Category Archives: Law

Update II: Repeat Offender Mike Huckabee

Crime, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Politics

“Like Michael Dukakis, former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee waded into the moral miasma of penal abolition. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, fought to secure a prison furlough for convicted murderer Willie Horton. Horton went on to assault a Massachusetts man and rape his fiancée during his recreational weekend off.

Wayne Dumond, the recipient of Huckabee’s helping hand, raped and murdered a Missouri woman. When asked about his difficult-to-defend role ‘in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board lobbying on behalf of a rapist,’ Huckabee has offered a thesaurus of excuses.” [From “Huck’s For Huck—Paul’s For America”]

It transpires that the darling of so many evangelicals may have had a hand in releasing another habitual offender suspected of gunning down 4 cops in Washington State. With the Huckster as its liberal lodestar, WA did its bit to ensure Clemmons remained a man-about-town.

Reports the AP:

A man with an extensive criminal past — including a lengthy prison sentence commuted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nearly a decade ago — was being sought Sunday in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

…

Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft, the sheriff’s office said. He also recently was arrested and charged in Washington state for assaulting a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child. Using a bail bondsman, he posted $150,000 and was released from jail last week.

Update I (Nov. 30): WND.COM:

“Mike Huckabee… granted 1,033 pardons and commutations, including 12 convicted murderers,’ … Huckabee granted more clemencies than the previous three governors combined.”

To repeat what I said above about Washington State’s excuse for law enforcement: “[I]t’s true that several authorities neglected to keep the repeat offender behind bars, recent headlines have been quick to point out that were it not for the clemency Huckabee granted in 2000, Clemmons would still be serving a 95-year sentence.”

Update II (Dec. 1): Michelle Malkin excerpts the Seattle Times, in addition to excoriating the Huckster and exposing his unforgivable record, something her conservative buddies can’t bring themselves to do:

Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protestations of prosecutors.

“This is the day I’ve been dreading for a long time,” Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’ Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings.

Clemmons’ criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.

Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.

He was released from custody just six days ago, even though he was wanted on a fugitive warrant out of Arkansas and was staring at eight felony charges in all out of Washington state.

Clemmons posted $15,000 with a Chehalis company called Jail Sucks Bail Bonds. The bondsman, in turn, put up $150,000, securing Clemmons’ release on the pending child-rape charge.

Clemmons lives in Tacoma, where he has run a landscaping and power-washing business out of his house, according to a police interview with his wife earlier this year.

He was married, but the relationship was tumultuous, with accounts of his unpredictable behavior leading to at least two confrontations with police earlier this year.

During the confrontation in May, Clemmons punched a sheriff’s deputy in the face, according to court records. As part of that incident, he was charged with seven counts of assault and malicious mischief.

In another instance, Clemmons was accused of gathering his wife and young relatives around at 3 or 4 in the morning and having them all undress.

Read all the Huckster’s excuse making.

In Brief: Unemployment, Climagedon, Jihad

Debt, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, EU, Homeland Security, Inflation, Law, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Regulation

• Mainstream press has stumbled on an alarming figure, which I reported way back on 8/28/2009 : “nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.”

The real unemployment rate is 16.3 percent. The discrepancy between the official and the awful numbers has arisen because the former count, conveniently, “only those who have looked for work in the last four weeks.”

• Climagedon or, rather, ClimaGate. Reports The IBD: “Hacked e-mails from Britain’s Climate Research Unit are only the latest evidence of climate fraud. Just ask NASA’s James Hansen about the faking of climate data or EPA employees about the suppression of climate fact.”

For years, noted scientists and other global warming skeptics have been accused of being on the take, their research tainted and funded by grants from Big Oil and other fossil-fuel interests.
Now, it turns out, it’s the warm-mongers who are fudging the numbers and concealing the inconvenient truth.

• To further hobble the economy and contribute to the climate chicanery, the president “will propose an emissions reduction target at a U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, the White House said Monday. … Obama said during his trip to Asia last week that the U.S. and China want the Copenhagen summit to lead to an agreement that has ‘immediate operational effect.'”

“Reincarnation of the Reds” is what it is.

MORE on the Obama connection.

• Finally, “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others are going to plead ‘not guilty.'” Read the cuss-studded comments from the Daily Kos coterie.
This is an unremarkable defense. Still, Obama will rue the day he brings this circus to New York. Posturing on the Left and the Right will not change the fact that a show trial of the 9/11 defendants will turn into a farce.

Dirty Harry Rides High

Democrats, Healthcare, Law, Regulation

In a procedure that was aptly dubbed “Cash For Cloture,” “The Senate voted on Saturday to begin full debate on major health care legislation,” reports the NYT, “propelling President Obama’s top domestic initiative over a crucial, preliminary hurdle in a formidable display of muscle-flexing by the Democratic majority. … The 60-to-39 vote, along party lines, clears the way for weeks of rowdy floor proceedings that will begin after Thanksgiving and last through much of December.”

I have not found a news report that specifies which of the Bill’s permutations will proceed in the Senate.

I suspect it is the one called “S1796: America’s Healthy Future Act.” Here’s a summary of the Baucus Bill.

Update II: Heather Ellis Against The Police State (Plea-Bargain Shakedown)

Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Race, Racism, Rights

“Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or a policeman], unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, and even killed. Evidence of tyranny in America is mounting” (“Tasers ‘R’ Us”)

You might call Heather Ellis’s behavior rude. That’s how the authorities described her cutting the queue at Walmart and refusing to be “removed” from the store by police. But for “belligerence,” The Machine brought the full force of the state down on Ellis. She was charged with “disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest and assaulting police officers,” and could have faced a jail term of 15 years.

In case you think I’m minimizing her crimes, let me not omit that Ellis also “stiffened her body” when the brutes tried to place her in the police car.

My oh my: doesn’t Heather know that as a subject she ought to have complied with her sovereigns?

“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.'” (“PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”)

Dr. Boyce Watkins, who spoke eloquently on her behalf on CNN, asked: “If ‘no one was seriously injured,’ why was she facing up to 15-years in prison?”

Heather Ellis took a plea deal. Writes Watkins: “According to the terms of the deal, Ellis will plead guilty to disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. She will also serve a year of unsupervised probation, attend an anger management course and serve four days in jail before the end of the year. Also, if she stays out of trouble for the year, the charges will be sealed and the arrest will not be on her permanent record.”

Imagine being forced into this predicament, when you are innocent in the natural law.

Statism, not racism, is at work here. But being black and alleging racism might have saved this woman from a fate far worse.

A good dose of anti-authoritarianism didn’t hurt Ellis and her supporters. Given their distrust of the state, blacks are often more defiant of the American police state. It serves them in good stead.

Update I (Nov. 23): I watched a segment of the reality show COPS. Two female police officers responded to a domestic altercation and ended up arresting the crying woman for the offense of not replying right away to the law’s queries. The bully babe in uniform explained to the poor woman that she was being arrested becasue she needed to be taught a lesson: “If a cop asked you something, you respond right away, you hear?”

Let’s see if I got this right: a woman in trouble calls the cops, who just about break down her door, yell at her for being out of it and cuff her, leaving children and an elderly mother unattended.

To serve and protect.

This kind of outlaw conduct from cops is clearly more common than we think. Having observed it, I’d have to conclude that it is best not to invite the bastards into one’s home.

Update II: A reader hereunder brings up the travesty that is the plea bargain, an abomination that is presented in every episode of “Law And Order” as a matter-of-fact route to “justice.” The truth is that such “wheeling and dealing” is anything but. This from “TRUTH OBSCURED IN JOHNNY JIHAD’S PLEA BARGAIN“:

There’s a reason the American Constitution emphasizes “the right of trial by jury.” The justice system’s mandate is to unveil the truth. This can only be done in a court of law, and in accordance with due process. The plea bargain is nothing more than a negotiated deal which subverts the very goal of the justice system: In the process of hammering out an agreement that pacifies both prosecution and defense, truth usually falls by the way. As the predominant method of adjudication in the United States, the plea bargain taints the system.