the case pro bono and covering all court costs personally. See this page for "Frequently Asked Questions" about the lawsuit. Find the page to join the lawsuit along with "over 32,000 other here. No monetary gains are expected from this suit. You are lending your voice to the effort to repeal ObamaCare.

Illegal Immigration: I am impressed that Irion uses the words "illegal Immigration," rather than an "immigration." I always use the words "illegal migrants," because they are not immigrants. Irion has some interesting statistics on this page and believes illegal immigration should not be tolerated.

10th Amendment: Irion says we have allowed our government to grow like a cancer, invading every aspect of our lives. We need to seize control and shrink the cancer.

Read more about jobs, the economy, the federal reserve, the national debt and liberty. Use the "issues" pulldown menu.

An interesting story is Van takes a pitchfork with him wherever he goes. According to his interview with The Daily Caller, "farmers use pitchforks to clean their manure of their stalls, and I tell people everywhere I go that I'm gonna take the pitchfork to the House foor and clean the manure out of the Capitol."

Both Smith and the other candidates in the primary have far out-raised him, he said, and since he can’t compete with them financially yet, he decided on the pitchfork to “help me stand out in the crowd.”

“It usually gets a standing ovation. So that gives you an idea of just how mad people are. And there’s a lot of mad people in this country.

Irion was interviewed by Greta van Susteren in April. Read that transcript here.

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See a list of Ten Buck Fridays here and read program details here.

Van Irion with Judge Andrew Napolitano

Van Irion - Constitutionalists (video) Van Irion - on ObamaCare and Smaller Government (video)
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Conservative Candidates for Congress who like TBF:
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Van Irion

Vicky Hartzler

Chris Gibson

Liz Carter 

Ed Martin

Daria Novak

Ann Marie Buerkle

Teresa Collett

Anna Little 

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Joran van der Sloot Chronicles: Joran Updates

The story of Joran van der Sloot will be endless, I suspect. No telling how many missing women were murdered by Joran. This post will be an ongoing compilation of news about this Dutch man who seems to have no conscience about anything he does - a one-stop documentation of all of his psychotic and/or narcissistic behavior. His quest for money is also endless, and of course, it has been his undoing. See a video below. Latest Update 6-2-10 below.

Joran van der Sloot

The short review is (skip to The Rest of the Story below if you know the background), van der Sloot is the only serious suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway on May 30th, 2005 in Aruba, Joran's home. He was the last person known to be in contact with her. He has told many stories, confessed numerous times and in numerous ways to her demise and to selling her. Joran was arrested twice in Aruba and was released each time.

Natalee Holloway - far left in blue/green dress - found on a friend's camera

In May 2010, Joran tried to extort $250,000 from Natalee's family in exchange for the location of her body. The FBI got involved, $15,000 was wired from a Birmingham, Alabama bank (Natalee's hometown), and another $10,000 came from somewhere, apparently an undercover FBI agent. Joran refused to give the information on Natalee's whereabouts until he had the whole $250,000.

Van der Sloot then showed the FBI agent a house where he said the remains were buried under the foundation. However, they then learned that the house was not even built when Natalee’s disappearance occurred. Van der Sloot then admitted he had lied. 

It is important to note that the FBI now denies that they paid any extortion monies to Joran. Wherever the money came from, Joran took it and ran to Peru, arriving there four days after receiving the money. In those four days, authorities are not clear where he was, and Aruba is under much criticism for allowing him to leave the Island. The FBI is excoriated for not putting a tail on him, after videotaping him telling his attorney that he "pushed" Natalee "down, that she hit her head on a rock and died." Then he says he called his father, and Paulus van der Sloot helped him bury the Alabama teen.

In Lima, Joran hit the casinos, as in the case of Natalee Holloway. He met Natalee in the casino in Carlos and Charlie's. In the Lima casino, the Atlantic City Casino, he met 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez. Some reports say they met two to three days earlier. Just hours after entering his hotel room, Flores-Ramirez was dead. About 4 hours after hotel security cameras show Stephany entering Joran's room, the same cameras show Joran leaving with suitcases.

Joran directed hotel staff not to clean the room. He had been the hotel for about two weeks and prepaid. It is not unusual for a hotel guest to forego the service, especially when they are on site for more than one or two nights. That was on Sunday. On Wednesday, the hotel staff found Stephany's body. Joran was no where to be found. It was assume he would make his way to Chile and then to Argentina, where his chances of extradition were lessened.

The story of Stephany's murder broke and two taxi drivers came forward with information. At least one said he drove Joran across the border into Chile.  Within hours the Chile police had Joran in custody in Santiago. A couple of days later he arrived in Lima and was transferred to Peruvian police custody.

Here's the rest of the story:

Then the confessions began again.  Peruvian newspaper La Republica reported that Joran had a court-appointed attorney when he said he returned to his hotel room after going for coffee and bread, and found Stephany on his laptop computer, looking at articles about him and Natalee Holloway:

Van der Sloot tearfully confessed, in the presence of a prosecutor and a state-appointed attorney, to grabbing Flores by the neck and hitting her because she had viewed images about the Aruba case on his computer while he was out buying coffee.

In the video of his interrogation, van der Sloot can be seen calmly explaining where he's been and what he's carrying, including a laptop, cash from different countries and photos. He even seemed friendly with the officers on his long drive back from Chile to Lima.

When investigators asked him where his credit cards were, van der Sloot answered in broken Spanish.

"I have those back in my hotel in Santiago," he said on the video. "I went up to my hotel room and I saw these things on the Internet and I had to leave quickly." 

Stephany's neck was broken. Her father is a former presidential candidate in Peru, and a well-known race car driver.

Stephany Flores-Ramirez

Van der Sloot reportedly told authorities that he "sipped an espresso" after he killed Stephany, and mused over what to do with her body.

The 22-year-old ate several biscuits and reportedly took several amphetamine pills as he considered what to do with his alleged victim.

Fearing he would be caught, the paper reports, Van der Sloot showered, got dressed - leaving his clothes from the night before on the bed - and fled at 8:45 a.m. on May 30, less than three hours after he'd arrived at the hotel with Flores.

Authorities believe Van der Sloot had possibly thought to get rid of the body in the ocean, based on maps charting currents found in his backpack when he was arrested in Chile.

 Stephany Flores

This article says van der Sloot went across the street alone at 8:10 a.m., "bought bread and two cups of coffee...and returned to his hotel room." He left the hotel with suitcases an hour and a half later.

Today, June 11th, Peru charged Joran with first-degree murder and robbery. There are reports that Stephany won several thousand dollars in the casino that night. That van der Sloot knew it and targeted her for the money. This information has not been confirmed, but if he has been charged with robbery, it sounds plausible.

Joran van der Sloot returning to Peru from Chile

Police say Van der Sloot smashed in the face of Lima business student Stephany Flores, whom he met playing poker at a casino, after taking her to his hotel room on May 30. They say he then strangled her, threw her to the floor, emptied her wallet.

At this point, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway comes back into the picture when he told police he knew where Natalee was buried:

Flores was killed three days after meeting Van der Sloot, police say, and five years to the day after Holloway disappeared.

Lima criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told the AP on Thursday night that when Van der Sloot confessed to killing the Lima business student, investigators asked him about the Holloway case and "he let slip that he knew the place where this person was buried."

Someone, maybe Joran's mother, Anita, hired a new attorney for him, Maximo Altez. Of course, he is asking that Monday's confession be declared void. Altez said Anita will be arriving in Peru next week with the "family's "media advisor."

Guardia said Van der Sloot's confession was legal - that a government-appointed lawyer and an interpreter approved by the Dutch Embassy were present. He also said that Peruvian interrogators had restricted their questioning to the death of Flores, the daughter of a circus promoter and former race car driver.

The general said Van der Sloot took Flores' cash, about $300 worth of Peruvian currency, two credit cards and her national ID card. Police say he also took her car, abandoning it in a lower-class Lima neighborhood before fleeing south to Chile.

It is interesting that some inside the Lima police believe he may have lied about the time of Stephany's death. They think he may have killed her before  going for espresso.

So today, Joran wants to get back to Aruba, don't cha know? Of course he does. This from The Zeitgeisty Report, as well as the telling photo of Joran above.

In a bid to get back to Aruba, Joran Van Der Monster has told authorities that he will reveal where he buried the body of his first victim Natalee Holloway. The caveat is, that he will do so only in home country.

View Greta van Susteren's in depth interview with Joran November 2008 - an intriguing look into his psyche. I believe this is around the same time it became obvious that Greta somewhat believed Joran's lies. In her defense, that didn't last long. The U.S. charges of extortion and wire fraud are not even on the horizon.

Reports say that van der Sloot will be sentenced to Peru's terrifying Lurigancho Prison, one of the worst in the world." The U.S. charges of extortion and wire fraud are not even on the horizon.

Now begins the possibility that Joran is a serial killer. Is he a "homicidal maniac," as private investigator Bo Dietl says?

This post will be continually updated with the latest attempts of Joran van der Sloot to fool all the people all the time. See a Fox News video detailing Joran's latest confession of killing Stephany with a local Peruvian reporter. Stay tuned for ongoing Joran updates as they happen.

Update 6-12-10: I'm hearing that Joran used his own shirt to suffocate Stephany when he realized she was not dead. Didn't he say he did not intend to kill her? Yeah, he did.

This is one of the most interesting things I've heard about Joran and the Natalee Holloway case: Geraldo Rivera's show interviewed a man who saw Joran, soaking wet, with one shoe and hopping along - in the early morning hours of Natalee's disappearance. Details coming.



Joran van der Sloot's Peruvian Confession (video from Lima Peru)
Related and Background:Joran van der Sloot Witness in Natalee Holloway Case Comes ForwardThe Joran Chronicles - continual updatesJoran van der Sloot Arrested
Joran van der Sloot Suspect in Murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez
Joran van der Sloot's Father Dies - more on Joran.