‘If Not for Huckabee, Carol Sue Would Be Alive Today’

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Elections 2008, IMMIGRATION, Republicans

Brian Ross and Anna Schecter Report:
“A Missouri mother says she will do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from becoming president, because he freed the man who went on to rape and murder her daughter, Carol Sue Shields (pictured).
‘I can’t imagine anybody wanting somebody like that running the country,’ Lois Davidson of Adrian, Mo., told the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
Wayne Dumond was initially sentenced to life plus 25 years for raping a 17-year-old Arkansas high school cheerleader. In 1999, a parole board voted to free Dumond, after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee announced his desire to see him released.
Do you have a tip for Brian Ross and the Investigative Team?
A former parole board member tells ABC News that Huckabee exerted strong pressure on the board to release Dumond.
During the campaign, Huckabee has insisted he played only a minor role in Dumond’s release and had concerns that Dumond had been wrongly convicted.
Huckabee recently told CNN, ‘None of us could’ve predicted what Dumond could’ve done when he got out.’”
[Snip]
For more on the horrors of Huckabee from the excellent investigator Brian Ross, see: “Despite Victims’ Pleas, Huckabee Pushed Rapist’s Freedom” & “Huckabee Aide: Gov Pushed for Rapist’s Freedom”
Or as I put it, in “Huck’s for Huck; Paul’s For America“:
“Like Michael Dukakis, 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.”
While you’re at it, read how George Stephanopoulos sweats Huckabee over his immigration inconsistencies. Now that’s a no-nonsense interview.

Update (Dec. 6): Powerful anti-Huck stuff from Joseph Farah:

“[Huckabee] is another one of these so-called ‘compassionate conservatives’ who believes government can be a force for good in the world, not merely a restraint on evil…. If so, he’s not only practicing bad politics – he’s practicing bad theology…
When Jesus tells us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, He is not suggesting we transfer that personal responsibility to government. He is not suggesting we transfer that responsibility to our neighbors. He is not suggesting, as the old saying goes, we rob Peter to pay Paul…
This is a personal, individual responsibility of the believer. It doesn’t count if you get someone else to do the job for you.”

Update #II: Oops, Iran’s Innocent

Bush, Intelligence, Iran, Islam, Neoconservatism

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s dormant nuclear program confirms the following:

* If a Pinocchio proboscis that grew with each lie uttered was a feature on the faces of political leaders, the Cheney-Bush-Rice gang would put the Ahmadinejad-Hussein knaves to shame in the nose department.
* The Intelligence community has been somewhat deterred by its failures in Iraq; not so the brazen Bush Administration.
* Since the Iranians halted their weapons program well before this latest unjust round of sanctions, economic punitive measures penalizing all Iranians seem more unjust than ever, to say nothing of futile.
* Americans remain criminally clueless about the Arab mentality and culture: Since national pride and honor are at stake, Arab leaders would sooner lie and claim to have the know-how to manufacture WMD, than admit to lacking it. Therefore, when habitual blowhards such as Saddam and Mad Mahmoud tone down their truculence and confess to having no weapons, they’re probably being truthful because truly terrified of an American invasion.
* Hillary has been a hawk on Iran except when the political expediency of the campaign has dictated otherwise. The new intelligence discredits the Democratic frontrunner—and all the GOP candidates bar Ron Paul.

Update #I: I just KNEW someone would take issue with my tagging of the Iranian leadership as typifying the Arab mentality. Everyone knows Ancient Persia was not Arab and that the Iranians are descendants of a medley of non-Arab people. However, since the Islamic conquest, the place has gone the way all places under Islam have gone—to the dogs.
With respect to more recent developments, I’ve written this on BAB: “Reza Shah and son hated Arab culture and identified themselves completely with pre-Islamic Persia. Not so the clerics who came to power after the Islamic revolution in 1979; they endeavored to expunge the Achaemenids, the Sassanids, and Zoroastrianism from Iran’s historical memory. To Islamists, history begins with Mohammad and his exploits; all that went before doesn’t count.
Shortly after the revolution, Islamic mobs in Iran tried to Talibanize Cyrus’s tomb. Persian names were changed to Islamic names, and references to the Achaemenid kings were banned on the state broadcaster. In post-revolutionary Iran, children were no longer named Darius or Cyrus (but Mo and Hussein, like one presidential candidate).”
In any event, I’m sticking with the “Arab-mentality” appellation for Iran’s leadership. It fits.

Update # II (Dec. 5): The neocons are still in power among the punditocracy. Their adherents are hanging on for dear life too. Not that they’ve been truly challenged; reality doesn’t seem to interfere with hereditary rights in American media. Still, I thought that by now they’d have the decency and sense to steer clear of the “left-liberal” libel when it comes to my views—and certainly not expect to be hosted on my blog. Alas, hubris is another of their distinguishing trademarks.
Libel aside, I’m extremely cautious about Iran, but I’d like to see other powers do the heavy lifting—let Israel take care of itself. The IAEA is a good option too, so long as an American president doesn’t kick them out of the inspected region to start a war.

Here are my pieces on the “Persian Pussycat”:

“The Persian Pussycat”
“Satan’s Little Helpers“

Minimizing the Crime of Home Invasion

Aesthetics, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Private Property, Race

Don Lemon, one of CNN’s not-very-bright, cherubic, soft-spoken “girlie-men,” called the murder of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor a “robbery gone wrong.”

In other words, the four career criminals who invaded Taylor’s home and shot and killed him were modern-day Jean Valjeans. Like Victor Hugo’s protagonist in Les Misérables, these thugs intended only to take a loaf of bread, sate their hunger, and then leave. (Please don’t tell me I have to post a “cynicism alert” every time I’m being, well, cynical.)

Let’s unpack this.

Confronted with a criminal breaking and entering, there’s precious little a homeowner can do to divine the intentions of the invader. If you violate someone’s inner sanctum, then he or she ought to proceed from the premise that you’re willing to violate the occupant.

The law ought to proceed from the same premise. A home owner ought to be permitted to deploy deadly force in defense of his home and family. In general, albeit with a growing number of exceptions, I believe this is the rule in the US. (Although, not in Cool Britannia.)

This is why neighbors are out in force to demonstrate their support for Pasadena hero, Joe Horn (good luck finding this story on the major news networks’ sites; I couldn’t):

Horn “shot and killed two suspected burglars at his neighbor’s home last month… The neighborhood has been awash in controversy ever since the two men, Miguel Dejesus, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30, were shot.
The whole thing started when Horn called 911 to say that two men were breaking into his neighbor’s home.

In a tape of the 911 call released to the media, the emergency operator can be heard urging Horn to remain in his home and wait for police to arrive.
‘You’re gonna get yourself shot if you go outside that house with a gun. I don’t care what you think,’ the operator said.
Horn disagreed.
‘You wanna make a bet?’ he said. ‘I’m gonna kill ‘em.’
After the shooting, a shaken Horn called 911 again.
‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘They came in the front yard with me, man. I had no choice. Get somebody over here quick.’”

[Snip]
“Values” is a buzzword not only in the presidential campaign. There is a veritable revival of the civil rights movement around certain criminal core values. African-Americans are coalescing around thugs to make the case that, wait a sec; what case are they trying to make? You tell me. If the issue is indeed race, then the Juvenile criminal from Jena came close to killing a white boy; these two black men robbed the home of whites.

Incidentally, why do you suppose this story is so hard to trace?

Update # II: ‘Redacted’: De Palma Tells The Truth

Film, Hollywood, Media

“There’s one pesky problem with all the indignant huffing and puffing” over the film “Redacted”; it’s “based on a true story. It’s a docudrama. Moral grandstanding notwithstanding, our mighty mediacrats have failed to mention that minor detail.”

“De Palma has, at least, bothered to commemorate the vanquished young victim at the center of ‘Redacted.’ To Rupert Murdoch’s protégés in Mainstream Media, Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi is redundant, a castaway. The same broadcasters who won’t quit braying when an American youngster is harmed pan De Palma for widening his lens to include an Iraqi girl’s ghastly demise at the hands of American soldiers…”

The complete column is “Redacted: De Palma Tells The Truth,” now on WorldNetDaily.com.

Update #I: I’m pro-truth, not anti-troops. For those who can’t Google–or rely on Michelle Malkin to verify facts for them–this case is well-documented. The culprits are sitting in jail, one for 90 years. The idea that individuals should shut up to serve what the mediacrats and their masters in Washington declare to be best for the fictitious collective is … fascistic.

Update #II: Americans don’t want to see a miserable film about a war most don’t support and aren’t able to bring to an end, thanks in no part to the lapdogs that lap up the propaganda perpetrated by what I’ve dubbed the Media-Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex.
Said offenders have surmised Americans won’t see the film because they want the army to continue mucking about in Iraq. Who’s to say Americans are not simply avoiding a miserable film, about a miserable reality they can do nothing about? Wake up lapdogs! The likes of Ann Coulter are getting rich off the war; you ordinary suckers are paying for it—some with their lives, and all with a devalued dollar and depreciated assets.

As for those who would like to decide what narrative will power a De Palma film: Why can’t De Palma tell any sorry story he likes? Why must he do what these collectivists think he should do? Since when must a director be directed in the choice of his subject matter? So much for our dwindling freedoms. Live and let live.

Asking “what is De Palma’s motive or justification” for producing his film is like asking me why I inveigh against injustices as I see them. I’m a political and cultural commentator. If you want to read non-controversial nonsense, then read Cosmopolitan. Similarly, filmmakers are like novelists; the one writes about things he thinks are important and have touched him; the other depicts them on celluloid. (Personally, I like films like “Dressed to Kill”—thrillers. As I say in the column, Hollywood no longer entertains me.) This reminds me of the foul attacks I got when, starting in 2002, I protested the unjust, illegal, unconstitutional Iraq war. It’s no different.