.

ad test

Monday, November 30, 2009

If He Were a Democrat....

Now it turns out that it appears that the man who allegedly shot 4 police officers in Tacoma was granted clemency by Huckabee, allowing for his pardon.

This guy's rap sheet is unbelievable in chronological order, we have:

  • Sentenced at 18 to 60 years for robbery, theft, burglary, aggravated robbery, posession of a gun on school property.
  • After his parole, it was two more armed robberies, and other assorted crimes.
  • Punching a police officer during a domestic dispute.
  • He has a pending charge of 2nd degree child rape.
Let's make this clear, sentencing people to prison, and paroling them is a crap shoot. Some people don't need to be in prison a day, some will never, ever be safe to put on the streets.

So, governors will get this wrong, but Huckabee has a particularly bad record, see also the earlier case of Wayne DuMond, where Huckabee seems to have engineered his release because it was a relative of Bill Clinton's who was raped, and reports that he was more likely to pardon someone when, "evangelical leaders attested that a prisoner had found Jesus", and it appears that the accused, Maurice Clemmons, used the language of Evangelical Christianity in his appeal for clemency to Huckabee, which likely had something to do with that decision.

There are also cases that seem to be tied to his personally knowing the prisoner, because they worked at the governor's residence (WTF is up with that?), and because they had personal ties to him.

So, it's not just that he's made a mistake, it's that he's been a real horror show on this.

Of course, if he were a Democrat with a gig as a new host, someone like Roger Ailes, who created the Willie Horton ads, would be on him, and on the network to dump him, but this won't happen, because Roger Ailes runs Fox News, and has hired him as that host:
Back in 1988, when it came to light that Willie Horton committed fresh crimes while out on a weekend furlough program backed by then-Gov. Mike Dukakis of Massachusetts, Republicans used it to help destroy Dukakis the presidential candidate. It may even have cost him the election.

“The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it,” said a gleeful Roger Ailes, then a media consultant to Republicans.

Ailes now runs Fox News. If they decide to hold the politician accountable for early release of a violent felon linked now to a death of four police officers, they know where to find him – in studio, as a Fox News host.
Consequence free lifestyle, all you have to do is to be a Republican politician.....Damn....I just cannot do that.

No comments: