Republicn camelot

The international man of mystery that will make America glamorous again!

 

This is how you make america "cool" again. This is the image we want to project to the world.

Mitt Romney speaks French, has a Harvard Law Degree, and business degree... graduating at the top of his classes. Romney would be JFK without Marilyn Monroe. Romney has done business in many places overseas, ran the Olympics. When people come to his house, his kids will be able to speak to them in Spanish, and he will be able to speak to them in French. David Huckabee will be able to tell them about when he was a boy scout and killed that dog and tried sneaking the gun on the plane! Oh, good times.

David Huckabee Leaves the Jail

David Huckabee Mugshot

Back Down in Little Rock

Back Down in Little Rock
Eugene Fields and an old familiar feeling.

By David J. Sanders

It's just like old times. National reporters are again scouring Arkansas. Except this time it is Republican Mike Huckabee's record, not Democrat Bill Clinton's, that is the subject of interest.

Over the course of more than a decade as governor, Huckabee granted over 1,000 commutations and pardons, and they're currently being examined closely by journalists. The latest to draw national attention is a commutation of Eugene Fields, who had multiple drunk-driving convictions.

The question is if there was there a connection between his wife Glenda Fields's five-figure political donations and Huckabee's action. On April 14, 2004, then-Gov. Huckabee commuted the sentence of Mr. Fields — then a four-time driving-while-intoxicated offender — granting him early release from prison. Fields, a resident of the western Arkansas town of Van Buren, was a habitual offender. He had already been convicted of DWIs in 1996, 1998, and 2000, but his 2001 felony-DWI conviction resulted in the maximum six-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine.

The political contributions by the Fields family — large by Arkansas standards — went unreported at the time Huckabee granted Eugene Fields executive clemency. The size of the donations places the Fields family in the top tier of the state GOP's donors, alongside Arkansas aristocracy like the scions of the Fords and Stephens families. Both Scott Ford, CEO of Alltel, and Warren Stephens, CEO of Stephens, Inc., gave the Arkansas Republican party $10,000 in 2003. (Full disclosure: I write a column that is distributed by Stephens Media.)

A review of campaign-finance records shows that Fields's wife, Glenda, made two $5,000 contributions to the Arkansas Republican party — one on June 26, 2003 and another on July 14, 2003. Less than two months before Glenda Fields wrote the first of those checks, the Arkansas Court of Appeals denied Eugene Fields's petition for rehearing his 2001 felony DWI conviction.

Fields did not immediately report to prison. Four days before he began serving his prison sentence on August of 2003, he applied for commutation of his sentence. In his application, he claimed that his "alcohol abuse is under control" because of anti-depression medication, counseling, and his experience with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Political contributions weren't the only donations made by the Fields family. Also contained in his application (along with a character reference from his Southern Baptist pastor) were copies of thank-you notes and tax receipts for financial contributions from charitable causes and organizations he'd supported: The Salvation Army, Arkansas Children's Hospital, U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, and the First Baptist Church of Van Buren's "Women's Mission Ministry." The scope of his charitable donations, which began around the time of his second DWI conviction, expanded as his DWI rap sheet grew.

On February 20, 2004, Huckabee announced his plan to make Fields eligible for parole. According to the Arkansas News Bureau, Huckabee "bristled" when pressed for specifics as to why he favored Fields's being made eligible for parole only after serving such a short portion of his sentence. Huckabee claimed that he had a reason: "Board recommended it. Sentence was within two months. That's the reason. What's hard about that?"

When Huckabee granted the clemency in April, Fields had served seven and half months of his six-year sentence. Fields had already appeared before the parole board, which voted 5-0 to grant parole, making him eligible for parole on June 1 of that year.

Huckabee's April 14 action accelerated the process, making Fields immediately eligible for parole and releasing him from prison. Field's commutation drew the attention of Rhonda Sharp, the Post Prison Transfer Board's spokeswoman told the Arkansas News Bureau. "I've never seen anything like this happen before," she said the day Fields's clemency was signed. "It's very unusual."



Several months after Huckabee's grant of clemency, Glenda Fields capped her previous contributions with a final $500 check to the state Republican party. That appears to be her most recent political donation.

What isn't known is if Huckabee and the Fields family had any connection other than the clemency review. However, another large political contribution to the state Republican party in 2000 and an alleged conversation about that contribution, which occurred that year between an Arkansas Republican-party official and one of Huckabee's close confidants, suggests perhaps there was: Fields's company, Fields Investments, made a $10,000 contribution to the state GOP on October 6, 2000 — the same day Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney appeared in Fort Smith at a campaign rally.

According to an Arkansas Republican who was working for the state GOP at the time, Jason Brady called him shortly thereafter inquiring about Fields's $10,000 donation. (Brady, who was known among Arkansas politicos as one of the former governor's most loyal aides, worked for Huckabee either formally or informally every day of Huckabee's nearly eleven-year tenure as governor.)

Brady had taken a leave of absence from the governor's office to run the Victory 2000 Committee, a fundraising and campaign committee directly overseen at that time by Huckabee. The former state GOP official — who wishes to remain anonymous — said that Brady called him about the Fields donation to inform him that the donation was supposed to go to the Victory 2000 account (as opposed to the state party's treasury, which Huckabee did not control) and told him "that the money was his" and that it was "the governor's deal."

Brady left Huckabee's presidential campaign earlier this year and he now works in Jefferson City, Missouri. Attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.

Replying to a series of questions this author submitted Friday evening about Governor Huckabee's decision-making process when granting Fields clemency, the Huckabee campaign issued this one-paragraph response: "Eugene Fields requested clemency before going to prison. Fields deserved time in jail and received it. In prison, he participated in a program to help other inmates with alcohol dependency issues overcome their illness. After completing his own alcohol-rehabilitation treatment, and with strong support from the community, his prison sentence was reduced to make room in an overcrowded system for violent offenders. He later relapsed and, due to his actions, he received the maximum penalties." Appended to this response was an overview of Huckabee's history of clemency decisions generally, which ended by stating that "there was no connection between those clemencies and any political donations."

So was Field's commutation normal or unusual? Public records reveal seven cases of felony DWI in which Huckabee granted a commutation. Based on these records, the Fields commutation was highly unusual in three respects.

First, his case was the only one in which public objections were raised. Both the Crawford Country prosecutor and the county sheriff strongly objected to Fields's executive clemency.

Second, there is a disparity between the Fields case and the others in respect to the time between conviction and clemency. When last convicted, Fields was 62 years old; but when Huckabee commuted his sentence he was 65 years old — a difference of three years. The years between convictions and executive clemencies for the others are as follows: 15 years, 17 years, 9 years, 14 years, 13 years, 10 years, and 14 years.

Third, Fields's application contained none of the standard justifications for commutation requests. The form for executive clemency contains four reasons for clemency requests – the correction of injustice, a life-threatening medical condition, an excessive sentence, and exemplary institutional adjustment — and applicants are instructed to check the applicable box or boxes. The only comment Fields supplies for "reason(s) for applying for a commutation of my sentence" is a handwritten "N/A."

(In another section of the application, Fields supplied his own justifications for commutation: his alcohol-related "health problems" and that the felony charge hampers his "efforts to help unfortunate children." Although Fields's charitable donations are sizable and commendable, the justifications he offers clearly are outside the standard reasons for commutation that the application form describes in detail.)

Apparently, Huckabee was not swayed by the objections of law-enforcement officials, the conspicuous lack of justification on Fields's application, or the relative rapidity with which he granted executive clemency. Perhaps the famously forgiving governor thought that Fields learned his lesson.

If so, he was mistaken. In 2006, Fields was arrested for DWI after he almost crashed head-on with a police car while crossing a state highway's center line. He pled guilty to the charge.

To be sure, all of this is merely suspicious and doesn't prove Huckabee acted improperly. But the case will undoubtedly get even more attention, and probably get murkier rather than clearer. Welcome back to Arkansas.

— David J. Sanders is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau. Sanders briefly collaborated with an NBC producer on this story.

Republicn camelot

Tin Mike

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12430
 
 
Tin Mike
By Philip Klein
Published 12/12/2007 12:09:42 AM
As he surges in polls, Mike Huckabee has come under increased scrutiny for granting an excessive number of clemencies during his time as governor of Arkansas. While it is tempting to glaze over the details of what seem like old controversies, his past actions need to be considered within the context of Huckabee's desire to be the nation's commander in chief during a time of war. Quite simply, his disturbing penchant for giving second chances to violent criminals raises serious questions about whether he has the steely resolve required to stand up to rogue regimes and carry on the fight against Islamic terrorists.
Much of the discussion about Huckabee's record on clemency has centered around the release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who went on to murder a woman in Missouri after being let out of prison under Huckabee's watch. While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Huckabee played a role in Dumond's release, Huckabee denies it. But even if one were to give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance, it does not explain away the rest of his record.
Over the course of his 10 and a half years as governor, Huckabee granted a staggering 1,033 clemencies, according to the Associated Press. That was more than double the combined 507 that were granted during the 17 and a half years of his three predecessors: Bill Clinton, Frank White, and Jim Guy Tucker.
In many cases, Huckabee's actions set loose savage criminals convicted of grisly murders over the passionate objections of prosecutors and victims' families.
"I felt like Huckabee had more compassion for the murderers than he ever did for the victims," Elaine Colclasure, co-leader of the Central Arkansas chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, a group that works on behalf of victims' families, told TAS. "He was kind of like a defense attorney. He couldn't see the pain and suffering that the victims were going through."
Among the violent criminals Huckabee granted clemency to were Denver Witham, who was "convicted of beating a man to death with a lead pipe at a bar," according to the AP; Robert A. Arnold Jr., who was convicted of killing his father in law; Willy Way Jr., who pled guilty to shooting a grocery store owner as his wife looked on; and James Maxwell, who murdered a reverend. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, when the reverend's daughter met with Huckabee to plead that Maxwell be denied clemency, Huckabee "'affectionately referred' to her father's killer as 'Jim.'"
Larry Jegley, a prosecuting attorney from Arkansas's 6th judicial district, which encompasses Little Rock, was a fierce critic of Huckabee's clemency policies throughout his time as governor. Jegley told TAS that jurors who had voted to convict criminals complained to him that Huckabee's commutations disrespected their service. Meanwhile, Huckabee's willingness to grant clemency complicated plea bargain agreements, Jegley said, because he could no longer assure victims' families that a murderer would not be eligible for parole prematurely. When he tried to make such assurances, he recalled, families would snap back, "Well, Mike Huckabee lets people out all the time." Huckabee's decision to offer commutations to violent criminals were so frequent, that it forced Jegley to call a press conference on the matter. Jegley is a Democrat, which some may argue makes him biased. But nonetheless, it is quite novel for a Republican to be under fire from a Democrat for being too soft on criminals.
When Huckabee did backpedal on his decisions, it was only after tremendous public pressure, or, in one case, a lawsuit.
In 2004, Huckabee agreed to commute the sentence of Don Jeffers, who pled guilty to beating and strangling a man to death in 1980. The Saline County Prosecuting Attorney at the time, Robert Herzfeld, another Democrat, wrote to Huckabee to complain about the decision and request an explanation, according to the Arkansas News Bureau. Herzfeld received a letter from Huckabee's adviser on criminal justice in response that said, "the governor read your letter and laughed out loud." The commutation was eventually stopped, but only after Herzfeld sued Huckabee and the state attorney general's office concluded that certain procedures were not properly followed.
Later that year, Huckabee created a firestorm when he announced his plans to grant clemency to Dennis Lewis, who shot and killed a pawnshop owner in a robbery, and Glen Martin Green. As Arkansas Leader columnist Garrick Feldman described it, Green "beat an 18-year-old woman with Chinese martial-arts sticks, raped her as she barely clung to life, ran over her with his car, then dumped her in the bayou..." Under intense public scrutiny, Huckabee reversed his decision weeks later, and vowed to be more open about his reasoning for making such choices in the future.
But because Huckabee gave little explanation for his decisions for much of his time as governor, it created a vacuum for others to draw educated conclusions. In a long 2004 investigative article, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette found that prisoners had a better chance of being granted clemency by Huckabee if they had a mutual acquaintance, labored at the governor's mansion under a prisoner work program, or a minister intervened on their behalf.
While there are opportunities to debate his motivations further, there should be no disputing the fact that Huckabee's proclivity for releasing violent criminals into society warrants close examination by Republican primary voters trying to determine whether he could be trusted as the leader of the free world during a time of war. Some may argue that this is an unfair basis by which to evaluate Huckabee. But while it may be an imperfect comparison, given that Huckabee has no foreign policy experience, the only way to judge him is to explore his actions as governor.
Huckabee has already given conservatives ample reason to fear that he is out of his depth when it comes to foreign policy. Last week, he pleaded ignorance when asked about the National Intelligence Estimate, one of the most important national security stories of the year. As the National Review noted in a scathing editorial on Monday, Huckabee has used populist appeals as a substitute for knowledge of international affairs. "I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night," he joked to Don Imus. At other times, Huckabee has resorted to making absurd analogies in a ham-handed attempt to put complex problems in human terms. In arguing for launching diplomatic relations with Iran, he said, "all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling or a friend, it's impossible to accomplish anything, impossible to resolve differences and move the relationship forward. The same is true for countries." One does not know where to start when critiquing a major presidential candidate who makes a serious comparison between engaging in diplomacy with the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and resolving trivial family disputes. Forget the comparisons to Jimmy Carter -- do conservatives want Bill Cosby to be commander in chief?
Just as Huckabee has cited executions in Arkansas as evidence that he was not as soft on criminals as the rest of his record strongly suggests, his defenders have pointed to examples of tough foreign policy statements he has made to argue that he is not as weak-kneed on national security as he seems. "I would prefer to skip the next attack [on the United States] and the exasperated fury it will rightly generate and cut to the chase by going after Al Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan," Huckabee said at a September speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But vacillating from one extreme to the other is not an example of intelligent foreign policy -- it's indicative of inexperience. Wasn't it just a few months ago that conservatives were slamming Barack Obama for wanting to negotiate with Iran and invade Pakistan?
America is in the midst of a historic struggle against radical Islam and faces a series of enormous foreign policy challenges. Those considering voting for Huckabee for the highest office in the land need to look at not only his words but his time as governor to determine whether he is the type of strong leader America requires to guide the nation through this difficult time. If his disturbing record of extending forgiveness to the most violent of criminals is any indication of how he would govern as president, there is cause for grave concern.

 

Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.

Dear Abby,

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the
beginning, and, when I confront him, he denies everything. What's
worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.
Also, since he lost his job six years ago, he hasn't even looked for a
new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and
hangout with his buddies while I have to work to pay the bills. Since
our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me
and hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?
Signed: Clueless

Dear Clueless,

Grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman. You don't need him anymore!
You're a United States Senator from New York running for President of
the United States. Act like one!!!!

Romney Week in Review - 12.14.07

Romney Week in Review December 14, 2007   This week, Governor Mitt Romney displayed the experience, vision, and values needed to lead our country forward at the Univision Presidential Forum in Miami, Florida and the tenth Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa.   Fox News' Frank Luntz conducted a focus group during the Iowa debate, which declared Romney the winner. "[Romney] united both elements of the Republican Party. And not only was his language effective, but they thought that the job that he did was very well-communicated," said Luntz.

Check Debate Central for highlights from the debate and the focus group's reaction. Also this week, Governor Romney was honored to receive the endorsement of the National Review, the leading journal of conservative thought. "Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest," the editors wrote. Read National Review's endorsement now. Governor Romney also outlined his plan to enforce our immigration laws with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on "Morning Joe" Wednesday morning. "Republicans respect and value legal immigration – but illegal immigration, that is something we have got to stop," said Governor Romney. Watch Governor Romney on "Morning Joe." Finally, mark your calendar for two important upcoming events. Governor Romney will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert this Sunday. Click here to find the airtime in your area!   And, do you have a question about our campaign's political strategy or opportunities to get involved?    Join Romney Campaign Political Director Carl Forti for an Ask Team Mitt Anything online Q & A session this Monday, December 17th at 7:30 PM EST.

The Left Attacks

Huckabee and criminals: It's worse than just Wayne DuMond

Convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, right, is released from prison on parole in Tucker, Ark., Oct. 22, 1999.

Huckabee and criminals: It's worse than just Wayne DuMond
The former governor's feckless, faith -based clemency policies in Arkansas continued for years after the convicted rapist was released.
By Joe Conason

Dec. 14, 2007 | Responding to accusations that he caused a rapist and killer named Wayne DuMond to be set loose from the Arkansas prison system -- leading ultimately to the murder of at least one and probably two women in Missouri -- Mike Huckabee has long denied any personal responsibility for that profoundly stupid decision. In the past he has tried to blame DuMond's parole on both Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker, who preceded him as governor. More recently, he has denounced the charge that he pressured the Arkansas parole board into freeing DuMond, who has since died, as "nonsense."

And now Huckabee, who plainly hoped to please the prisoner's deranged right-wing advocates back when he promised to commute DuMond's sentence, says that he laments the politicization of a tragedy.

"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief-stricken," he told CNN, referring to the relatives of DuMond's victims, including the mother of a Missouri woman he raped and murdered who has vowed to campaign against Huckabee. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."

According to good old Huck, the fault still lies elsewhere, presumably with that nebulous "system." How could anyone believe that he would let a vicious killer and rapist walk free? It is all too believable, if only because Huckabee continued to exercise his powers of clemency and commutation just as foolishly and frivolously for years after he should have learned better from the DuMond mistake. He bestowed those favors on prisoners he happened to meet, on prisoners with personal connections to him or his [family], and especially on prisoners recommended to him by pastors whom he happened to know from his own previous career as a Baptist minister and denominational leader. As with DuMond, whose case was pleaded by a preacher named Jay Cole, prisoners guilty of heinous crimes could be washed clean in Huckabee's estimation if a pastor of his acquaintance importuned him. Among the thugs to whom he granted clemency was a robber who had beaten a man to death with a lead pipe.

For several years after 1996, when he first considered parole for DuMond (he was released in 1999), the Arkansas governor freed as many as 1,000 prisoners. Some were undoubtedly deserving of release (?), but others were dangerous and violent felons like DuMond who should have been kept behind bars. Huckabee's questionable methods and motivations never changed until prosecutors, the media, his fellow Republicans and virtually the entire state of Arkansas rose up in protest against his idiocy.

The case that sparked the citizen revolt against Huckabee came to public attention in 2004, when he announced his intention to release a murderer and rapist named Glen Green. What seems to have impressed him was the endorsement of Green provided by one Rev. Johnny Jackson, a Baptist minister in the town of Jacksonville and friend of the governor's. Observers doubted that Huckabee had bothered to glance at the case file before he decided to release Green, because he could not have helped being chilled by the harrowing confession it contained.

In 1974, Green was serving as a sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base, located in a suburban county outside the state capital. On a certain evening, he seized Helen Lynnette Spencer, 18, and brought her to a quiet spot on the base where he assaulted and tried to rape her. She briefly escaped from Green, who then caught her and beat her brutally with nunchaku sticks. He stuffed her into the trunk of his car and drove her off the base to another county, where he pulled her into the front seat and violated her. Since she wasn't dead, he ran over her several times with his car, and finally dumped her corpse in a bayou. When Spencer's body was found, her hand was reaching up from the swampy waters.

This was the series of events that Green and his gullible minister -- who reportedly described the perp as "a humble Christian man" -- later insisted had been "accidental," an explanation that Huckabee inexplicably accepted. The prosecutors who put Green away for life in 1974 believed that he was capable of killing again, and they were stunned when the governor ignored their advice, along with the unanimous opinion of the Arkansas parole authorities. Only the anguished protests of the victim's family, amplified by the local media, eventually forced Huckabee to rescind the commutation of Green's sentence, which he had already announced(!)

The pattern could not have been clearer, as described by Arkansas columnist Garrick Feldman, who crusaded against Huckabee's feckless, faith-based clemency and pardon policies. Killers and rapists need not express remorse, as the Green case showed. They need only profess their salvation, "especially if a minister from Huckabee's circle vouches for their jailhouse conversion."

Whatever Huckabee now says about the DuMond case, he continued to misuse his authority for several years after the fatal consequences of that fiasco became all too obvious. Behind his pattern of error and misconduct is a troubling arrogance that is not unfamiliar in a certain kind of evangelical politician. He would not be the first elected official who did something stupid and destructive because he had convinced himself that he was fulfilling the will of God. The question is why the rest of us should want to risk our safety and security by entertaining such delusions again.

-- By Joe Conason