Issues: Keeping Americans Safe
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By Joe Conason
Dec. 14, 2007 | Responding to accusations that he caused a rapist and killer named Wayne DuMond to be set loose from the Arkansas prison system -- leading ultimately to the murder of at least one and probably two women in Missouri -- Mike Huckabee has long denied any personal responsibility for that profoundly stupid decision. In the past he has tried to blame DuMond's parole on both Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker, who preceded him as governor. More recently, he has denounced the charge that he pressured the Arkansas parole board into freeing DuMond, who has since died, as "nonsense."
And now Huckabee, who plainly hoped to please the prisoner's deranged right-wing advocates back when he promised to commute DuMond's sentence, says that he laments the politicization of a tragedy.
"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief-stricken," he told CNN, referring to the relatives of DuMond's victims, including the mother of a Missouri woman he raped and murdered who has vowed to campaign against Huckabee. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."
According to good old Huck, the fault still lies elsewhere, presumably with that nebulous "system." How could anyone believe that he would let a vicious killer and rapist walk free? It is all too believable, if only because Huckabee continued to exercise his powers of clemency and commutation just as foolishly and frivolously for years after he should have learned better from the DuMond mistake. He bestowed those favors on prisoners he happened to meet, on prisoners with personal connections to him or his family, and especially on prisoners recommended to him by pastors whom he happened to know from his own previous career as a Baptist minister and denominational leader. As with DuMond, whose case was pleaded by a preacher named Jay Cole, prisoners guilty of heinous crimes could be washed clean in Huckabee's estimation if a pastor of his acquaintance importuned him. Among the thugs to whom he granted clemency was a robber who had beaten a man to death with a lead pipe.
For several years after 1996, when he first considered parole for DuMond (he was released in 1999), the Arkansas governor freed as many as 1,000 prisoners. Some were undoubtedly deserving of release, but others were dangerous and violent felons like DuMond who should have been kept behind bars. Huckabee's questionable methods and motivations never changed until prosecutors, the media, his fellow Republicans and virtually the entire state of Arkansas rose up in protest against his idiocy.
The case that sparked the citizen revolt against Huckabee came to public attention in 2004, when he announced his intention to release a murderer and rapist named Glen Green. What seems to have impressed him was the endorsement of Green provided by one Rev. Johnny Jackson, a Baptist minister in the town of Jacksonville and friend of the governor's. Observers doubted that Huckabee had bothered to glance at the case file before he decided to release Green, because he could not have helped being chilled by the harrowing confession it contained.
In 1974, Green was serving as a sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base, located in a suburban county outside the state capital. On a certain evening, he seized Helen Lynnette Spencer, 18, and brought her to a quiet spot on the base where he assaulted and tried to rape her. She briefly escaped from Green, who then caught her and beat her brutally with nunchaku sticks. He stuffed her into the trunk of his car and drove her off the base to another county, where he pulled her into the front seat and violated her. Since she wasn't dead, he ran over her several times with his car, and finally dumped her corpse in a bayou. When Spencer's body was found, her hand was reaching up from the swampy waters.
This was the series of events that Green and his gullible minister -- who reportedly described the perp as "a humble Christian man" -- later insisted had been "accidental," an explanation that Huckabee inexplicably accepted. The prosecutors who put Green away for life in 1974 believed that he was capable of killing again, and they were stunned when the governor ignored their advice, along with the unanimous opinion of the Arkansas parole authorities. Only the anguished protests of the victim's family, amplified by the local media, eventually forced Huckabee to rescind the commutation of Green's sentence, which he had already announced.
The pattern could not have been clearer, as described by Arkansas columnist Garrick Feldman, who crusaded against Huckabee's feckless, faith-based clemency and pardon policies. Killers and rapists need not express remorse, as the Green case showed. They need only profess their salvation, "especially if a minister from Huckabee's circle vouches for their jailhouse conversion."
Whatever Huckabee now says about the DuMond case, he continued to misuse his authority for several years after the fatal consequences of that fiasco became all too obvious. Behind his pattern of error and misconduct is a troubling arrogance that is not unfamiliar in a certain kind of evangelical politician. He would not be the first elected official who did something stupid and destructive because he had convinced himself that he was fulfilling the will of God. The question is why the rest of us should want to risk our safety and security by entertaining such delusions again.
-- By Joe Conason
CIVIL RIGHTS The Central Point
Selma is a city of 29,500 people—14,400 whites, 15,100 Negroes. Its voting rolls are 99% white, 1% Negro. More than a city, Selma is a state of mind. "Selma," says a guidebook on Alabama, "is like an old-fashioned gentlewoman, proud and patrician, but never unfriendly." But the symbol of Selma is Sheriff James Clark, 43, a bullyboy segregationist who leads a club-swinging, mounted posse of deputy volunteers, many of them Ku Klux Klansmen. It was in Selma, four years ago, that the Federal Government filed its first voting-rights suit, but court processes are slow, and Selma Negroes remain unregistered.
Selma seemed a natural target to Martin Luther King. He rounded up hundreds of Negroes at a time, led them on marches to the county courthouse to register to vote. Always, Clark awaited them, either turning them away or arresting them for contempt of court, truancy, juvenile delinquency and parading without a permit. In seven weeks, Clark jailed no fewer than 2,000 men, women and children, including King, who dramatized the situation by refusing to make bond for four days. Still the Negroes came, singing "We shall overcome." In reply, Sheriff Clark pinned a button on his shirt reading "Never!" The city's mood grew ever uglier.
King called for a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery, 50 miles away. King planned to lead the march himself, but at the last minute was persuaded by aides to stay at his Atlanta headquarters for his safety's sake.
Ignoring an order from Governor Wallace forbidding the march, 650 Negroes and a few whites filed through the back streets of Selma, and headed for the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama River.
On U.S. Highway 80, 400 yards beyond the bridge, was a phalanx of 60 state cops. Suddenly the clubs started swinging. From the sidelines, white townspeople raised their voices in cheers and whoops. Joined by possemen and deputies, the patrolmen waded into the screaming mob. Now came the sound of canisters being fired. A Negro screamed: "Tear gas!" Within seconds the highway was swirling with white and yellow clouds of smoke, raging with the cries of men. Choking, bleeding, the Negroes fled in all directions while the whites pursued them. The mounted men uncoiled bull whips and lashed out viciously as the horses' hoofs trampled the fallen. " O.K., nigger!" snarled a posseman, flailing away at a running Negro woman. "You wanted to march—now march!"
"Please! No!" begged a Negro as a cop flailed away with his club. "My God, we're being killed!" cried another. The Negroes staggered across the bridge and made for the church, chased by the sheriffs deputies and the horsemen. All told, 78 Negroes required hospital treatment for injuries.
Rarely has public opinion reacted so spontaneously and with such fury. In Detroit, Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh and Michigan's Governor George Romney led a protest parade of 10,000 people. President Johnson publicly declared that he "deplored the brutality." And in Atlanta, Martin Luther King announced that as a "matter of conscience and in an attempt to arouse the deepest concern of the nation," he was "compelled" to lead another march from Selma to Montgomery.
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Folks, we should not be shocked that Hannity and O'Reily are against Huckabee. Even Chris Matthews, another Catholic, goes way out of his way to bash Huckabee on religious issues, even though Matthews is a Democrat.
Here is one take on the Dean comment about Romney. Allahpundit is great at getting attention by saying over-the-top red-meat comments, and calling people who try to use their Brain, practice law, graduated at the top of their Harvard Class like Mitt Romney and Hugh Hewitt stupid. Allahpundit also calls Dean Barnett stupid, but agrees with him when he criticizes Romney. Ed Morrissey from hot air is likes Mitt much more than Allahpundit (who ever the hell that is). My concept of Allahpundit is that he is a guy that lives at home in his parents basement, weights 300 pounds, and has never gone on a date. But I may be wrong. He may be a smart guy, who has actually accomplished something in his life, but his analisis is so one-sided, and incomplete that I have to question his ability to function in the real world.
Lets have a brain storm of the aspects of Mitt Romney that Allahpundit left off. "Won" more debates than any of the other republican candidate. Accomplished more in school than any of the other candidates. Accomplished more in life than any of the other candidates. Did not have a son try to sneek on to a plane with a handgun, or hang a stray dog from a tree and stone it to death. Did not pardon 11 convicted murderers. Did not pardon 1,033 convicted criminals. When he crossed the isle and worked with democrats on Health Insurance, he actually accomplished something the re-alocated expenses more efficiently and helped his country, instead of the problems that McCain Feingold free speach bill, and the McCain Kennedy immigration bill. Mitt Romney was the only MBA with real world business experience. Yes Bush had an MBA but graduated at the bottom of the class, while Romney had an MBA graduated at the top of his Harvard Law and Business and BYU English classes, and again I saw: Romney was the first MBA with real-world business experience. Bush's dad gave him a base-ball team to run.
So yes, Allahpundit who-ever the hell you are, you do have a list of things that people might not like about Romney, but are you really too stupid to consistently time after time fail to acknolwedge any points that would tend to disagree with your pre-determined position?
Exit question. How long will people read the insane ramblings of someone who has never as far as I know ever accomplished anything in his life, doesn't go by his real name, doesn't take credit for what he writes, has probably never been published off the internet (all of this is conjecture based on my impression of his writing, but I may be way wrong), and tries to comment on the world around him, but refuses to acknowledge any points that go against his pre-determined conclusion.
Exit question #2: Your exit question was: "Aren't you glad we get to run against Obama instead of Bill Richardson? Bullet dodged" Yes a bullet was dodged. Look at Bill's accomplishments, and background vs. Obama. And if you were serious in saying that you are glad we did not have to run against Bill, do you realize that liberal bloggers view your words with the same suspicion that you view comeing from the good Dr. Dean?
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