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DEL.ICIO.USThe tale of Huckabee and the castrated rapist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The good news for Republican Mike Huckabee is that the media and other presidential nominees now understand that he’s a serious candidate.
The bad news is that the new favorite of conservative evangelicals — Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Huckabee today — is just now getting the kind of scrutiny he needed to put behind him four or five months ago.
Below is the crucial segment of an Associated Press retrospective of Huckabee’s years as lieutenant governor and governor. There’s a certain Arkansas strangeness to it, on multiple levels:
Huckabee has consistently understated his role in the parole of rapist Wayne DuMond, who had been convicted in the 1984 rape of a distant cousin of former President Clinton.
Two months after taking office, Huckabee stunned the state by saying he questioned DuMond’s guilt and that it was his intention to free the rapist, who had been castrated by masked men while awaiting trial.
Huckabee said then he had “serious questions as to the legitimacy of his guilt” and acknowledged later that he had met with DuMond’s wife about the case while he was lieutenant governor. Two months after ascending to the governor’s office, Huckabee met with the woman again.
The ex-governor now blames his predecessor for making DuMond parole eligible — Jim Guy Tucker commuted a life-plus-20 years sentence to 39 1/2 years — but distances himself from his role in DuMond’s release. Huckabee met privately with the state parole board, and two members have said he pressured them for a vote.
“He made it obvious that he thought DuMond had gotten a raw deal and wanted us to take another look at it,” former board member Charles Chastain said in 2001. “Some board members who were usually very tough about letting people out … (later) voted in favor of him, and seemed eager to.”
On his campaign Web site, Huckabee says the parole board was made up entirely of Democrats appointed by Clinton and Tucker.
It doesn’t mention that Huckabee reappointed board member Railey Steele days before he voted with three other members to set DuMond free. DuMond was later convicted of killing a woman in Missouri and died in 2005.
Comments
By lane filler
November 28, 2007 2:37 PM | Link to this
Anyone interested in what Huckabee is really like face to face should try this funny (but it actually happened) column: http://goupstate.us/index.php/lanefiller/2007/11/02/title_14
By David Anderson
November 28, 2007 2:53 PM | Link to this
The big media might as well go down to the ocean and scream at the tide not to come in. Mike Huckabee is going to be elected the next President and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it, no matter how dirty and disgusting they get.
By GA Elephant
November 28, 2007 2:59 PM | Link to this
David…don’t delude yourself. Huckabee is no conservative. He’s as intrusive as Hillary. Ban smoking? Carbon tax? He’s nanny state through and through no matter how good of a Baptist he is. I like his religion, but his economics and social policies scare me to death.
By Fistic Mystic
November 28, 2007 3:38 PM | Link to this
Right now the Republican nomination is between Giuliani and Huckabee. Romney’s fading despite spending tens of millions, McCain can’t win, and Thompson is a train wreck. With the Evangelical community squarely behind him, Huck is the man to beat.
By Craig
November 28, 2007 3:43 PM | Link to this
You mean kind of like Sonny’s taxing of cigarettes here in GA? Perhaps Sonny and Huck would make the perfect ticket huh? Social conservatives but fiscal moderates?
By Steve Huckabeerealfriend
November 28, 2007 3:46 PM | Link to this
It is becoming evident that those who attack Huckabee are continually grasping at straws. This happened at the begining of his time as Gov. and if it was a real issue I don’t think he would not have been re-elected or maintained the highest rating of any public official in the state of Arkansas 58% approval in ‘05 and 55% in ‘06 while he was in a mostly Dem state at a time when Bush’s approval was about 38% and pulling most Repubs down the tubes with him. The Gov. didn’t pardon the man…end of story.
By Barnabas Park
November 28, 2007 3:59 PM | Link to this
Steve! You are absolutely right. If Mike Huckabee was what his critics might say he was, then why he was reelected again by his state and nominated as one of 5 most effective governors in the United States by Times.
By pcspencer
November 28, 2007 4:03 PM | Link to this
Ugh, Huckabee is such a panderer to the right-wingers. I am so tired of this talk about freedom while legislating all over people about morality. The rise of fundamentalism is the worst things that’s ever happened to this country; all the hate and unhappiness across the world from our secret coups and corporate deals are not caused by liberals, they’re caused by people like him. Selfish people like him who ignore reality in favor of an insane ideology
By Wackolibhack
November 28, 2007 5:10 PM | Link to this
It is Bush’s fault that Huckabee is a panderer and that fundamentalism is rising. It is also Bush’s fault that liberalism/socialism cannot get a foot hold in this horrible nation of haters that we live in.
By Thomas Bell
November 28, 2007 5:24 PM | Link to this
In rebuttal to negative posts about Mike’s pardon:
“A relative of Bill Clinton is raped. Wayne Dumond is arrested and imprisoned in the case. While awaiting sentencing, Dumond himself is sexually assaulted and castrated by two masked men. A local sheriff, later sentenced to 160 years for extortion and drug dealing, displays Dumond’s testicles in a jar on his desk under a sign that read, ‘That’s what happens to people who fool around in my county.’[maybe the sheriff committed the rape and framed the man] A parole board, upon receiving new evidence of Dumond’s innocence, will vote to release him after 4 1/2 years in prison. Governor Clinton — according to the managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette — stages a ‘romping, stomping fit’ and blocks the release.” In another reference, we said, “As for Clinton, his character is formed in no small part on the idea of hegemonic liberty — the presumption that because of his power his liberty is worth more than that of others. To those without power, the story can be quite different. For Paula Jones. Or for Wayne Dumond, who was wrongly accused in the 1984 rape of a Clinton relative.”
“Dumond, who was eventually released and is now charged with murder in another case, was clearly the victim of an extraordinary injustice in the rape case. He was released on that basis and not upon an hypothesis concerning what might happen in the future.]”
Cited from http://prorev.com/whtwtru.htm
If somebody cut of my loins for a crime I did not commit I might snap and kill someone without the Lords’ strong intervention. A second real crime does not relate to the first injustice. The real criminals were the sheriff and the Bill Clinton political machine in Arkansas.
Post for Christians tried of lying and misleading liberals, Thomas Bell
By Churchill
November 28, 2007 7:23 PM | Link to this
Speaking of Bill Clinton, he was out there lying, again, in Iowa about his/her stance on the war in Iraq. He is pathological. The guy cannot help himself. Do we want to through all this again with the two of these self-promoting liars.
By jessica
November 28, 2007 8:46 PM | Link to this
Yes, Bill was lying again today but what struck me as even more crazy was his statement about having his office in Harlem-
“I raise money from the richest Americans for my foundation but my offices are in Harlem in New York City. I walk the streets among my neighbours and talk to them about their lives.”
“My neighbors” (?) Let’s not forget that Bill does not LIVE in Harlem.
East and Central Harlem are two of the poorest communities in New York City characterized by higher rates of poverty and unemployment, lower education levels and a higher number of single parent households than the average for Manhattan or New York City. 36% of East Harlem households have incomes below $10,000; the unemployment rate is 16%. 88% of children enrolled in East Harlem public schools are eligible for free lunches.
Median Household Income (2000) was $14,600 in East Harlem and $16,000 in Central Harlem. The percentage of children in poverty was 54%.
Bill’s real neighbors are- in Chappaqua which is 91.80% white, the median income 7 years ago for a household was $163,201, and the median income for a family was $180,451. 2.3% of families were below the poverty line.