You really can’t make this stuff up.
Via N.C. Policy Watch, we’ve learned that McCrory administration member Ilario Pantano, the assistant secretary of veterans affairs for the Department of Administration, has some, um, unique views.
Enjoy this half-hour clip from Pantano’s address earlier this month to the Cape Fear Christian Men’s Fellowship in Wilmington, in which he denounces leftist plans to deny that the country was founded upon Christianity.
A little background on Pantano, who earns $91,000 annually from the state: He’s a former Congressional candidate in North Carolina and occasional conservative speaker on Fox News, but he’s perhaps best known as an Iraq War veteran once accused by the Marine Corps of murdering two Iraqis in 2004. Pantano was later cleared of those charges.
But, according to an Associated Press report from 2005, Pantano was accused by prosecutors of repeatedly shooting the two men, even stopping to reload, before hanging a sign on them emblazoned with the Marine slogan, “No better friend, no worse enemy.” The report says Pantano never denied those allegations, but it was determined that he was acting in self-defense.
The sign echoes Pantano’s 2007 book, “Warlord: No better friend, no worse enemy.” According to his bio on the N.C. Military Affairs Commission, he’s also an Iron Man TriAthlete and a competitive shooter.
