In the video clip he posted to YouTube, Oscar Lopez can be heard asking neighbor Anthony Sanchez, “Why don’t you come over here and teach ME!?” Lopez, you see, had just captured footage of Sanchez lashing his stepson with a belt for failing to catch a baseball. 

Sanchez turned himself in on Friday, after the clip went viral. On Saturday, he resigned his post as director of California’s Imperial Irrigation District. He’s now being held on $100,000 bail for suspicion of felony child abuse, yet another elected official implicated for yet another failure of character.

Now I realize that many adults over a certain age had the crap kicked out of them as children, and I also know that serious child abuse is often a cycle. Sanchez, age 34, probably knows these things too. What he doesn’t seem to realize, however, is that there’s no excuse for wailing on a kid either way.

And what was Stepfather of the Year’s excuse?  In the footage he can be heard responding to Lopez, “The boy suffers from ADHD! Do you know how he acts?” Well okay then, Sanchez, by that standard you need a head-punch and 2 face-slaps. Read more