March 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Days after formally entering the 2020 Democrat field, pro-abortion Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke is embroiled in a controversy over his involvement in a notorious hacking group as a teenager, through which he authored alarming online writings about hitting a child with a car and a sexually-tinged fantasy involving a cow.

On Friday, Reuters revealed that in his youth the 46-year-old O’Rourke had been a member of the “hacktivist” group Cult of the Dead Cow. At the time, part of the membership test involved posting essays called t-files to online bulletin boards. Using the name “Psychedelic Warlord,” O’Rourke wrote several t-files, two of which in particular have garnered attention.

“One day, as I was driving home from work, I noticed two children crossing the street. They were happy, happy to be free from their troubles,” one essay read. “This happiness was mine by right. I had earned it in my dream. As I neared the young ones, I put all my weight on my right foot, keeping the accelerator pedal on the floor until I heard the crashing of the two children on the hood, and then the sharp cry of pain from one of the two.”

“I was so fascinated for a moment, that when after I had stopped my vehicle, I just sat in a daze, sweet visions filling my head,” O’Rourke wrote.

He also wrote a poem titled the “Song of the Cow,” which asks a “sacred Cow” to perform a number of bizarre, sexually-tinged acts on a speaker who “live[s] only for eternity, Thirst[s] for the undrinkable.”

“I'm mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed, but I have to take ownership of my words,” O’Rourke said Friday about the writings, the Chicago Tribune reports. “Whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn't matter, I have to look long and hard at my actions, at the language I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better.”

“It's not anything I'm proud of today, and I mean, that's — that's the long and short of it,” he continued. “All I can do is my best, which is what I'm trying to do. I can't control anything I've done in the past. I can only control what I do going forward and what I plan to do is give this my best.”

O’Rourke’s writing making light of vehicular homicide is grimly ironic in light of the candidate’s 1998 drunk driving arrest for an incident in which a speeding, intoxicated O’Rourke reportedly hit a truck, careened into oncoming traffic, and allegedly attempted to flee the scene.

The latest revelations also raise new questions about the impartiality of the mainstream media. In a follow-up piece, Reuters revealed that O’Rourke had actually admitted being part of the Cult of the Dead Cow in a 2017 interview with reporter Joseph Menn, “on the understanding that the information would not be made public until after his Senate race against Ted Cruz in November 2018.”

Menn first caught wind of O’Rourke’s involvement while researching for a book on the hacker group, and claims he simply made the agreement because otherwise none of the members would agree to talk to him:

No one in cDc would talk about O’Rourke until I promised not to publish before the 2018 election. That was OK: I wanted the full story for my book, which spans decades, rather than 1 scoop ahead of a state vote. I offered O’Rourke the same terms. He accepted, and we spoke. (8/10) pic.twitter.com/psZCnSD9ZP — Joseph Menn (@josephmenn) March 15, 2019

“Oh, okay, let’s hide this information because … book. Can’t you just feel The Journalism?” John Nolte of Breitbart responded, noting that Menn deduced that O’Rourke had been a member before assuring the candidate he would “hide that information from voters.”

“It is also worth noting that in his Friday story, Menn and Reuters go out of their way to gloss over the criminality O’Rourke was involved in,” Nolte added. “It is treated as an adventure, a Kool Kids vs. The Man growth experience, even as they stole intellectual property and ‘other peoples’ phone-company credit card numbers and five-digit calling codes to place free calls.’”