It turns out that Maurice Clemmons, the guy who killed four Washington cops a few days ago, was one of numerous felons that Mike Huckabee pardoned as former Arkansas governor. Huckabee ran for the Republican nomination in the last US election, and was thought to have been a strong prospect for 2012.
Salon's Gene Lyons writes:
Although he posed as a conservative hard-liner, when it came to crime and punishment, the glib, self-deprecating Huckabee proved as softheaded and gullible as the woolliest sociology professor in the faculty lounge.
During the former Baptist minister's decade as Arkansas governor, it appeared that no matter how heinous an inmate's crimes, all he had to do for a pardon was drop to his knees, praise Jesus and persuade some preacher known to Huckabee of his newfound holiness. "Everybody knows that Mike Huckabee makes up his mind what to do by what God tells him to do," said one minister who gained clemency for a prisoner serving 100 years for the strong-arm robbery of elderly neighbors.
Making the governor's personal acquaintance also seemed to help. Inmates competed to be assigned to do yard work at the Governor's Mansion. "If you do a good job raking the governor's leaves," Pulaski County (Little Rock) prosecutor Larry Jegley complained bitterly, "you can go free."You don't get far in the Republican Party if you're soft on crims.
Altogether, Huckabee commuted 163 inmates' sentences, including a dozen murderers. Several have already ended up back in prison. Indeed, given Huckabee's track record, Maurice Clemmons probably won't be the last to earn notoriety. We must pray that he ends up being the worst. Only a strong public outcry in 2004 prevented the governor from freeing a Lonoke County killer who'd beaten, raped and run over a pregnant woman with his car, only to get religion in the penitentiary.
Another rival to Sarah Palin falls.
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