Mike Huckabee

i know, blatham, it's just that for me it is
a) not enough in and of itself (i disagree with the notion that poor and destitute should depend on individual mercy and charity.. that is not a liberal principle, but conservative through and through - as it puts the responsibility not on the state, but churches, associons, individuals.... not enough for me.)

and b) it's even more not enough to change anything in the image or practice of the republicans as a party.

... all in all...not enough.

Lack of humor? Stupid? Maybe filthy and unbathed and in need of taking that hat to the dry cleaners and the barber for a shave. Kucinich is interesting too, but... is a really superficial thing to say...but the British media has latched on to Kucinich's new wife...20 plus years his junior. And you know what? I find it's distracting.

No, it doesn't change anything for the Repub's. The rest of M. Huckabee's message goes over the top. As far as I'm concerned, he and his spouse are holy rollers-- sincere, but still, all that sincerity can be mind-numbing, Especially with his taking the high moral ground on everything. Very unappealing.

I'm not sure about what you're saying...I think acknowledgement of the poor is an obligation, for those of us who have had the advantages and live comfotably-- whether that be from individuals, society, the governement.

Whether they do a good job of helping the needy is a whole other matter.

Call it mercy, pity, whatever. The fact of the matter is, when I walk by the subway and see all those homeless people, some who are seriously mentally ill, I feel a pang of gratitude for my life. I am a Liberal and I am not going to sugar-coat why I volunteer for a charity...it's because I am better off...

Nor for me, dag. I was trying to clarify several points:
1) the version of christianity which has moved to the forefront of political activism and visibility in the US is deeply illiberal. It is militarist, often racist, unforgiving while zestful for punishment, insular and exclusive, commonly bigotted, anti-intellectual, and so devoid of human empathy as to be arguably considered pathological. If one wanted to portray a seriously perverse inversion of christianity (using for a measure Sermon on the Mount for example) just describing this present movement in the US would do fine.

2) but there is, in the US, another strand of faith which sits outside of that description above. Many who made up the leadership and membership of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 60s were christians of this strand. This tradition was and is not averse to New Deal notions of government responsibility for individual and communitarian well-being. This tradition was, to a large degree, part of the Dem community.

3) for a set of reasons historical and political, this second tradition has seemed to disappear beneath the ascendant extremist conservative movement. But there are very encouraging signs now that the conservative extremists are weakening while the liberal christian groups are reasserting themselves.

4) a reinvigorated liberal movement in the US will need to include, support and strengthen the newly awakening liberal christian community. That's not only necessary, it is also intellectually and morally consistent.

ps

Mike Huckabee is not a representative of that liberal strand, but he clearly does represent some aspects of it.

Under this same rubric of the vicious conservatism-- they have managed successfully to take the most vulnerable aspects of the Liberals and make them look even more vulnerable and even stupid. I am convinced this is why none of the Dem's are really addressing poverty head-on.

Witness, the Dem's on immigration have dominated the debates.

What do you mean, Gala? Poverty is Edwards' signature issue, and Obama and Clinton talk about it a lot, too.



They have to answer the questions they're given.

Huckleberry, liar, liar pants on fire??

Documents Expose Huckabee's Role In Serial Rapist's Release
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/04/documents-expose-huckabee_n_75362.html

December 4, 2007 Little Rock, Ark -- As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.

Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.

While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee's intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond's behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.

"There's nothing any of us could ever do," Huckabee said Sunday on CNN when asked to reflect on the horrific outcome caused by the prisoner's release. "None of us could've predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out."

But the confidential files obtained by the Huffington Post show that Huckabee was provided letters from several women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond and who indeed predicted that he would rape again - and perhaps murder - if released.

In a letter that has never before been made public, one of Dumond's victims warned: "I feel that if he is released it is only a matter of time before he commits another crime and fear that he will not leave a witness to testify against him the next time." Before Dumond was granted parole at Huckabee's urging, records show that Huckabee's office received a copy of this letter from Arkansas' parole board.

The woman later wrote directly to Huckabee about having been raped by Dumond. In a letter obtained by the Huffington Post, she said that Dumond had raped her while holding a butcher knife to her throat, and while her then-3-year-old daughter lay in bed next to her. Also included in the files sent to Huckabee's office was a police report in which Dumond confessed to the rape. Dumond was not charged in that particular case because he later refused to sign the confession and because the woman was afraid to press charges.

See the full letters sent to Huckabee's office here.

Huckabee kept these and other documents secret because they were politically damaging, according to a former aide who worked for him in Arkansas. The aide has made the records available to the Huffington Post, deeply troubled by Huckabee's repeated claims that he had no reason to believe Dumond would commit other violent crimes upon his release from prison. The aide also believes that Huckabee, for political reasons, has deliberately attempted to cover up his knowledge of Dumond's other sexual assaults.

"There were no letters sent to the governor's office from any rape victims," Huckabee campaign spokesperson Alice Stewart said on Tuesday when contacted by the Huffington Post.

Subsequently, however, the campaign provided a former senior aide of Huckabee's who did remember reading at least one of the letters.

But Huckabee and his aides insist that his receipt of the letters is irrelevant because the decision to release Dumond was made by the parole board. Huckabee on Tuesday again denied allegations by former parole board members that he lobbied them to release Dumond. "I did not ask them to do anything," he said. "I did indicate [Dumond's case] was sitting at my desk and I was giving thought to it."

Charmaine Yoest, a senior adviser to the Huckabee campaign, told the Huffington Post: "I think what should be considered here is that if he [Huckabee] could have changed what happened, he would. His whole life has been about respect for life and understanding the value of each individual life. Nobody regrets the loss of life here more than him."

In 1996, as a newly elected governor who had received strong support from the Christian right, Huckabee was under intense pressure from conservative activists to pardon Dumond or commute his sentence. The activists claimed that Dumond's initial imprisonment and various other travails were due to the fact that Ashley Stevens, the high school cheerleader he had raped, was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.

The case for Dumond's innocence was championed in Arkansas by Jay Cole, a Baptist minister and radio host who was a close friend of the Huckabee family. It also became a cause for New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, who repeatedly argued for Dumond's release, calling his conviction "a travesty of justice." On Sept. 21, 1999, Dunleavy wrote a column headlined "Clinton's Biggest Crime - Left Innocent Man In Jail For 14 Years":

"Dumond, now 52, was given conditional parole yesterday in Arkansas after having being sentenced to 50 years in jail for the rape of Clinton's cousin," Dunleavy wrote. "That rape never happened."

A subsequent Dunleavy column quoted Huckabee saying: "There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime."

After Dumond's release from prison in September 1999, he moved to Smithville, Missouri, where he raped and suffocated to death a 39-year-old woman named Carol Sue Shields. Dumond was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that rape and murder.

But Dumond's arrest for those crimes in June 2001 came too late for 23-year-old Sara Andrasek of Platte County, Missouri. Dumond allegedly raped and murdered her just one day before his arrest for raping and murdering Shields. Prior to the attack, Andrasek and her husband had learned that she was pregnant with their first child.

Dumond died of natural causes while in prison on September 1, 2005. At the time of his death, Missouri authorities were readying capital murder charges against Dumond for the rape and murder of Andrasek.

Huckabee has refused to release his gubernatorial administration's records on the matter, saying that he was concerned for the privacy of Dumond's victims and that the records contain sensitive law enforcement information.

The Arkansas Parole Board also refuses to make public any letters or warnings it received from Drumond's victims. "We don't release comments for or against a clemency application or a parole case," the Board's spokesperson told Huffington Post, "except when they are comments from public officials."

But most of the women assaulted by Dumond and interviewed for this story say that Huckabee could have made information public while guarding their privacy. Law enforcement authorities also scoffed at the idea that anything in the records would have harmed an ongoing investigation since Dumond is no longer alive.

The records revealed in this story -- including correspondence between Dumond's victims and Huckabee, as well as the governor's own file regarding Dumond -- were provided to me in the fall of 2002 by a Republican staffer to then-Gov. Huckabee.

I made the decision not to make the files public at that time because of concern for the privacy of the rape victims and their families. I felt that their right to privacy outweighed the public's right to know, although I understand why many people would disagree.

Now that Huckabee is running for president, and after consulting with the victims and their families, I have decided to proceed, given what his actions on the case - and his attempts to whitewash his involvement in it -- say about his judgment and integrity.

During a 2002 bid by Huckabee to be re-elected governor of Arkansas, the staffer who provided the documents attended a meeting where Huckabee and top aides expressed concerns that information in the files showing that other women had told Huckabee about being raped by Dumond might somehow become public, and thus become an issue for his opponent. The information remained secret, and Huckabee won a tight race for re-election.

The staffer said that during that same period, another senior aide to Huckabee suggested asking other state agencies, which might have portions or even the entirety of the Dumond file, to transfer their records to the governor's office. If the files were transferred, the aide to Huckabee said, they would no longer be obtainable by reporters or political opponents under the state's Freedom of Information statute.

Arkansas has one of the most progressive Freedom of Information laws in the country. People need only to make requests orally whereupon state officials have to quickly respond and make them public. Governors, in sharp contrast, have wide latitude in deciding which of their own files to make public.

"The files had to be disappeared because there just wasn't a plausible explanation for the governor's stance," the former staffer said. "I mean, what could the governor say? That he believes these women made up their stories? That women lie when they say they are raped?"

Asked on Tuesday whether Huckabee would release his file on Dumond, campaign spokesperon Alice Stewart said, "We're not the governor, we don't have the file." Asked if Huckabee would ask the current governor to release the file, she responded, "No. I don't want to see it. You apparently want to see it."

Dumond raped Ashley Stevens, Clinton's distant cousin, in 1984 when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Forest City, Arkansas.

He was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. In 1992, Jim Guy Tucker, who became governor of Arkansas after Clinton left office, reduced Dumond's sentence to 39.5 years.

Shortly after taking office in 1996, Huckabee announced his intention to commute Dumond's sentence to time served. A public outcry ensued.

Stevens, her father, and Fletcher Long, the Arkansas state prosecuting attorney who sent Dumond to prison, met with Huckabee to protest.

"'This is how close I was to Wayne Dumond,'" Stevens says she told Huckabee at the time. "'I will never forget his face. And now I don't want you ever to forget my face.'"

Stevens now says: "This isn't and was never about politics. This is about a rapist. This is about a murderer. ... I might never forget Dumond's face, but there are other women [for whom] Dumond's face was the last thing they ever saw on this earth... I would hope that Huckabee would remember the faces of his victims."

Stevens, who had been silent about her rape and not identified in the press for more than a dozen years, finally spoke out publicly in 1996 after feeling frustrated by her meeting with Huckabee. Twenty women members of the state House of Representatives protested the commutation proposal. The editorial pages of some Arkansas newspapers questioned Huckabee's judgment and suggested he reconsider.

What the public never knew, however, was that other women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond had privately written Huckabee about their anguish. Their very private attempts at changing Huckabee's mind, they later told the Huffington Post, were based on concerns that speaking out publicly would have been too painful and traumatizing.

One such letter was from the daughter of a Dumond rape victim:

When you ran for office, one of the reasons I voted for you was the fact you are/were a Baptist preacher. I come from a very strong Baptist background... [O]ne of my grandfathers is also a preacher. I have always been a faithful church member where I am the choir director, yet this is one event that is not so easily forgiven.

I have prayed about these feelings, but once someone hurts your mother, or daughter the way this man hurt my mother I believe that you would feel the same...

Please understand that this letter is coming from my heart.... I would love to have the chance to talk to you about this matter as a daughter of a surviving rape victim.

The woman provided Huckabee with her personal phone number in hopes that he or at least someone on his staff would call. She says that she never heard back.

What was left unsaid in her letter to Huckabee was that she was three years old when, in the 1970s, Dumond raped her mother. The girl was in her mother's bed asleep when the rape occurred. Dumond held a butcher's knife to her mother's throat during the assault.

In an interview, her mother told the Huffington Post how she fought with Dumond to wrestle the knife away from him, willing to risk her own life rather than suffer at Dumond's hands.

But Dumond overcame her resistance. He pointed to her daughter sleeping next to her and threatened: "If you don't cooperate with me, she'll be next."

The woman did as she was told. As Dumond continued to violently rape her, the woman recalled, she lay consciously and deliberately silent. Even as she was being assaulted, she gently stroked her daughter's hair, praying she would not wake up.

When the assault was over, the woman said, Dumond threatened to come back and rape and kill her daughter if she told anyone.

Twenty-three years after the rape, the girl who had been protected by her mother's silence attempted to persuade Huckabee to keep Dumond behind bars. Fearing that the rapist would attack her mother again, she wrote to the governor:

Governor Huckabee, I really wish you could spend one night in my mother's home. Even though twenty years have past [sic?] she still has trouble sleeping at night. The house is never dark...

Friday afternoon when I heard the dreadful news [that Huckabee intended to commute Dumond], I was the one to tell my mother. She was on her way out of town and I didn't want her to hear this on the radio while she was driving. I wish you could have heard the emptiness in her voice.

In her own letter to Huckabee, the woman who was raped by Dumond in the 1970s wrote that she felt deep guilt over what happened later to Ashley Stevens:

I feel responsible for Ashley's years of suffering at Dumond's hands because I was so naïve as to believe that since Dumond was arrested for raping me that he had learned his lesson and would not do it again. I was raised to take a person at their word, so I believed him when he said he was sorry.

The woman said in an interview that she wrote Huckabee out of concern for him. If she felt so much guilt about what happened to Ashley Stevens, she wondered, what private Hell would Huckabee go through if he commuted Dumond's sentence, and Dumond harmed or even killed someone else?

If Huckabee had any doubt that the woman and her daughter were telling the truth, included in the materials provided to him was a police report in which Dumond confessed to authorities that he had raped the woman.

According to the report, "Wayne stated that he went upstairs to the bedroom, and that the woman was asleep when he went into the room. Wayne stated the woman woke up, and he held a knife on her while he committed the rape, and that the woman's baby was in the bed with her."

When police detectives pressed Dumond to admit his involvement in other rapes, however, he "stated that he desired not to answer any further questions" and also "refused to read, sign, or initial the statement that he had made in the presence" of police officers.

Also in the file sent to Huckabee was a letter from yet another woman who said that Dumond attempted to rape her, with some striking similarities to other accounts of Dumond's assaults.

This woman wrote that she awoke in her bed to find Dumond above her: "Standing there, yielding a butcher knife above his head was the shadow of a man..."

Startled, she asked who was there. Dumond threatened her by saying he would cut her throat. But, as the woman wrote, once Dumond's "eyes got accustomed to the darkness, he saw the figure of someone laying next to me." When Dumond saw her boyfriend, he became frightened and skittish.

"At this," the woman wrote, "Wayne realized we were not alone, jumped up from the bed, and leaped down the stairs in three bounds and I heard him go out the front door...and ran across the street into the darkness."

The woman explained in her letter why Dumond was not arrested: "I was talked out of filing charges by the city police because they said rape cases are hard to prove, that I might be able to charge him with breaking and entering, assault and battery, etc., but that the evidence was slight. I took their advice."

There was additional and compelling evidence available to then-Governor Huckabee that releasing Dumond would pose a threat to society.

Dumond had been previously arrested for violent acts and an attempted sexual assault of an underage girl.

In 1972, Dumond had been arrested for his involvement in the beating death of man in Lawton, Oklahoma. Court records showed that the man who was murdered had been dating an ex-wife of a Dumond friend named Bill Cherry. Enlisting the aid of Cherry's underage daughter to lure the man to a public park, Cherry, Dumond, and a third man bludgeoned the individual to death with a claw hammer.

Dumond was granted immunity from prosecution in the case in exchange for his testimony against the other two men. On the witness stand, Dumond admitted to beating the man repeatedly over the head with a claw hammer, but denied that he struck the fatal blows.

Dumond said that when Cherry asked him to finish off the victim, he refused, only to have one of the others do the deed. Dumond's accomplices, however, claimed that it was he who was responsible for the killing.

The following year, in 1973, Dumond was arrested again, this time for attempting to assault a teenage girl in a parking lot in Tacoma, Washington. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to five-years probation.

In an effort to preempt scrutiny of the Dumond case, Huckabee has said that if the issue were to be raised during the '08 race, it would be because his rivals for the nomination feel threatened by his campaign.

"Suddenly I seem to be in the cross hairs of every predator who is out there," Huckabee told reporters recently. "To me that seems to be a good sign of life."

When he was governor of Arkansas, Huckabee similarly attempted to deflect Dumond-related criticism by claiming that those raising the issue -- among them, members of the state's parole board, women state legislators, journalists, and even one of Dumond's victims -- were doing so for partisan political purposes.

"If he makes it about politics, he doesn't answer the hard questions about why he did what he did," says Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas' sixth judicial district. Jegley is a Democrat who campaigned against Huckabee when he ran for re-election because of Huckabee's actions on the Dumond case, as well as his commutation of the sentences of other convicts who went on to commit additional crimes.

Although Huckabee has yet to give a detailed account as to why he pushed to free Dumond, he provided his fullest explanation to date in his published campaign manifesto "From Hope to Higher Ground." In the book, he wrote that he was moved to act on Dumond's behalf because he believed Dumond might have been wrongly convicted. Ashley Stevens and Fletcher Long confirmed in interviews for this story that when they met with then-Gov. Huckabee, he insisted to them that Dumond might be innocent.

Huckabee also wrote in "From Hope to Higher Ground" that he moved to act on Dumond's behalf out of compassion. He said on numerous other occasions that he felt sympathy for Dumond because Dumond was allegedly castrated while awaiting trial for raping Ashley Stevens. Dumond had claimed that unknown assailants wearing masks broke into his home, hogtied him, and then surgically removed his testicles.

Evidence has since come to light indicating that Dumond might not have been attacked but engaged in an act of self-mutilation. A physician who treated Dumond after his alleged attack told police, according to state police records, that Dumond's own wife asked him "if it was possible for Dumond to have inflicted the wound himself."

The Forest City Times Herald, which published a series of articles about the Dumond controversy in 1996, quoted experts on sexual predators as saying it was not uncommon for them to engage in acts of self-mutilation to garner sympathy or because they feel guilt for what they have done.

Huckabee also wrote in his campaign book that his intervention on Dumond's behalf reflected his broad philosophy that the criminal justice system is too harsh, and that his religious faith requires him to take chances to act with compassion towards the accused.

Regarding the Dumond case, a Huckabee adviser says: "It might have been wrongheaded for him to do what he did. But his heart might have been in the right place even though the outcome was horrific. What he did was for reasons of faith and compassion."

But the daughter of one of Dumond's rape victims -- herself devoutly religious -- wrote Huckabee wondering whether his faith was leading him down the wrong path:

You were called to deliver the work of the Lord as you interpret the Bible. [But] the actions you are taking you are taking in regard to Dumond's release makes me believe that you are trying to act as the Lord. There were twelve people on the jury that convicted him of this crime. There have been numerous people on the jury that convicted him of this crime.

Huckabee has also tried to deflect criticism over his role in freeing Dumond by saying that his two immediate predecessors, Jim Guy Tucker and Bill Clinton, were responsible for Dumond's release.

Huckabee wrote in "From Hope to Higher Ground": "In 1992, while Governor Bill Clinton was out of state campaigning for president, Acting Governor Jim Guy Tucker, the lieutenant governor, commuted Dumond's sentence, making him eligible for parole... While there was speculation at the time that Governor Clinton was unaware that the commutation was going to take place, I know from my understanding of the inner workings of the process in the governor's office how impossible that would be."

Tucker, however, only reduced Dumond's initial sentence of life in prison plus 20 years to a total of 39.5 years -- which meant that Dumond was still unlikely to get out of prison until he was an elderly man, if at all.

Moreover, Tucker told the Huffington Post in an interview that, in stark contrast to Huckabee's advocacy on Dumond's behalf, he had told his parole board that he did not believe Dumond should be paroled. Tucker also said that, contrary to Huckabee's claim, Clinton had entirely recused himself from the matter because Ashley Stevens was a distant relative.

Huckabee and his aides have always denied that he secretly pressured the Arkansas parole board to free Dumond in an effort to hide his involvement and avoid political fallout.

But, in a 2002 story I wrote for the Arkansas Times about Huckabee's role in freeing Dumond, four board members -- three of who spoke on the record -- said that Huckabee lobbied and pressured board members on the matter. This included a 1996 executive meeting at which the board's recording secretary -- who ordinarily tapes the entire sessions -- was asked to leave the room. Several board members and members of the state legislature have said the secret session violated state law.

Huckabee, in turn, has said that all four parole board members have lied about his role in Dumond's release from prison.

For a full and detailed refutation of that claim, read the 2002 piece here.

So while Huckabee continues to rise in the polls, Dumond's victims are left with questions as to why the former Arkansas Governor did what he did.

The woman who was raped by Dumond while her 3-year-old daughter lay beside her tells the Huffington Post that one day she worked up the nerve to call Ashley Stevens to tell her how sorry she was. The two began to discuss their shared trauma.

"It was when I first began talking to Ashley that I began to heal," the woman said.

When Huckabee pushed through Dumond's parole, she says, "It was like he believed we were lying and Dumond was telling the truth. I wish he would now say in front of the entire world whether we told the truth or lied.

And if he believes we told the truth, explain why he did what he did."

In 2001, the woman ran into Huckabee in her hometown. She wanted to know if he had any regrets in light of the Missouri murders.

"He was down here on a fishing trip," she recalled, "He was in one of the convenience stores and I went in to get me a Coke. And I went up and spoke to him.

"And all he said was, `How are you doing?' That was it."

Sozobe, you are so correct. But they are not effective . John Edwards ought to be kicking ass for all he's done on the issue (granted he opended up his center with presidential aspirations) and yet, he's not getting his message across. Obama, is having some of his own troubles. And Hillary, well, she's a woman. And that's whats dominating the race. Not their message.

Yes, they have to answer the questions they are given. Nonetheless, the Repub's are much more direct about immigration. The Dem's are doing this embarrassing side-stepping. Hillary ought to have stuck by Elliot Spitzer...instead she back-peddled. We no longer live in a tolerant society that opens its doors. Because it's all about making $ and not having enough resources for all the demand. So the first to go are "the people that speak funny" (Romney's expression he's another gem of a politician, but he got away with it because he's got a square jaw...).

I agree totally! America has crawled up its own ass and stayed there for seven years. We're looking as reactionary as the old Soviet system. I don't see any of the Republican candidates willing to change that, and with the severe challenges facing America we need a JFK, not another Bush.

I'm from Arkansas, and had the not so nice pleasure of living under Mike Huckabee as Governor.

I didn't like him then, I don't like him now.

He did set the murdering rapist Wayne Dumond free...... which should have never happened.

And yes, he's a recovering foodalholic that in turn when he went on a diet (surgery), he put the whole state of Arkansas on one. Our children in our public schools systems went from having a halfway decent lunch program to zilch and the state prisoners were left eating better than our school age children. Which I do not believe is just.

The point here is this, Huckabee come up with studys that showed the poor in the state were the more likely to be the one's that were obese, because of .....lack of money, education, jobs...that afforded them a healthier diet than their munching on junk food alternative ways. (Thats all some can afford) Ok, so if the poor are more at risk, than why cut out decent food from the school lunch programs, where most of these children that are on free lunches maybe getting the one and only hot meal for the day?????? Makes no sense to me. This went as far as to consider two packs of kecthup as one serving of vegetables? (I may have to go and dig out some old lunch menues if I can find them...it was horrendous!)

He also introduced children to total humilation with having each child in the Arkansas school systems BMI measured, and weighed. These screenings were not done in private, they were lined up like cattle moving through shoots and the amount of embarrassment it caused certain aged school children was uncalled for, especially the little girls, none of it should have been condoned, or it should have been done in private. These children were told in front of their friends that they were overweight and needed to loose it. (yea, like that builds self-esteem)

I have actually overheard young children complain about it, and then want to go on starvation diets at the age of 8 and 9 because of it their humilation. Its bad enough they already want to emulate Brittany Spears, but lets give them another reason.

Then to top that off, after these screenings are finished, each parent is sent a BMI report on their child explaining to them whether or not they are obese or not.


Rumor had it, and I stated "RUMOR", that if the child remained over their ideal weight after these reports were sent home to the parents, and an extended period of time had passed, that dear old Huckabee was fixing to set loose DHS on said parents because he considered it to be a form of abuse.

Huckabee's an idiot.........the only thing I've seen him do since taking office is release a murderer, humilate our school children, and live in his luxious double wide mobile home.

If you are serious about looking into the Dumond story, this might interest you...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0110,harkavy,22841,1.html



Sounds like that sheriff was really interested in justice, doesnt it?
It more sounds like that sheriff was interested in torture.



In late 1991, on the campaign trail, Clinton began to be pestered about

So, the whole thing was screwed up.
Am I defending what Dumond did after he was released?
Absolutely not!!!
What he did was evil and he deserved the death penalty for it.

But, the fact that he was screwed over by the criminal justice system during the Clinton reign in Ark cant be denied.

Was Huckabee wrong to release him?
IMHO yes he was.
But, he followed the law and the rules when he did so, and he cant be faulted for that.

Mysteryman
"But, the fact that he was screwed over by the criminal justice system during the Clinton reign in Ark cant be denied. "
As a neutral observer from a far of place I wish to say that the next PRESIDENT IS from Rep and not from dem .
If the Americans select or elect a Dem irrespective of the Gender or colur then they are making a bloody mistake.
let me wish and hope USA acclaime approve admire adore and upheld the achievements of our honourable BUSH and his team.

This guy is a f--king idiot.

Yes, he is a very big idiot.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DB173BF932A15750C0A961958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Huckabee,%20Mike

Makes one wonder what influence his interpretation of the Bible will have on our domestic and foreign policy if he's elected president.

Are you talking about the same Mike Huckaby, when speaking about the pros and cons of Medicare said, in his Christianly love thy neighbour way ""And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there".

Or was that someone else?

I'm even surprised that someone like Huckabee made it this far.
When the world looks upon our candidates, they laugh *sigh*

Religion and politics should not mix at all. We have had a prime example
thereof with Bush. Who in their right mind hasn't grasp that, and who
in their right mind would want another 4 years of such utter nonsense?

This includes Romney as well.

President Huckabee: "No Room in the Inn"
By Stan Moody
Dec. 19, 07

Huckabee's answer to the "two state solution" is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine:

Gov. Mike Huckabee shows all the signs of being a Christian Zionist.

A Christian Zionist is an Evangelical who believes that it is incumbent on Christians, and by inference America, to enforce God's promise to Abraham of a Promised Land. To some, that Promised Land is all the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. To others, it is the Davidic kingdom from the Euphrates River in Iraq, south into Egypt, the entire nation of Jordan and considerably north and east through the Golan Heights.

However you define the Promised Land, Palestinian residents on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are in the way.

Huckabee's presidential primary endorsement by such evangelical leaders as Tim LaHaye (Left Behind series) and John Hagee (Christians United for Israel) are clear indications that a President Huckabee would advance the agenda of Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism comes largely out of the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination in which Huckabee was ordained as a pastor. It is a pivotal belief of the Christian Right that derives from a 19th Century doctrine known as Premillennial Dispensationalism (PD). PD holds to the thesis that the coming of Jesus Christ was a stopgap measure in God's redemptive plan and that His real plan is the restoration of the Jewish people to the physical land of Israel and their eventual conversion to Christianity.

To the Christian Zionist, therefore, the expanded borders of Israel are sacred and inviolate. These Evangelical Christians have a long history of funding illegal settlements in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, thus destabilizing the region. They have heavily lobbied the US Congress and recently have advocated for war with Iran. Their severe rhetoric against Islam reflects a belief that Arab nations in the region are obstructing biblical rights to the expanded nation-state of Israel.

Huckabee's answer to the "two state solution" is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine:

When asked (in New Hampshire) about a Palestinian state, Gov. Huckabee stated that he supports creating a Palestinian state, but believes that it should be formed outside of Israel. He named Egypt and Saudi Arabia as possible alternatives, noting that the Arabs have far more land than the Israelis and that it would only be fair for other Arab nations to give the Palestinians land for a state, rather than carving it out of the tiny Israeli state.[1]
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2007/10/gov-mike-huckab.html

By re-defining the boundaries of Israel to be vastly beyond those officially recognized by international law and by opposing a land-for-peace exchange, Huckabee unmasks himself to be a Christian Zionist.

By offering a solution not unlike that envisioned by 19th century Americans to the slavery question and carried out against Native Americans, Huckabee essentially dehumanizes the Palestinians in his scheme to transport them elsewhere.

There are a number of courageous people on the West Bank. Here are proposed Huckabee apologies to a few of those:

To Zougbhi Zoughbi, founder and Director of Wi'am, the Palestinian Center for Conflict Resolution and a committed Christian who has been jailed 18 times, "Pack your bags, Zoughbi, you're headed for the Saudi desert so that a Christian America can complete Israel's prophetic mission."

To gentle, forgiving George Sa'adeh, Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem and Principal of a Greek Orthodox high school, "Your story began with a simple shopping trip with your wife and two daughters on March 23, 2003, and ended with four hundred bullet holes in your car, your twelve-year-old daughter, Christine, dead, and you and her sister, Marianna, severely wounded courtesy of exploding bullets from the guns of IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldiers. America has its eye on your future."

To Dr. Bishara Awad, founder and President of Bethlehem Bible College, "You have fought a good fight, but you stand in the way of biblical prophecy and are squatting on God's land. Henceforth there is reserved for you an oasis in the Saudi desert."

To Dr. Mitri Raheb, Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem who miraculously survived the Israeli shelling of Manger Square two days after Easter 2002, thank you for the International Center and for your good deeds. We will see that you get a pastorate in the Saudi desert."

To Sami Awad, Executive Director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, "You can plant all the trees you want in your new homeland."

To the Magi from Persia (Iran) come to see the place where the Christ-child lay, "We are sorry, but there is no room for you in the Inn."

http://faithfuldemocrats.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=706&Itemid=108

sorry, I have no words for this.