Joe Conason adds some more background to Mike Huckabee’s pardon habits:
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.
Yet Mike Huckabee chose to execute Frankie Parker sooner, because Frankie Parker made the mistake of converting to the wrong religion.
I think it is important to call the public’s attention to Frankie Parker’s story. One might assume Gov. Huckabee was just gullible, or soft. But the way he handled Frankie Parker’s request for commutation reveals something much more sinister about the governor — that he had no compunction about exercising the worst kind of religious favoritism.
If Huckabee had simply not intervened in Parker’s sentence and allowed the execution to go ahead as scheduled, it wouldn’t have been so blatant. But Huckabee took the trouble to make the execution date six weeks sooner. And he did this even as Mother Teresa and many Buddhist monks and priests, including the Dalai Lama, wrote requesting that Parker’s sentence be commuted. I think that says something really ugly about Mike Huckabee.
Like Torquemada before him Huckababy was called of God to hasten the heathens appearance before the judgment seat of Christ. There’s nothing wrong with giving a reluctant heathen a nudge into the lake of fire.
So if a convict is “one of us” (in the Huckster’s mind, that is) then that’s OK? It doesn’t even matter what “us” is in that context (Christian, American, white, heterosexual, male, right-handed, whatever), to base a decision on that principle automatically makes one unsuitable for ANY office.
And last time I checked, the “bedrock of public policy” in the US was never intended to be a theocracy. What a sorry sack of s***.
Also, to add, the “bedrock of public policy” is not determined by a religious sect formed in 1845 over the issue of slavery.
As much as the Church of England gets its fair share of ridicule for breaking off from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of a king wanting to divorce his wife, the Southern Baptists broke off form the other Baptists in the US because SOUTHERN because they supported slavery. Just sayin’.
Which is, of course, why we have a separation of church and state. The pardon power of the president, and I’d assume many governorships, is unchecked. The only check being the public saying, “You pardoned this guy?” Hucks may have just been checked.
Now we’ll never really know what was up with Maurice Clemmons, because the cops done killed him.
After the Ft. Hood shootings, my Rightie coworkers expressed anger over Maj. Nadal surviving the incident. This kind of caused me to flip out at them: What is it with you guys?! You’re so scared of trials and due process! I want to know WHY he did this.
Way too much “Fear of Facts” in that crowd.
huck ran for public office and won. Took the oath of office to uphold man’s law with one hand on the bible…and once in office he administers his god’s law. That is a recipe for failure.
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You’re quoted on HuffPo!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/01/huckabees-clemmons-pardon_n_375020.html
The death penalty is an atavistic aberration and like our ‘tails’ and ‘gills’ which went by the wayside a long time ago because they no longer served a purpose – not to mention how unattractive we might look sporting them – it’s time it went by the wayside.
Years ago when I lived in Yemen I became fascinated with their rendering of the death penalty. Staged in a public square, the guilty’s head was cut off to the roar of the crowd and the seeming delight of the guilty’s dead victim’s relatives.
However, like any seemingly simple political act, there was intrigue. If the family of the victim could come up with a bunch of money to pay the state executioner, the head of the guilty was sawed off – very slowly. However, if the familty of the guilty could come up a bunch of money to pay the state executioner, the head of the guilty came off like lightening.
How something’s-wrong-with-this-process? Maybe, but the rich in America seldom if ever get our death penalty, but the poor? And then of course we throw up our hands at the barbarism of beheading while paying no attention to the opinion of the rest of the developed world which looks in horror at our continued rendering of our death penalty.
End of rant.
I think Rupert Murdoch is salivating over our mouse clicks – sounds like he wants him a piece of the action.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20091201/D9CALF1O0.html
How long will we remain a third world country? Very few, if any–read the statistics–civilized and democratic countries have the death penalty. If you read, you will find out that due to numerous appeals, the death penalty costs the state more than life in jail. Believe me, I have visited jails and that is a viscous punishment. Though we claim they get such good treatment in a prison, try it sometime. They get medical care, but how long do they wait, sometimes until they are dead, food is atrocious, crowding is unreal. Read on in statistics and find out what the ratio of poor black prisoners to rich white prisoners. Money surely does talk in the country too. Until they find a method of positive identification for crimes the death penalty should be abolished. Even then, it causes the quandary of is it legal for the state to murder when it is illegal for a person?