Conason: Mike Huckabee and the Cop Killer of Seattle

[BurtWorm]

Unless the Christian right is in a pardoning mood in 2012, Huckabee's leniency toward murderers and rapists who dupe Baptist preachers might give Palin an early edge among the red meat eaters:

:patriot:

http://salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2009/11/30/mike_huckabee/index.html

Mike Huckabee's fatally bad judgment

Brutality by another Huck-pardoned criminal suggests the 2012 GOP hopeful listened more to pastors than prosecutors
By Joe Conason



Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Right: Maurice Clemmons, a person of interest in the killing of four Lakewood Police officers in Parkland, Wash., Sunday.

...

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murdered now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.

The real engine behind Dumond's release, however, was a Baptist minister and ultra-conservative ideologue named Jay Cole, who also happened to be a friend of Huckabee. Cole would tell the governor about his visits with the supposedly innocent Dumond, when the minister and the prisoner would read the Bible and pray together.

[snagglepuss]

1. Very interesting article. K & R

thanks for posting.

[opihimoimoi]

2. POOR JUDGMENT TRUMPED LOGIC and the COMMON GOOD

Trusting the RED PHONE TO HUCKY ia EXTRA RISKY

[la la]

3. while clicking through the channels,

of course-- ;>0---- i happened upon billo 'interviewing' huckleberry and the huck blamed the prosecutors in AR. anyone else hear that- or was that just me?

[KT2000]

4. yes - heard it

and no one is falling for it. The prosecutor is much more believeable. The prosecutor was being quoted within hours of the shooting. Huckabee had to be nudged into comment and it was conveyed by local news in a negative light.

[LisaL]

5. Clemmons mentioned "Christian" and "God" in his clemency

application. No wonder Huckabee commuted his sentence.

[starroute]

6. This needs to be spread around

There's another thread with people arguing that we're acting like Republicans in blaming this on Huckabee, or even pulling a Willie Horton.

No -- the issue is not clemency, it's lack of judgment and Huckabee's willingness to let his unfounded religious faith in the power of "redemption" to blot out common sense or even the advice of prosecutors.

It's a judgment issue not a mercy issue -- and Huckabee's judgment stinks.

[BurtWorm]

10. Right on the money.

:toast:

[XOKCowboy]

7. Glad to be the 10th Rec!

Keeping it :kick:ed

[Bolo Boffin]

8. A nice, cleaned-up Democratic version of Michelle Malkin's lead story.

Thanks, Joe Conason. :eyes:

[Catshrink]

9. Remember Willie Horton?

Huckabee is toast.