Huckabee and Dumond. Willie Horton Rides Again

[Pure]

Politics as usual in the USA.

It's alleged that Huckabee urged release of rapist to parole board. The rapist, Dumond re offended, murdered.

Huckabee: The system failed. The board was appointed by a Democrat.

The Story Mick Huckabee Dreads
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTcyMTM5YzRiMzVjMjA3MGEwMjUwM2Y3NGJiMzM1YWY=


Dumond case revisited
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=154e1aad-fd18-4efd-8d80-b5dab8559419


Wayne Dumond Case
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/wayne_dumond_case_it_huckabee_1.php



Murder Victim's Mother Assails Huckabee
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/05/earlyshow/main3577585.shtml


CNN: Huckabee's role in rapist's parole comes under fresh scrutiny
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/05/huckabee.dumond/



Boston Globe: Huckabee defends his role in Ark. rapist's parole case
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/a..._defends_his_role_in_ark_rapists_parole_case/

 

[Huckleman2000]

The thing in this story that I find most disturbing is that Dumond became a cause celebre' for the radical right simply because his victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. Though Clinton recused himself from the case for exactly that reason, those morons decided that Dumond must have been railroaded into the conviction.

Such are the people who have taken over the so-called Conservative movement. It's indicative of Republican sellout that such idiots must be kowtowed to, again and again.

 

[Pure]

i wasn't aware of this, huck. youre saying the radical right was working on his parole/release for some time?

cool!

 

[Huckleman2000]

i wasn't aware of this, huck. youre saying the radical right was working on his parole/release for some time?

cool!

Yes indeed!
Here's an article that broke new information on this story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/04/documents-expose-huckabee_n_75362.html
excerpt:

In 1996, as a newly elected governor who had received strong support from the Christian right, Huckabee was under intense pressure from conservative activists to pardon Dumond or commute his sentence. The activists claimed that Dumond's initial imprisonment and various other travails were due to the fact that Ashley Stevens, the high school cheerleader he had raped, was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.

The case for Dumond's innocence was championed in Arkansas by Jay Cole, a Baptist minister and radio host who was a close friend of the Huckabee family. It also became a cause for New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, who repeatedly argued for Dumond's release, calling his conviction "a travesty of justice." On Sept. 21, 1999, Dunleavy wrote a column headlined "Clinton's Biggest Crime - Left Innocent Man In Jail For 14 Years":

"Dumond, now 52, was given conditional parole yesterday in Arkansas after having being sentenced to 50 years in jail for the rape of Clinton's cousin," Dunleavy wrote. "That rape never happened."

A subsequent Dunleavy column quoted Huckabee saying: "There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Most people do not know that Huckleberry Hound is the King of Clemency. He loves to cut killers loose from prison. And once people see his record, he's toast.

 

[Pure]

thanks for the tip, jbj!

 

[walkerlong]

The thing in this story that I find most disturbing is that Dumond became a cause celebre' for the radical right simply because his victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. Though Clinton recused himself from the case for exactly that reason, those morons decided that Dumond must have been railroaded into the conviction.

Such are the people who have taken over the so-called Conservative movement. It's indicative of Republican sellout that such idiots must be kowtowed to, again and again.

It's unfortunate when politics becomes like a sport - just trying to score points off the other side rather than actually governing.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

Huckleberry takes pardons seriously. He did more pardons than several governors combined.

 

[Pure]

in theory, and as a bleeding heart social democrat, i favor generous pardons.

that said, in practice if the killers and rapists strike again, then the pardon was NOT a good idea.

i favor generous paroles too, since US prisons are crammed, and the most populous, relatively, on earth.

that said, in practice if a rapist on parole rapes, the parole was a BAD idea.

perhaps a start would be to differentiate crimes against persons, and other. ALL serious crimes against persons, battery, rape, kidnapping, murder, torture, robbery should entail CAREFUL assessment and erring on the side of public safety.

===

of course it's politics, and if Rep'ns want to play hardball, then if there's a mistake, no matter what the faults of the system, as Huckaberry claims, the pardoner/paroler is going down under Willie Horton attack ads.

 

[Pure]

huckabee on a roll!

from newsweek, verbatim excerpts

//Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has vaulted over his major GOP challengers to take a commanding lead in the race to win the Iowa caucuses, while Barack Obama continues to edge ahead of Hillary Clinton among Democrats likely to participate, a new NEWSWEEK poll shows.

The most dramatic result to come out of the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,408 registered Iowa voters on Dec. 5 and 6, is Huckabee's emergence from the shadows of the GOP race into the front runner's spot in just two months. The ordained Southern Baptist minister now leads Romney by a two-to-one margin, 39 percent to 17 percent, among likely GOP caucus-goers. In the last NEWSWEEK survey, conducted Sept. 26-27, Huckabee polled a mere 6 percent to Romney's 25 percent, which then led the field.

Huckabee has also opened up a wide margin over the next three leading candidates, who all show signs of fading in Iowa: Rudy Giuliani, who dropped from 15 percent in the last survey to 9 percent in the current one; Fred Thompson, who fell from 16 percent to 10 percent; and John McCain, who slipped from 7 percent to 6 percent. "You rarely see anything like [Huckabee's surge]," says Larry Hugick, who directed the polling for Princeton Survey Research Associates. Hugick added that the reason has as much to do with a leeriness of the other candidates among Republican voters as Huckabee's folksy success on the stump. "He's filling a vacuum," Hugick said. "Nobody on the Republican side was getting strong support." //

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

My personal view of Huckabee: He's the great unknown in this election. He's the candidate nobody knows anything about outside Arkansas. In the current state of politics, that might be a good thing. Someone had to dig up something and found Dumond.

Huckabee, as a lot of half-assed politicians do, didn't handle the questioning very well and created more controversy than there should have been over this issue.

Did someone screw up by letting Dummond out of prison? Yeah. Was it Mike Huckabee's interference? Who knows, but probably not. What grain would he have gotten by getting him released?

 

[Pure]

he pleased a lot of prominent local right wing persons, esp. the Clinton haters. ... the ones who were crucial in his getting elected.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

he pleased a lot of prominent local right wing persons, esp. the Clinton haters. ... the ones who were crucial in his getting elected.

Pure,
That would indicate that Mike Huckabee was planning a run on the presidency as far back as 1996 while Clinton was still in office. Still makes not sense unless Huckabee himself brought up the controversy to make himself stand out. But that makes no sense politically.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Who stands to lose the most from a Huckabee win? Who has Arkansas connections to dig up the dirt?

 

[Pure]

Bill?

(missed you!).

 

[Pure]

some docs; letters from dumond victims

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/10/new-documents-revealed-in_n_76186.html

New Documents Revealed In Case Of Huckabee's Support For Freeing Rapist


The Huffington Post | Sam Stein and Nico Pitney | December 10, 2007 10:50 PM

In the wake of revelations that Mike Huckabee pushed for the parole of a convicted rapist who went on to rape and murder two other women, the former Arkansas governor has sought to distance himself from the story and questioned the legitimacy of the relevant documents.

Murray Waas reported last week for the Huffington Post that Huckabee received (and subsequently tried to keep secret) letters from victims of rapist Wayne Dumond and their family members, imploring the state not to grant his parole.

When first informed of our story last Tuesday, Huckabee spokesperson Alice Stewart said, "There were no letters sent to the governor's office from any rape victims." Later on Tuesday, Huckabee's campaign acknowledged that his office had received at least one letter from another Dumond victim.

On Wednesday, Huckabee campaign research director Joe Carter claimed in a statement that "the authenticity of the letters [posted by the Huffington Post] is questionable." Yet, in an interview with ABC News aired on Wednesday evening, Huckabee personally acknowledged receiving one of these letters from a previous victim of

Dumond, and said he had also "encountered" the rape victim.
Since the Huckabee campaign has questioned the validity of the original report, the Huffington Post has decided to release additional documents from Huckabee's file on Dumond.
[Read the new documents in full here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/10/huckabeedumond-files-le_n_76188.html
]
The file, which was provided by a staffer to then-governor Huckabee who was concerned about his handling of the case, includes 12 separate letters written by eight different women. (This includes the three documents posted for the original story). Three of the women reported being raped or sexually assaulted by Dumond. One, whose writings have not been made public up to this point, wrote about her harrowing assault at Dumond's hands.

Standing there yielding a butcher knife above his head, was the shadow of a man. I asked "Who is it?" and he immediately burst on to my side of the bed, put his hands over my mouth and stuck the knife in my throat, whispering, "Don't say a word or I'll cut your goddamned throat." I froze and adhered to his request...

Also included in the file is an officially marked and dated Arkansas State Police affidavit, given to Huckabee prior to his decision to support parole, in which Dumond confessed to having raped another woman. Dumond was never charged for the crime.

The document provides a clear indication that Huckabee had evidence from state officials concerning Dumond's long history of violent behavior. While on the presidential campaign trail, Huckabee has stated that no one could have anticipated that Dumond would strike again after being set free.

Yet the warnings were apparent. A lieutenant within the department detailed how Dumond stalked and raped a woman in 1976:

//On [Date], someone entered [Name]'s bedroom and raped her. [Name] did not report the rape because she was going through a divorce at that time and was afraid that it would affect the custody proceedings of her minor child. On [Date], there was again a commotion... Subsequently on [Date]... Wayne Dumond was seen approaching the apartment of [Name] from the rear. When Wayne Dumond became aware that he was being observed, he turned and ran. He was followed home where he was arrested. He now claims that the first assault on [Name] was a sex for drugs transaction. If so, he also needs to come up with an explanation for the later two visits.//


In an accompanying criminal investigation file, Dumond confessed to the rape, only to later refuse to sign any statement admitting guilt. He was never charged. Six years later Dumond was arrested following the rape of Ashley Stevens, a 17-year-old high school student and distant cousin of Bill Clinton.

Even with these documents at hand, Huckabee supported the release of Dumond from prison, backed by fervent anti-Clinton activists. According to several parole board members, he even lobbied the board on Dumond's behalf. The frighteningly prescient warnings of Dumond's victims were seemingly left ignored.

"It should be so obvious to the Governor and yourselves," writes one woman, "that Wayne Dumond is a threat to society and that there is no reformation available to correct him enough to be placed in a world where he could harm anyone like this again."

 

[Pure]

Is this story more embarrassing that the Dumond one?

This should clarify why our local AH rightwingers prefer Huckabee.

Huckabee surge has satirists smiling

Republican who fell prey to `igloo' prank faces questions about grasp of foreign policy

Dec 15, 2007 04:30 AM
Tim Harper

WASHINGTON BUREAU

DES MOINES, Iowa–You don't want to believe it.

You just don't want to believe that a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, two steps from power in the free world, really thought that Canada had a national igloo.

When Rick Mercer comes on the phone to talk about Mike Huckabee, we expect he'll explain it was a joke.

Surely, he'll assure us that the wisecracking former Arkansas governor was just playing along for a laugh in Mercer's now-iconic Talking To Americans television spots.

No, what Mercer tells us should cause shudders in all igloos across the country, from split-levels to bungalows.

"He wasn't in on it," Mercer says. "The governor of Arkansas thought there was a Canadian national igloo. The governor of Arkansas would have believed the world was flat."

Huckabee last month told radio interviewer Don Imus that he didn't have the foreign affairs knowledge of his Republican rivals, "but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

You have to wonder where he spent the night before Mercer talked his way into his office in Little Rock, telling him that Canadians were fearful of losing the igloo to global warming and wanting to hear from the governor of Arkansas on this issue.

Mercer's hilarious send-up of U.S. ignorance of Canada is best known for his Michigan ambush of soon-to-be president George W. Bush, who happily accepted the endorsement of Canadian Prime Minister "Jean Poutine," a Mercer-inspired play on the name of then-prime minister Jean Chrétien.

Mercer admitted this week he's keeping an eye on the sudden emergence of Huckabee, the ordained Baptist minister who went from affable also-ran to the leader among Republicans in the first-in-the-nation caucuses here in Iowa in 20 days.

Huckabee is also running second nationally behind former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

"I've got him on a Google alert," said Mercer.

Huckabee was the first governor he talked his way into seeing for his 2001 segment, which ran originally as part of his This Hour Has 22 Minutes show, then was spun off into an hour-long special.

In front of the Arkansas legislature building, he tells passersby of the endangered Canadian Parliament buildings.

"It's an igloo, you see," he tells one woman.

"And we're worried about global warming and the fact that it might melt. So we're putting a dome over it. But, in order to pay for it, we have to attract tourists.

"Would you be interested in visiting Canada's national igloo?"

"Absolutely," says one woman.

He then convinced Huckabee aides that it was important that the Arkansas governor speak out on this, and the result:

"Hi, I'm Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas wanting to say: `Congratulations, Canada, on preserving your national igloo.'"

Mercer remembers that Huckabee first asked whether this was a controversial igloo in Canada.

"He had at least a glimmer of political acumen," he says.

Subsequently, Arkansas reporters called Mercer and there were requests for the clip.
He didn't return the calls and didn't surrender the clip.

"I consider it our little joke," he says.

The Huckabee surge, fuelled by his Christian beliefs, easy manner and glib debate performances, caught the rest of the field off guard and he is now being snowed under by opposition research.

Huckabee calls it "dumpster diving" and likes to repeat a folksy aphorism, saying a pastor had once told him "if they're kicking you in the rear, it only means you are out in front."

 

[Pure]

as jbj foretold.

another Huckabee decision: commutation of Mr. Field's sentence:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWFjYjFmOWMwYThjYzcwM2FiYmE5MDcyMmM4NzlkMGQ=



December 15, 2007 7:00 PM

Back Down in Little Rock
Eugene Fields and an old familiar feeling.

By David J. Sanders

It’s just like old times. National reporters are again scouring Arkansas. Except this time it is Republican Mike Huckabee’s record, not Democrat Bill Clinton’s, that is the subject of interest.

Over the course of more than a decade as governor, Huckabee granted over 1,000 commutations and pardons, and they’re currently being examined closely by journalists. The latest to draw national attention is a commutation of Eugene Fields, who had multiple drunk-driving convictions.

The question is if there was there a connection between his wife Glenda Fields’s five-figure political donations and Huckabee’s action. On April 14, 2004, then-Gov. Huckabee commuted the sentence of Mr. Fields — then a four-time driving-while-intoxicated offender — granting him early release from prison. Fields, a resident of the western Arkansas town of Van Buren, was a habitual offender. He had already been convicted of DWIs in 1996, 1998, and 2000, but his 2001 felony-DWI conviction resulted in the maximum six-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine.

The political contributions by the Fields family — large by Arkansas standards — went unreported at the time Huckabee granted Eugene Fields executive clemency. The size of the donations places the Fields family in the top tier of the state GOP’s donors, alongside Arkansas aristocracy like the scions of the Fords and Stephens families. Both Scott Ford, CEO of Alltel, and Warren Stephens, CEO of Stephens, Inc., gave the Arkansas Republican party $10,000 in 2003. (Full disclosure: I write a column that is distributed by Stephens Media.)

A review of campaign-finance records shows that Fields’s wife, Glenda, made two $5,000 contributions to the Arkansas Republican party — one on June 26, 2003 and another on July 14, 2003. Less than two months before Glenda Fields wrote the first of those checks, the Arkansas Court of Appeals denied Eugene Fields’s petition for rehearing his 2001 felony DWI conviction.

Fields did not immediately report to prison. Four days before he began serving his prison sentence on August of 2003, he applied for commutation of his sentence. In his application, he claimed that his “alcohol abuse is under control” because of anti-depression medication, counseling, and his experience with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Political contributions weren’t the only donations made by the Fields family. Also contained in his application (along with a character reference from his Southern Baptist pastor) were copies of thank-you notes and tax receipts for financial contributions from charitable causes and organizations he’d supported: The Salvation Army, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, and the First Baptist Church of Van Buren’s “Women’s Mission Ministry.” The scope of his charitable donations, which began around the time of his second DWI conviction, expanded as his DWI rap sheet grew.

On February 20, 2004, Huckabee announced his plan to make Fields eligible for parole. According to the Arkansas News Bureau, Huckabee “bristled” when pressed for specifics as to why he favored Fields’s being made eligible for parole only after serving such a short portion of his sentence. Huckabee claimed that he had a reason: “Board recommended it. Sentence was within two months. That’s the reason. What’s hard about that?”

When Huckabee granted the clemency in April, Fields had served seven and half months of his six-year sentence. Fields had already appeared before the parole board, which voted 5-0 to grant parole, making him eligible for parole on June 1 of that year.

Huckabee’s April 14 action accelerated the process, making Fields immediately eligible for parole and releasing him from prison. Field’s commutation drew the attention of Rhonda Sharp, the Post Prison Transfer Board’s spokeswoman told the Arkansas News Bureau. “I’ve never seen anything like this happen before,” she said the day Fields’s clemency was signed. “It’s very unusual.”

 

[Pure]

huckabee videos.

the man is smooth and congenial; look at his handling of the evolution question in clip 2.

clip 1 has been argued to not-so-subliminally show a cross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xn7uSHtkuA

--

evolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVd69n1EhrU&NR=1
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clips/quips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sdZY3oSupU&feature=related

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pro-life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ3eIJ_fYAQ&feature=related

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gays in military
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl_LTJuGTB4&feature=related