To Russia With Child Porno Love

The Irish are welcoming and hospitable but they are not willing to accomodate the needs of a child pornographer. It should have come as no surprise that Eric Eoin Marques was denied bail once the authorities had him locked up in a jail cell (without a computer) while the U.S. argued in favor of his extradition.

Eric Eoin Marques arrives at the High Court

Mr. Marques, of dual American-Irish citizenship, has been described as the world's most prolific purveyor of child pornography. Even making allowances for the sort of overblown rhetoric that you'd expect from the people seeking to extradite him, the man has made a fortune providing material to the sickest of perverts.

American authorities issued an arrest warrant when they determined that Mr. Marques was the source of an enormous amount of on-line porn, but Mr. Marques was living in Ireland where he may have thought he was safe from detection. At the least, he was closer to various escape routes to countries that would not be so willing to entertain an extradition request.

A court in Ireland listened to testimony and Mr. Justice Paul Gilligan was quite intriuged by the accused's recent travels. As it turns out, Mr. Marques has friends and financial support in Romania, where he recently spent a little time and moved a great deal of his savings. Most likely he was wishing he had stayed there, instead of returning home to Ireland, where there is no sympathy for a man who trades in pornography.

He's not a flight risk his solicitor said, but if a man has recently flown, well, it stands to reason.

And you can bet that Mr. Justice Gilligan did not want his name to be linked to a bail-jumping miscreant like Eric Eoin Marques, thus negating any consideration of granting bail to the world's biggest porn merchant.

Then there were those Internet searches about Russia and obtaining a visa and Edward Snowden getting asylum. Connecting those dots led the judge to conclude that Mr. Marques was giving serious consideration to seeking asylum as well, claiming that he was running from the same government that was persecuting Mr. Snowden.

Without question, Vladimir Putin is enjoying his little game, making Barack Obama appear impotent and weak, powerless in the face of Russian might. But even the Russians would not use a notorious child pornographer to further skewer the American President. To offer asylum to Mr. Marques would be to approve of what he did, which would not reflect favorably on Mr. Putin.

The High Court will hear the case in the coming week, and will in all likelihood hand Mr. Marques over to the FBI agents who came calling. He'll face trial in an American court, and then do time in an American prison.

Which proves that the current administration is very much biased against the small business entrepreneur who found a niche and filled it. He can commiserate with all the drug dealers and gang-bangers for the next thirty years, as he watches his business enterprise crumble. Assuming he'd be allowed access to a computer...