4 Cops gunned down in Washington coffee shop

[Martinus]

Usually that person is a dangerous criminal. 

I see there is no point even discussing it - our worldviews are too differnet.

[grumbler]

Dunno about America, but at least on this forum, it's usually a celebratory mood whenever cops kill someone or someone is sentenced to death. I find it grating, to be honest.

Not grating enough to drive you away for good, but we are working on that. 

[Caliga]

Well, I'm also embellishing because I know that if there are two things that can get Languish up in arms, it's cop killings and soldier-related stuff (coupled with an almost total, nonchalant disregard for any rights of someone accused of a crime and/or the enemy). Frankly I don't get it (it's a very illiberal attitude which conflicts with the forum's otherwise pro-liberty slant) but I like yanking that chain.

Guilty till proven innocent. 

[Caliga]

Usually that person is a dangerous criminal. 

I see there is no point even discussing it - our worldviews are too differnet.

Seriously though, would you have preferred the cops to nicely ask Mr. Clemmons to surrender with their guns holstered?  The guy already killed four cops... do you honestly think he wouldn't have killed as many more cops as he possibly could?

I guarantee you if someone walked around executing cops in Poland, the police would respond with deadly force too... as they should.

[Eddie Teach]

Marty probably hates Polish cops worse than American ones.

[DGuller]

I can understand Marty's viewpoint.  I imagine that in Eastern Europe police is very corrupt and incompetent, so they definitely shouldn't be entrusted with the right to kill people at their discretion.  Things are different in US.

[Mr.Penguin]

I can understand Marty's viewpoint.  I imagine that in Eastern Europe police is very corrupt and incompetent, so they definitely shouldn't be entrusted with the right to kill people at their discretion.  Things are different in US.

In eastern europe is even the gays corrupt and incompetent, that's just the way thing are there...

[LaCroix]

you know, fox new's interview with huckabee over the events never mentioned this 

not that i took much from it..

[dps]

you know, fox new's interview with huckabee over the events never mentioned this 

not that i took much from it..

Oh, man, if that's legit, then Huckabee's even more screwed than I thought.  That's rich.

[CountDeMoney]

Oh, man, if that's legit, then Huckabee's even more screwed than I thought.  That's rich.

No shit.  That's even worse than Willie Horton quoting Blazing Saddles.

[Sheilbh]

To clarify things like butter, they not only got him, but they KILLED the boy.

Butter isn't very clear.

Clarified butter's an amazing thing for cooking.  It doesn't burn.  You need it to cook anything meuniere and it's used a lot in Indian and Middle Eastern food (ghee)

[grumbler]

Oh, man, if that's legit, then Huckabee's even more screwed than I thought.  That's rich.

No shit.  That's even worse than Willie Horton quoting Blazing Saddles.

I personally love it.  The Country Attorney is obviously a twit (talking about his "standing objection to clemency requests" and suggesting that the governor clear all such requests through him, the local prosecutor) who deserved the scorn he got.

Herzfeld sounds an awful lot like some of our moaning Languishites, and Huckabee a lot like some of the quicker-witted ones.. and it is the quicker-witted ones that make this place worth coming back to.

[KRonn]

Yep, Huck will pay a price, and later more of a political price if he runs for office again. He explains his reasons in this article, and in the link at the end of the article. I've seen him interviewed about this on CNN and FOX. He cut down the sentence, which allowed Clemmons to have hearings (or earlier hearings?), on being released by a prison parole board.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/03/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5879156.shtml

Mike Huckabee On Maurice Clemmons: I'm no Bleeding Heart

Former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who has come under fire for commuting the sentence of suspected cop-killer Maurice Clemmons nine years ago, said at Jacksonville University Wednesday that "the idea that I'm some bleeding heart that lets anyone go is nonsense."

Huckabee, who is believed to be considering another presidential run in 2012, got a supportive welcome from students at the university, according to Jacksonville.com, which reports they "laughed at his jokes" and "applauded him when he said he supported a consumption-based tax system and opposed same-sex marriage."

But questions about Clemmons were very much on the minds of the reporters who questioned Huckabee before he spoke to the students. Back in 2000, the then-Arkansas governor commuted Clemmons' 108-year sentence for theft and other charges. Clemmons had already served 11 years in jail at the time; Huckabee said he made the decision in part because Clemmons was just 16 when he was sentenced. He also suggested the sentence was excessive and that a white teenager would not have received such a long jail term.

Clemmons was eventually released on parole. He was later arrested on other counts, including child rape, but went free when prosecutors failed to file charges against him. He was ultimately killed by police while being sought in connection with the murder of four policemen in Washington.

Conservative commentators have hammered Huckabee for commuting Clemmons – criticism Huckabee has deemed "disgusting."

"It really does show though how sick society has become when we're more interested in the political consequences of an election that's three years away," he said.

Huckabee said Wednesday he wasn't apologizing for his decision in the Clemmons case. He said there were no protests about his court of action, which cut Clemmons' sentence to 47 years, and noted that the parole board is the body that released him.

According to CNN, Huckabee told reporters Wednesday that "You're looking at this nine years later and trying to make something as if I can look in to the future."

"I wish I could have. Good Lord, I wish I had that power. I wish I could have done that. But I don't know how anyone can do it," he added. Huckabee said that "nobody at that point was saying he's a cop killer."

Explaining his decision to grant clemency, Huckabee said he read "every bit" of Clemmons' file.

"And here was a case where a guy had been given 108 years," he said. "Now, if you think a 108-year sentence is an appropriate sentence for a 16-year-old for the crimes he committed, then you should run for governor of Arkansas."

He laid out his argument in full in an article in the conservative Human Events magazine earlier this week.

[Berkut]

Huckabee is right, of course - but that won't matter a bit.

He will always be the guy who let the 4 times cop killer out of jail.

[alfred russel]

An interesting article on Huckabee's pardons gone wild:

Find God, get out of jail, slaughter again
Why did Mike Huckabee pardon child rapist Maurice Clemmons? Because God told him to
By Gene Lyons
AP/Elaine Thompson
Lakewood, Wash., Police Chief Bret Farrer, center, listens to a news briefing near where a man suspected of killing four Lakewood police officers was shot and killed by a Seattle patrol officer on Tuesday.

Another week, another grotesque mass shooting: In Washington state this time, leaving four police officers dead, four families destroyed and nine children's lives shattered. As it's politically unfashionable to wonder whether Americans shouldn't do more to keep semi-automatic handguns away from crazy people, attention soon focused on why mass murderer Maurice Clemmons wasn't locked away, where he belonged.

Once again, former Arkansas Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee struggled to explain his catastrophically poor judgment. Once again, a violent felon turned loose on his say-so had run amok. Once again, according to Huckabee, currently a Fox News Channel talk show host, the disaster was everybody's fault but his own. He issued a buck-passing statement blaming "a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington."

Assisted by an absurdly deferential Bill O'Reilly on Fox, Huckabee attempted to shift blame to Washington judges who'd freed Clemmons on $150,000 bail pending trial for child rape. Why, had he known Clemmons would go berserk, he vowed, he'd never have commuted his sentence in 2000. (One can only imagine O'Reilly's reaction to this self-serving blather had Huckabee been a Democrat.)

The Washington tragedy almost surely marks the end of Huckabee's political career. Ironically, however, for once his alibi is more right than wrong. For his own protection and everybody else's, Clemmons ought to have been inside a locked-down psychiatric unit. The system failed from top to bottom.

But let's start at the top, shall we? Although he posed as a conservative hard-liner, when it came to crime and punishment, the glib, self-deprecating Huckabee proved as softheaded and gullible as the woolliest sociology professor in the faculty lounge.

During the former Baptist minister's decade as Arkansas governor, it appeared that no matter how heinous an inmate's crimes, all he had to do for a pardon was drop to his knees, praise Jesus and persuade some preacher known to Huckabee of his newfound holiness. "Everybody knows that Mike Huckabee makes up his mind what to do by what God tells him to do," said one minister who gained clemency for a prisoner serving 100 years for the strong-arm robbery of elderly neighbors.

Making the governor's personal acquaintance also seemed to help. Inmates competed to be assigned to do yard work at the Governor's Mansion. "If you do a good job raking the governor's leaves," Pulaski County (Little Rock) prosecutor Larry Jegley complained bitterly, "you can go free."

Altogether, Huckabee commuted 163 inmates' sentences, including a dozen murderers. Several have already ended up back in prison. Indeed, given Huckabee's track record, Maurice Clemmons probably won't be the last to earn notoriety. We must pray that he ends up being the worst. Only a strong public outcry in 2004 prevented the governor from freeing a Lonoke County killer who'd beaten, raped and run over a pregnant woman with his car, only to get religion in the penitentiary.

The most notorious was Wayne DuMond, Arkansas' celebrity inmate of the '90s. Convicted in 1985 of raping a Forrest City cheerleader at knifepoint, DuMond was a glib psychopath who persuaded ideologically deranged crackpots who circulated Clinton administration "death lists" that he'd been framed. DuMond's victim, see, was a distant cousin of the then-president's. Articles appeared in places like the New York Post portraying him as a victim of the Satanic Clinton machine.

Becoming governor after Kenneth Starr deposed his predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, Huckabee came into office publicly doubting DuMond's guilt and talking about a pardon. After the prosecutor and the victim herself courageously objected, Huckabee pulled some hugger-mugger with the parole board that ended up freeing Dumond -- the proud recipient of a "Dear Wayne" letter from the governor celebrating his release.

In 2001, DuMond was arrested and subsequently convicted of the rape and murder of a Missouri woman. Huckabee's 2007 campaign bio titled, get this, "Character Makes a Difference," falsely claimed that DuMond died in prison awaiting trial. The man's worse than a hypocrite; he's a fool. Even so, establishment pundits pretty much gave Huckabee a pass. After all, he's so charming on television. Anyway, where, exactly, is Kansas City?

Maurice Clemmons, too, played the holy card to Huckabee, who got him turned loose back in 2000. But the governor had no seeming role in Arkansas' failure to revoke Clemmons' parole after he was convicted of two more armed robberies in 2001, bringing his total to seven felonies. He was released in 2004.

Nor was Huckabee involved in Washington's decision to free Clemmons on bail with seven pending felony charges -- one involving forcing 11- and 12-year-old relatives to strip naked and fondle him while he pronounced that he was Jesus. President Obama, Clemmons proclaimed, would soon declare him the Messiah. These are unmistakable symptoms of criminal psychosis.

How and why Washington authorities failed to act is frankly beyond comprehension.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/12/02/huckabee_and_god_and_clemmons/index.html