Who’s Tim Reily?

Well, if you’re in the business community in South Louisiana you might know Tim Reily as the proprietor of Reily Electrical Supply, which is a Metairie business of long standing serving electrical contractors, maintenance companies and other such businesses.

If you’re an animal lover in Louisiana you might know Tim Reily as a member of the board of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Reily takes that philanthropic endeavor seriously; he donated $500,000 to a Wisconsin shelter for abused and abandoned tigers, lions and leopards in 2007.

If you’re involved in political circles, you might know Tim Reily as a sometimes-donor to political candidates in Louisiana, most notably Walker Hines and John Kennedy (back when they were Democrats) and, among others, Bobby Jindal, David Vitter and George W. Bush in national races.

To the rest of us, though, Tim Reily is the guy who had the stones to let the world – or at least the people who passed by his house in uptown New Orleans – know exactly what he thinks of our president.

And Reily’s sense of humor is considerable.

A little closer look at Reily’s signs, courtesy of WWL-TV…

You’ll notice, of course, that Reily’s critics interviewed by the TV station had no substantive critique of the arguments Reily made on those signs – namely that Obama refuses, in childlike fashion, to take responsibility for the results of his presidency, that he’s a puppet of George Soros and that his economic program is neither honestly put forth nor realistic. All they said was that the signs made them upset and because of that he doesn’t have the right to display them on his own property.

One accused Reily of racism. Which is typical. There is, of course, nothing whatsoever racial about the Obama signs on Reily’s property. There is nothing racist about disagreeing with economic policy. Soros has puppets of many ethnicities. And at some point in everyone’s life diapers – and a refusal to take responsibility – are the order of the day. If Reily is a racist it certainly isn’t proven by those signs regardless of the delicate feelings of the professionally offended gawkers on his street corner.

And of course it’s particularly laughable that former mayor Ray Nagin, he of “Chocolate City” fame and multiple examples of dealing in race cards by the truckload throughout a failed mayoralty, should descend upon Reily to instruct him in sensitivity. At that point one wonders whether Reily asked Nagin for a refund of the $1,000 campaign donation he made to Nagin back in 2002.

Which brings us to Reily’s other visitor from City Hall, Councilwoman Susan Guidry, who said she didn’t get far with her host. Reily hasn’t donated to Guidry’s campaigns in the past; if she hit him up this time she doubtless didn’t get far with him then, either. Guidry’s threats to force Reily to take down the signs by abuse of the city’s zoning laws should rightly earn her a lawsuit and an ignominious defeat at the ballot box assuming the people of Orleans Parish District A value the First Amendment, though our faith in those voters is shaky at best. It is nonetheless shocking to see a politician – remedial-level though Miz Guidry may be – in so brazen a fashion advocating for the abridgement of the rights of one of her constituents through roundabout means. She’s doing it on camera, which even the most clownish pols know is a stupid idea.

And Guidry is a lawyer! Incredible.

So for his troubles, which clearly he must have known would ensue from putting up those signs and chose to bear the slings and arrows anyway, we honor Mr. Reily by devoting Thursday, September 29, 2011 to him in preservation of his First Amendment rights. And we wish him well in protecting his property from the grievance-mongers and the political hacks they’ve spawned in the Crescent City.

UPDATE: One of Reily’s neighbors informs us he’s also supporting Herman Cain and has bumper stickers to that effect on his Obama-in-diapers sign. WWL would have done itself a favor reporting that, as it certainly gives the lie to the claim of Mr. Reily’s supposed racism given that Cain happens to be of African descent.