Sunday, December 09, 2007

The Husk For Dummies

This is relatively important, so let's just lay this all out again.

BuzzFlash summarizes the issue:
Well, Mike Huckabee not only is a pious Creationist and a fundamentalist Baptist minister with a folksy manner, but he's also an opportunist and prevaricator.

First of all, he denied this week that he is being advised by the scumbag Dick Morris, just after a Huckabee staffer confirmed that Huckabee talks with Morris on political strategy regularly.

But more importantly, Huckabee has his own Willie Horton problem.

It's one of those complicated swampy Arkansas affairs, so we'll just give you the BuzzFlash take on it based on our reading over the years: as governor, Huckabee paroled a convicted rapist, Wayne DuMond, who shortly thereafter went on to kill two young women after raping them.

Although Huckabee disputes it, it appears that Huckabee was caving in to a rabid contingent of anti-Clinton whackos. This group of nutcases ran a campaign claiming that DuMond was framed by Bill Clinton because the first woman that he raped -- and was serving time for -- was a distant relative of Clinton's. Without getting into the quicksand of details, the nutty defense of a convicted rapist was as flawed as it was bizarre to watch right-wingers champion a hardcore sexual criminal.

The best and most exhaustive account of Huckabee's personal role in appeasing the Clinton haters by paroling DuMond can be found in a Murray Waas article printed in the Arkansas Times in 2002.

Of course, as self-righteous and self-described "Men of God" often do, Huckabee claims to be appalled by anyone thinking that he would release a rapist for political gain.

Well, the mothers of the girls subsequently slain by DuMond have a response for Mike in an article entitled, "Murdered women's mothers blame Huckabee for his part in killer's release":
The mothers say Huckabee is responsible, at least in part, for the release of DuMond, who died in a Missouri prison in 2005.

"What a fool," Lois Davidson, (Carol) Shields' mother, said of Huckabee. "Thinking he could rule the country when he couldn't even do a good job as governor of Arkansas."

Janet Williams, (Sara) Andrasek's mother, said: "Wayne DuMond should have never been on the streets in Missouri. … When politics are involved, people get hurt, and Sara and Carol Shields paid the ultimate price with their lives."

Davidson and Williams said they're particularly angry because Huckabee has never called them to apologize or explain his part in the DuMond case.
Huckabee, like Bush, deals with his disastrous decision by blaming others -- in this case the Arkansas parole board -- and expressing compassion for the families of the victims, but -- also like Bush -- not accepting an iota of responsibility for his actions.
Arianna spells it out from her perspective:
The way that Mike Huckabee has handled the furor caused by the Huffington Post's coverage of his role in the release of Wayne Dumond, a serial rapist who went on to rape and kill at least one other woman, has been very revealing. And troubling.

It has exposed the dissembling reality behind the charming, articulate, more-preacher-than-politician facade - and has called into question both his judgment and his integrity.

Huckabee's response has been to fudge the truth, point the finger at everyone in sight, and -- that old standby -- blame the messenger.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning, Huckabee said of our story: "there are factual errors in what they have printed, some of it is outrageously incorrect." As an example of our factual errors, he cited... well, nothing. Not one.

He also claimed "the Huffington Post just doesn't want to give the whole story of what was going on." Really? Our original story on the Dumond case was over 4,000 words long and offered what even the American Spectator deemed a "detailed, convincingly irrefutable" presentation of the evidence in which HuffPost "backs up every single word." What's more, we included links to a number of never before published documents from the governor's own files.

Huckabee also claimed that in a follow up story "the Huffington Post totally misrepresented and just utterly distorted" the statements of Butch Reeves, his former top aide, who told us that, contrary to his former boss's claims, Huckabee had indeed influenced the parole board to reverse its previous rejection of Dumond's release. Huckabee described Reeves as "outraged," and promised that a statement from Reeves to that effect would be posted on mikehuckabee.com today. It just went up, ten hours later.

In the statement, Huckabee's campaign acknowledges the accuracy of the quotes attributed to Reeves in our story, but splits hairs over whether Huckabee's claims that Dumond's conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime" (brutally raping a 17 year old cheerleader) were in the context of a discussion about "paroling" the rapist or in the context of a discussion about granting him "clemency" or "a pardon."

Even Huckabee appears vague on the semantics he now considers so important, having told Tim Russert in January: "They asked me did I think that he should be paroled, or something to that effect, and I simply said, "I think that his case has got to be given, you know, a serious look." The campaign now concedes he said more than that.

Most important, Huckabee made it clear to the parole board that he thought Dumond should be free. Does it really make any difference in terms of the tragic outcome whether Dumond would be freed through parole, clemency, or pardon? Isn't the point that Huckabee wanted him freed and that the board, which had recently voted 4-1 against paroling him, reversed course three months later and voted 4-1 for his release.

Tellingly, the Huckabee campaign chose to attack only the Huffington Post for our interpretation of Reeves' comments, even though our reporter Murray Waas was joined on the phone call with Reeves by Brian Ross, ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent, who filed a report offering the same interpretation. Yet there is no mention of ABC or Ross in the Huckabee campaign's press release. Why? Is it harder to dismiss ABC as "left-wing," and the charges as part of a partisan agenda?

But none of Huckabee's finger pointing (he mentioned Bill Clinton 12 times while discussing the Dumond case in his press conference on Tuesday) addresses the key questions raised by this tragic story: why Huckabee continued to favor the rapist's release, even after being sent police reports and wrenching letters from several of his victims detailing his horrific crimes (which included raping a woman while her 3 year old daughter lay beside her in bed); and why Huckabee, to this day, continues to insist "No one could have predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out" when we can read for ourselves the words of his victims predicting that the man would rape again - and perhaps murder - if released.

"Dear Wayne," Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond, after having read the victims' letters. "My desire is that you be released from prison." And no amount of spinning can change that, or the conclusion that Huckabee allowed his judgment to be swayed by the bleating of a collection of right-wing zealots who put their hatred of Bill Clinton over the well being of the public (Dumond's victim was a distant relative of Clinton, and the daughter of a major Clinton donor).

In interviews, Huckabee claims that his stand on Dumond was clouded by a surfeit of compassion. In reality, it was clouded by a surfeit of cynical pandering to a group whose support he felt he needed.

And no amount of denials and mudslinging by Huckabee can make the devastating evidence -- and what that evidence reveals about him -- go away.
Links at the above.

And here again is the long version.

At the least, the Huck shows that he as stupid and dishonest and, well, disgusting as the other GOP candidates. Not a one has anything to offer this country but for a load of needless shit. Not a one, including this one, has a principle to his name.

Anyway.

The lies of the right on this; the ends of attacking Clinton justified everything.

The Wayback Machine brings us Steve Dunleavy, one of Murdock's rabid dogs, from June 1996:
The bombshell Whitewater convictions that may be President Clinton's darkest hour gave a middle-aged Arkansas housewife her brightest moment. "Now that the Clinton people are going to jail, maybe my husband will finally go free," Mary Lou Dumond told me in Little Rock. Her husband, Wayne Dumond, 49, has just spent his 11th year in an Arkansas jail.

Many say that Dumond is the victim of one of the most bone-crunching and infuriating examples of Clinton-clan justice the country has ever seen. And now, because Clinton's alleged bagman, Gov. Jimmy Guy Tucker, is going to jail, Dumond is set to see freedom.

"The new Governor, Mike Huckabee, has assured me Wayne will be a free man," Mrs. Dumond said Thursday. "He is not one of the Clinton crowd. He is a very fair man. He has always been disturbed about the way the Clinton people never wanted my husband free," she added. And there was a very good reason for the Clinton people not wanting her husband to go free.

THE CHARGES
The story of Wayne Dumond is not for the innocent eyes of the young, but every adult of voting age should read closely. These are the cold facts as an Arkansas court saw it: A 17 year-old girl says she was kidnapped and raped on Sept. 11, 1984, in Forrest City, Ark. Dumond, father of six, Vietnam veteran, churchgoer, was convicted in August 1985 of the rape. He was sentenced to life PLUS 20 years. An appeal by Dumond, under Gov. Clinton, got a response of: "No merit."

What the public did not see, while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, were the following very unpretty facts--which Clinton, despite countless personal appeals, ignored:

A genetic expert stated unequivocally that sperm found on the girl's jeans COULD NOT "IN A MILLION YEARS" belong to Dumond.

The victim identified two other men as her rapist but they had ironclad alibis and were set free.

She failed to pick out Dumond as her rapist when presented with a lineup.

But now the clincher: The father of the girl is a millionaire and one of Clinton's biggest contributors. But guess what? The girl is Bill Clinton's cousin. And her mother worked as part of Clinton's inner circle when he was governor.

The worst was yet to come.

THE HORROR

On March 7, 1985, while Dumond was awaiting trial, two masked men with guns and knives burst into his house. They hog-tied him. They raped him. And then, with surgical scalpels, they castrated him. Now get this, the two monsters ACTED ON ORDERS OF LOCAL SHERIFF COOLIDGE CONLEE! The sheriff retrieved Dumond's testicles from Dumond's blood splattered house. The sheriff then placed the body parts in a jar that he displayed on his desk with the admonition: "That's what happens to people who fool around in my country." The sheriff actually took that jar to "a good-ol'-boys wedding." That is a fact.

No reaction whatsoever from Gov. Clinton.

Now hold on to your seat for this. The sheriff, who didn't tolerate any "fooling around" in his country-- would later be nabbed by the FBI for extortion and drug-dealing and sentenced to 160 years in jail, where he died of natural causes.

Dumand's attackers were never picked up even though ONE OF THEM CONFESSED TO A STATE COP!

All this and Dumond still rotted away in prison. And Clinton, both as governor and president, ignored facts that surrounded the case of the rape of his cousin.

"Bitter? Hell yes, I was, at first," Dumond told me from prison at Varner in Arkansas. But now, I think, I hope, things will change around. With Jimmy Guy Tucker gone as governor, one of Clinton's men, and Mr. Clinton running for cover, maybe the new man will have another look. "But strange as it may seem, it hasn't been all that bad these days. I have gotten a very good education in here. I think I am becoming a computer nut. I just miss my family, so much.

"That girl? Well it's pretty ridiculous. Sad, but ridiculous. She told the police that a man in a new red pickup truck, with no tailgate, drove to her house, burst in, forced her into her car, drove in her car to some woods, tied her up, committed a pretty terrible act, drove her back in her car and took off in her car and dumped it nearby. Well, I drove a very old dirty brown pickup with a tailgate. Now, if I took her car, what happened to the pickup I drove to her house in? She changed her story, how many times? I mean many times. [Well we know one thing, she sure had to be related to Clinton - changing one's story must run in the family] She was with this guy driving through town and suddenly, out of nowhere, months after, she saw me driving my old pickup truck. She told the guy out of nowhere: 'That's the man that did it.' She said I had raped her.

" When it came to the lineup, she couldn't identify me. Suddenly she disappears into a room with her father and a cop who showed her a picture of me. She came out and immediately identified me."

THE CONVICTION

The outrageous identifying scam was exposed by a local cop who witnessed it all. Deputy Sheriff Henry Leary had the guts to go against his own and told the world of the scenario. Dumond was still convicted. "Oh yeah," Dumond told me, "she identified two other guys who were the rapists. They had an ironclad alibi. Then it came to me."

Dumond was still convicted. Gov. Clinton remained silent. But of course at the time nobody knew that the girl was Clinton's cousin. The Governor didn't mention it.

After 4.5 years, with his freedom gone, his manhood gone, a five-person parole board recommended that Dumond go free for time served. John R. Steer, managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, records the following reaction from then Gov. Clinton: "Clinton had a romping, stomping fit. The victim was a distant cousin and St. Francis County [where this all took place] had a lot of votes and he deeply resented the pressure to free Dumond." Clinton refused to sign a release. And Dumond rotted.

Dumond has since been before the parole board twice. "They ask me: 'Do you have any remorse?' Well, I tell them straight. How can I have remorse for something I didn't do? No sir, I will stay here until I die before I say I am sorry for something I haven't done."

The day of the castration is not something that should be dealt with in detail in a family newspaper. "My two boys, Michael and Joey, found me there after coming home from school. They cut me loose and got help." he said. "Sure I remember it, but do you really want to know the details?" Dumond's life was miraculously saved after he lost three-quarters of his blood. As he lay near death, Sheriff Coolidge Conlee displayed Dumond's testicles in a jar. Still no reaction from Gov. Clinton.

THE HOPE
The Dumond's later won a lawsuit "of outrage." They cleared just $20,000 from the settlement. This money came in handy however, because someone burned down the Dumond house when the couple were in hiding from vigilantes. No insurance was paid on the home.

Can this story get worse? "Sometimes, " said Mrs. Dumond, "I just want to give up. But now, who knows? The new governor has personally assured me that Wayne's case will be the first thing on his desk, after he clears up everything from this Whitewater thing."

Dwayne Harris, a spokesman for Huckabee, the Republican lieutenant governor who will succeed Democrat Tucker, told me Friday that Huckabee " has voiced a very special intention to thoroughly review the case of Wayne Dumond." "I hope so," Dr. Moses Schanfield told me Friday. "This case was a disgrace." Schanfield heads the Analytic Genetic Testing Center in Denver. He was one of the experts dispatched to Bosnia to examine and identify graves after the civil war there. He did an independent Allotyping test of sperm of the alleged victim's jeans, which supposedly came from Dumond. "No way, zip, nada. Didn't happen. No way Dumond was the donor of that sperm," Schanfield said. "The girl's scenario of the so-called crime couldn't have happened. I didn't believe anything she said."

WHY IT HAPPENED
Fred Odam, a retired Arkansas State Police captain told me, "This was and still is a very bad day for justice." Odam witnessed Sheriff Conlee retrieving Dumond's testicles and later investigated the sheriff for the FBI. " I have been working to get that boy Dumond free for a long time. In all my time this is the one case when I know a man is not guilty."

What was the crazed motive behind this disgusting affair? Why Dumond? Gene Wirges, a fiesty 67-year-old publisher of a local weekly who is writing a book on this mess, told me: "Well, a Clinton kin had to be revenged. The sheriff was on a hot seat and young Wayne had been talking to a church group about how cars were suddenly disappearing. It turned out to be true. The sheriff along with his drugs, and turning the sheriff's department into a casino was heading up a car-theft ring. When this girl said she was raped, the sheriff wanted to help out the Clinton clan [ so that they might look the other way with respect to his illegal doings]. He would do anything for the girl's father and mother. The truth, the terrible truth is, that one of the guys she first identified as the rapist but who had an ironclad alibi had been going out with the girl. But the new governor has indicated to me on several occasions that he was more than disturbed about Wayne's case and the way Clinton and his boys handled this terrible thing. " You know, this is Arkansas. Right up until now this has been Clinton territory. Maybe not anymore."

THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN CLINTON'S AMERICA
(And Dunleavy was still at it in 2001.)

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