Merged Huckabee going down? / Huckabee & Clemmons

[Puppycow]

Huck had said just before this erupted that he probably wasn't going to run in 2012, that he was having too much fun doing his show.

I don't believe that. I believe that it's just too early for any candidate to throw their hat in the ring yet, so they downplay it and suggest that they are not really interested. Standard stuff. Especially if it's not a categorical denial, which this wasn't.

ETA: IIRC Huckabee recently won the Values Voters straw poll.

 

[mortimer]

Or perhaps there is no blame at all to go around. The system is designed with certain assumptions in mind -- that (usually) rehabilitation is possible, that mitigating circumstances should be taken into account, that sometimes sentences are poorly selected, etc. Failures are expected, and as we skeptics know, when something is expected, we shouldn't automatically consider it miraculous when it happens.

I'll admit a little shadenfreude when bad things befall politicians I don't like, but I consider myself to be principled and would never hold this against Huckabee. That his own party is, is, well, perhaps evidence of something else. ;-)

As for Washington... maybe. I've never quite understood the bail thing. It seems like someone should either be held in jail or they shouldn't. Bail just seems like a money-making scheme, one that simultaneously punishes people just because they're poor and gives the rich a privelidge they haven't earned.

Well put.

 

[Sporanox]

Honestly, I don't think Huck shares much culpability here. His delayed assumption of his responsibility in the matter, though, doesn't reflect well on him.

 

[leftysergeant]

I'm not a big fan of Huckabee (because of his social views) but I'd hate to see a politician go down in flames because a calculated risk went bad. But I'm not all that well-versed about how bad a mistake this might have been.

It wasn't a calculated error. He let the cons con him with the old "I found Jesus" BS.

The last thing this country needs is a religious whackadoodle who lets his religious prejudiices over-ride the mundane laws and whatever he has that passes for common sense.

Buh-bye, Huckleberries. Sucks to have known ya.

 

[Whiplash]

You just can't help yourself, can you Lefty?

 

[tyr_13]

Honestly, I don't think Huck shares much culpability here. His delayed assumption of his responsibility in the matter, though, doesn't reflect well on him.

I don't think it's going to ultimately matter if he is or is not culpable to most voters. All that matters is that a spotlight has been shown on his past policy of letting his religious beliefs drive a very, very poor governmental choices. To people who share his religious beliefs that's a plus, unless they don't believe that religious beliefs should drive governmental choices. To almost every single other person it's a huge negative.

 

[Just thinking]

It should also be noted that Huckabee commuted his sentence to something like 47 years after Clemmons had served around 16 years. The Arkansas parole board still had to approve his release, which they did with a 5-0 vote. Washington State also allowed him out on a $15,000 bail, knowing his past convictions. There is plenty of blame to be spread about here.

Unfortunately the facts matter very little to too many. When Clemons was given clemency by Huckabee it was actually for very sound reasons, and I doubt anyone on this forum would have done otherwise. He was a teenager in jail for over 11 years on a burglary/robbery charge (without a weapon) serving a 108 year sentence. Seem a tad excessive? --- no other person in Arkansas who committed a similar crime was serving 1/10th that amount. That is why Huckabee granted clemency ... he did not pardon him, he did not parole him (that's done by the parole board). He also was not responsible for the two idiot judges that let him go on $15,000 bail after child rape charges.

It's all too easy to sit back and say NOW that it would have been better to not grant clemency ... and Huckabee has admitted full responsibility for that action. (Just what have those two judges had to say? ... that's right, nothing!). It also would have been better to kill Hitler as a child ... but would anyone have ever thought that way at the time? And as for the "finding Jesus" nonsense ... virtually everyone in prison finds Jesus, so I'm very skeptical that that was the selling reason in this case.

 

[Snide]

Or perhaps there is no blame at all to go around. The system is designed with certain assumptions in mind -- that (usually) rehabilitation is possible, that mitigating circumstances should be taken into account, that sometimes sentences are poorly selected, etc. Failures are expected, and as we skeptics know, when something is expected, we shouldn't automatically consider it miraculous when it happens.

Agreed. The only way to ensure we get as many criminals as possible is to lock up all of the suspects. (And even that wouldn't work 100% of the time.) The only way to ensure criminals don't repeat is capital punishment for all convicts, no questions. I don't want to live in a society that does either, and as long as our society does not do either, we are guaranteed that some guilty will avoid punishment, and some convicts will repeat. This is a necessary result of living in a society I think we all want in one shape or another.

This is why I hated the anti-Dukakis (lack of) thinking then, and I hate the anti-Huckabee sentiment now. Shameful.

 

[MattusMaximus]

This is why I hated the anti-Dukakis (lack of) thinking then, and I hate the anti-Huckabee sentiment now. Shameful.

What I find interesting is the hypocrisy on display from a variety of political fronts regarding these developments. But then... it's politics, which is synonymous with hypocrisy

 

[psychictv]

I didn't read the whole thing so apologies if it's already been mentioned, but can I just say... WORST THREAD TITLE MENTAL IMAGE EVER.

 

[Lurker]

It should also be noted that Huckabee commuted his sentence to something like 47 years after Clemmons had served around 16 years. The Arkansas parole board still had to approve his release, which they did with a 5-0 vote. Washington State also allowed him out on a $15,000 bail, knowing his past convictions. There is plenty of blame to be spread about here.

Minor quibble, the bail was $150,000 but a bondsman took $15k and put up the rest, or so I heard.

 

[Tricky]

Merging similar threads from Politics and Conspiracy Theories.

Posted By: Tricky

 

[ponderingturtle]

Aye. Huckabee's Horton just killed four white cops. I realize I may be jumping the gun here, but it is my opinion that this attack was racially motivated.

I accept that I may be wrong.

DR

Why think that they were attacked because they were white and not because they were cops?

 

[Lurker]

OK, I listened to a little Hannity on the radio yesterday and he was interviewing Huckabee. They portrayed the whole event as if Maurice Clemmons had only two events on his record; robbery (unarmed) and breaking & entering/theft.

Today I checked Wiki to get the actual history and lo and behold it is pretty apparent that Huckabee and Hannity were lying their arses off. That pissed me off! Here is what information Huckabee should have known by the time he granted clemency:

1. Clemmons was arrested when he was a junior at Hall High School for carrying a .25-caliber pistol on school property. He claimed to be carrying the gun because he was "beaten by dopers", and said he had "something for them" if they attacked him again.

2. In 1989, a 17-year-old Clemmons and two other accomplices robbed a woman at midnight in the parking lot of a Little Rock hotel bar. Clemmons pretended to have a gun in his pocket and threatened to shoot her if she did not give him her purse. When she responded, "Well, why don't you just shoot?", Clemmons punched her in the head and ran off with the purse, which contained $16 and a credit card.

3. Clemmons was accused multiple times of displaying violence during court appearances. On one occassion, Clemmons dismantled a metal door stop and hid it in his sock to use as a weapon also reportedly hidden a piece of metal in his sock to use as a weapon. It was discovered and confiscated by a court bailiff. One another instance, Clemmons took a lock from his holding cell and threw it at a bailiff, but missed and accidentally hit his mother instead.

4. Clemmons was once accused of reaching for a guard's pistol while being transported to court. During one trial, he was shackled in leg irons and seated next to a uniformed officer because the presiding judge ordered extra security, claiming Clemmons had threatened him.

5. By 1990, Clemmons was sentenced to 108 years in prison for eight felony charges from his teenage years in Arkansas. The total prison term stemmed from multiple sentences, some of which were concurrent to others and some were consecutive.

6. The largest sentencing came in 1990, when he was given a 60-year prison term for breaking into an Arkansas state trooper's home and stealing about $6,700-worth of items, including a gun.

Huckabee granted him clemency shortening his term from 108 years to 47 years, 5 months and 19 days which just happened to make him elgible for parole that day! Today Huckabee acts as if he just made an unreasonable sentence more reasonable yet it is clearly obvious by his commutation to a very specific length that allowed Clemmons to immediately apply for parole that Huckabee fully intended Clemmons to go free on parole ASAP.

This lying pisses me off as Huckabee certainly knows he is lying and Hannity was supporting the lie. Of course no callers were taken that had the real information.

All that being said, I agree with Huckabee shortening the sentence. I am not outraged by that so much. I am outraged by how he is now trying to spin this to absolve himself of any blame whatsoever instead trying to blame the parole board. Grr!

 

[MattusMaximus]

I didn't read the whole thing so apologies if it's already been mentioned, but can I just say... WORST THREAD TITLE MENTAL IMAGE EVER.

Ewwwwwww...

 

[WildCat]

I posted this in another thread, but it's also appropriate here:

And this illustrates quite well how "seriously" Huckabee treated his clemency decisions. This is his actual response to Prosecutor Robert Herzfeld's objection to one of his pardons:

4 cops now dead? LOL!

 

[Cynic]

The typo makes me question its authenticity.

 

[WildCat]

The typo makes me question its authenticity.

It's sourced (names names), and the article is from 2004 so it's untainted by either the current incident or the 2008 run for President. It's also a local tri-county Arkansas newspaper, not some political blog.

I see typos all the time in the Chicago Tribune, spell checkers don't catch words spelled correctly but used wrongly. In this instance dropping the "r" from "your" to make "you" instead.

I see no reason to doubt its authenticity.

 

[Cynic]

You probably right.

 

[Brainster]

Wow, Wildcat, that letter is disgusting.