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More on Huckabee and Dumond

Tristero at Digby's Hullabaloo goes off on Mike Huckabee today for his Wayne Dumond pardon. It's in the news again because of an anti-Huckabee ad by a 527 group.

Wayne Dumond's attorney, John Wesley Hall, who writes as Last Night in Little Rock at TalkLeft and I have taken a different view of the case from a legal perspective. We have provided the legal grounds upon which Huckabee might have believed Dumond should have been released -- and the argument that Huckabee succombed to anti-Clinton forces.

And then, there's Mike Huckabee's Other Pardons. As I wrote there,

[More...]

Huckabee granted a lot of deserved pardons while in office, particularly for drug offenders serving excessive sentences. A Governor's use of clemency and pardon power is a good thing. The problem with Huckabee's exercise of the power is that several of his decisions make no sense, he refused to explain his decisions, and he injected his religion into it.

The take-away lesson in this for me:

Instead of saying, "Yes, I believed Dumond should have been paroled, his sentence was too long, there were doubts about his guilt and I made my thoughts known to the parole board," Huckabee is all over the map, saying he didn't know a lot about the case; he denied clemency and didn't pressure the parole board; it's former Lt. Governor Jim Tucker's fault for reducing Dumond's sentence to 39 1/2 years, making him eligible for parole; Bill Clinton must have known about it; and on and on.

Sometimes the truth will set you free. I think it's too late now for Huckabee. He's caught in a Willie Horton trap, and it's a web of his own making.

Which is really too bad, because while I don't want any Republican as President, someone like Huckabee who is willing to exercise clemency, even if wrong sometimes, is preferable to a candidate like Giuliani who is so intent on furthering his law and order image that he is only capable of showing compassion for former offenders who happen to be his cronies and business associates.

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    Isnt it great (none / 0) (#1)
    by Jgarza on Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 07:34:30 PM EST
    when primary politics and crime and injustice news match up so perfectly?  This story just begs for you to dissect and you do a great job.