Mike Huckabee's "Willie Horton"?

Mike Huckabee's "Willie Horton"?

by SouthernFriedInfidel Published on December 2nd, 2009, 10:35 am Rift: News

The manhunt is over, after Maurice Clemmons gunned down 4 off-duty police officers at a diner in Washington state. But the fallout for the people who helped him hunt down police officers will take a while to settle. And the presidential politics will be rather interesting to watch.

Because, similarly to Willie Horton before him, Clemmons was released from prison by a governor who later decided to run for president. And like Michael Dukakis, Mike Huckabee is having to answer some questions. Like why would a fellow who had been sentenced to over a century in prison get his sentence commuted? Especially at a time of life where he could quite easily return to a life of crime and violence, and become a danger to whatever community he lived in?

Huckabee says that if he was presented with the same information today that was given him 9 years ago, he'd make the same decision. I find that interesting -- this event hold no lessons in caution for him? And he expects people to think he's good presidential material?

[A Person]

One big question is why? What criteria did Huckabee use to decide? Everyone can make a mistake, but what was it about Maurice Clemmons' appeal that Huckabee was receptive to? Did Clemmons baptism and new-found piety affect Huckabee? And has Huckabee acknowledged that he made a mistake?

Salon

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.
No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murderer now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.

The answer seems to be that Huckabee was a sucker for a religious 'repentant sinner' story and refuses to accept responsibility. Mercy is not neccessarily wrong and there are a great many people convicted on weak evidence or who have made real efforts to improve themselves. And then there are those for whom the idea of instant forgivness sounds attractive and take the easy way out by professing piety and a ticket back to their hunting grounds.

Frankly becoming born again is not a good reason to inflict them on society, any more than believing in good fairy dust would be.

Think Happy Thoughts

[Edited to fix pic]

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Frankly becoming born again is not a good reason to inflict them on society, any more than believing in good fairy dust would be.

I have to wonder why a convict who became a True Christian ™ while in prison would even ask to have his/her sentence commuted. Surely, such a person would be in the ideal place to spread the Gospel, and seem themselves as having been sent there by God just for that purpose.

Also, the Bible tells believers that worldly freedom is overrated. I mean, if slaves are advised to not seek freedom, and to do everything they're told and pray for their masters, would not the same advice work for prisoners? And really, what true believer would not be eager to pay for their transgressions, simply as a matter of honesty?

[A Person]

Unlike slaves the Bible recommends liberating those in prison:

Psalm 107: 10-15.
Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron because they rebelled against the words of God, and rejected the counsel of the Most High: therefore He brought down their heart with labor; they fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their chains in two. Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

I expect Huckabee saw himself as God's agent and expected praise for his goodness and wonderful works. He's already said that laws and the constitution should be subordinate to the Gospel,he was just walking the talk.

[A Person]

Or maybe he thinks he's Jesus

Luke 4:17-18 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

Apparently the unchanging word of God changed, or Jesus read it wrong. Isiah became Esias and Jesus added the bit about the blind and bruised.

Isiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

[claragilbert]

Now that juvenile justice is under review and courts are reconsidering how teenagers are sentenced,isn't it odd that this terrible crime happened? There are more victims than the slain.

[BecauseHeLives]

I have never in my life seen so much contempt for the Lord than AP and SFI. You guys really disgust me.

[A Person]

Apparently BHL thinks Huchabee is the Lord too.