The Latin shift.

Crooks and Liars:

By 57 percent to 23 percent, more Hispanic registered voters say they favor Democrats than Republicans, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew
Hispanic Center.

That 34 percentage point Democratic edge — which includes people who said they lean toward either party — has grown since July 2006, when a Pew poll measured a 21 point difference. Then, 49 percent of registered Hispanic voters said they favored Democrats and 28 percent chose Republicans.

Wow. I guess Chris Matthews doesn't know Latinos as well as he thought.

Huckabee and Gay Marriage

No not another dark secret from Huck's past.

Daily Kos looks at one of his comments about the social destruction that is caused by messing the the tenets of marriage ("There's never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. ") and make an excellent point to consider when someone says that gay marriage is an End of the World sign.

...

So, I'm wondering, who were these civilizations that re-wrote the meaning of marriage or family, and met some horrible doom. Was it the many civilizations were marriage was arranged and decided long before children were of marriageable age? Was it the Jewish civilizations of Jesus' day where brothers were required to marry their brother's widows? Was it civilizations that allowed siblings to marry? How about first cousins? Could be it civilizations who adopted the silly idea that you should marry for love. Perhaps it was the Mormons who decided to practice polygamy. Perhaps it was those who decided to stop. Or maybe it was the polyandrous cultures in many mountainous or arctic regions.

The truth is that every society rewrites the rules of marriage and family. That's what happens to all our social values as they respond to changes in how we live, what we know, and our available resources. Yes, friction occurs when the boundaries of a social convention no longer match those of a society in which it's embedded, but the societies that survive are exactly those which demonstrate the flexibility to change and adapt.

We stand at the end of a long line of rule-changers, of civilizations that have made institutions like marriage work for them, instead of against them. The dust under our feet is composed of all the civilizations that just the kind of rigidity that Huckabee wants for us now. The civilizations who fail are not those who acknowledge changing conditions and reshape their rules, but those who don't.

"Marriage" has changed shifted in so many ways since people started having "permanent" couplings. Heck, Catholic priest could once get married. Rules change left and right.

So, please, cut the bull conservatives. You just don't like the idea of gay marriage. That's your problem, not the worlds.

Juan Cole on the Romney Speech

Juan Cole gives his considered opinion of The Religion Speech. He hits on a number of good points and some added context from the words of some of his supporters.

Mitt Romney's speech in Texas on Thursday was supposed to be an attempt to fend off religious bigotry. Instead, it betrays some prejudices of its own (against secular people), and seems to provoke others to bigotted statements. It has been likened to the speech of John F. Kennedy on his Catholicism. But we knew John F. Kennedy, and Mitt Romney is no John F. Kennedy. Kennedy strongly affirmed the separation of religion and state. Romney wants to dragoon us into a soft theocracy (not as a Mormon but as a Republican allied to the Pat Robertsons of the world). Kennedy wanted to be accepted as an American by other Americans. Romney wants to be accepted as a conservative Christian by other conservative Christians.

...

What Romney omits is that many of the "religious people" among the founding fathers were Deists, who did not believe in revelation or miracles or divine intervention in human affairs. Thomas Jefferson used to sit in the White House in the evening with scissors and cut the miracle stories out of the Gospels so as to end up with a reasoned story about Jesus of Nazareth, befitting the Enlightenment.Some Founding Fathers were Christians, some were not, at least not in any sense that would be recognized by today's Religious Right. Jefferson believe that most Americans would end up Unitarians.As for the insistence that you need religion for political freedom, that is silly. Organized religion has many virtues, but pushing for political liberty is seldom among them. Religion is about controlling people. No religiously based state has ever provided genuine democratic governance. You want religion in politics, go to Iran.

Liberty can survive religion, especially a multiplicity of religions within the nation. Because that way there is not a central faith that imposes itself on everyone, as Catholicism used to in Ireland or Buddhism used to in Tibet. But organized religion would never ever have produced the First Amendment to the US constitution, and the 19th century popes considered it ridiculous that the state should treat false religions as equal to the True Faith.

Deists, freethinkers and Freemasons--the kind of people that Romney was complaining about-- produced the First Amendment. When Tom Jefferson tried out an earlier version of it in Virginia, some of the members of the Virginia assembly actually complained that freedom of religion would allow the practice of Islam in the US. Jefferson's response to that kind of bigotry was that other people believing in other religions did not pick his pocket or break his leg, so why should he care how they worshipped? And that's all Romney had to say. But he did not want to say that. Romney said the opposite. He implied that is is actively bad for a democracy if people are unbelievers or if there is a strict separation of religion and state.

We know the Founding Fathers and Romney is no founding father.

...

So Romney's so-called plea for tolerance is actually a plea for the privileging of religion in American public life. He just wants his religion to share in that privilege that he wants to install. Ironically, the very religious pluralism of the United States, which he appears to praise, will stand in the way of his project.

Why should we care if a candidate pushed to release a serial rapist from prison?

Now, I like NBC's David Shuster's work. He does ask government tough questions. And he does well guest hosting on Countdown.

But I really dislike a question he posed to Ariana Huffington this morning. It could be a devil's advocate question, but this bespeaks my feel of the lazy and taking the easy roads mentalities of too many journalists.


To paraphrase, "Why should we care about this story [The Huckabee - Rapist released from prison story], it doesn't support a pre-existing activity or opinion of him?"


What? He seems to be saying, if it ain't part of the media's existing narrative, why should we care? Why should it not just be pushed off the table? Oh, heavens forbid we discover the public facade is a false one. I would hate to make the journo job harder.

This reminds me of the Katie Curic, off camera comment, about bumping the Kerak/Giuliani story, as no one cares.

That's good journalism all around...

And yet more...

From firedoglake:

From start to finish, Romney's speech this morning entitled "Faith in America" was a political -- not a religious -- speech. Romney wanted to say "I believe in the separation of church and state," yet he tried to reach out to evaneglicals who are moving toward Mike Huckabee and bring them back by saying in essence "Americans are people of faith, their leader must be a person of faith, and I'm the best faithful leader out there."

It's kind of hard to reconcile those two, but Mitt gave it a good try.

...

What "some" people want removed from the public domain is the government taking official notice of and granting preference to (a) religious beliefs over non-religious beliefs, and (b) favoring certain religious believers over others with different beliefs (religous or otherwise). The Constitution says not one word about God, and refers to religion only twice -- and both times in the negative, to constrain the government's interaction with religion. People are free to impose a religious test (or any other kind of test, for that matter) on the candidates for office as they consider for whom they will vote; the government cannot put such a test as a requirement for holding office. People are free to be religious or not; the government must be blind to religion.

...

For all Romney says about history in this speech, this paragraph is proof that his knowledge is shallow indeed. Abolition of slavery, for instance, divided families, congregations, and entire denominations. The Presbyterians split in 1861, and didn't reunite until 1983, for crying out loud.

It's also proof of a subtle religious bigotry. Despite his claim of a "common course" based on "great moral principles," there continues to be great division among religious people over all kinds of issues. Committed Roman Catholics, for instance, interpret "right to life" to mean opposition to the death penalty; evangelical fundamentalists see the death penalty as a completely separate issue. Some religious groups embrace GLBTs, while others do not. Yet Romney, trying to reach the evangelicals who are moving toward Huckabee, blithely says in essence, "all religious folks have the same moral beliefs." Sorry, Governor, but your moral beliefs are much different than mine, and also much different from a lot of evangelicals.

"We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny," says Romney -- but he makes it clear he is talking only about "radical Islam." Romney's language about America's churches having a common moral creed and his assumption that every American is religious points to a different kind of tyranny from the TheoCon right. Says Romney, "And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me."

Where, pray tell, does that leave those who have not knelt in prayer to the Almighty?

The bottom line for Romney is that he has to reach out to the right wing religious voters. He mouths the words about separation of church and state to mollify moderates, but his strongest language is aimed directly at the evangelicals who are leaning toward Huckabee and others on the right, telling them that he's a good, religious guy -- and Americans need a good religious leader in the White House.

Daily Kos:

...

In this formulation "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" Romney completely distorts or ignores history. In fact, religion has flourished alongside slavery and repression. In fact, organized religion has served as the instrument of repression from prehistory right into the modern day. Romney finds it convenient to disregard this.

In praising religious liberty, Romney mourns the empty cathedrals of state-sponsored churches in Europe, before returning to an attack on Islam.

...

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

This theme, played out in one discordant note after another through the remainder of Romney's speech, is perhaps the least tolerant expression uttered by anyone this side of Bill O'Reilly, certainly by anyone running for president. In Romney's speech, America isn't just a country where a number of religious people live, it's a country that is required to be religious.

...

In noting the "Creator" of the founding fathers, Romney discards any notion that this word was an abstract concept, a term for man's origin stated by a group of men operating decades before Darwin climbed aboard the Beagle. His list of religions among the founders doesn't entertain any idea of deism, much less atheism.

...

Rather than a defense of his personal beliefs, Romney's speech devolves into an exclusionary rewrite of history, one if which our country is founded by, for, and about religion. Romney assures the conservatives he hopes to woo that those who fall on their knees are his friends. And for what about those do don't kneel? Where is their place in Romney's America?

And this is something that is getting praise. Sure from politicians and pundits. But from the media? Can they just pool a brain, or have an energy drink and do some sound work?

An Olbermann Special Comment and more on The Speech

The video from last night's Countdown is on One Good Move.

A great piece that lays out the slow shift in the president's statements, that started right when he didn't get the NIE.

Bush is a liar. Not about sex, about matters of life and death.


Unfortunately, I have not found video of the other great piece from last night. In the segment, Olbermann talks with Washington Post's Eugene Robinson about the Romney Speech. They hit on the key issues I was having, and they note how the media is too busy loving the speech to care. Of course the issues surround tolerance for those other than monotheist, and the media tends to forget they exist. And the blowing off and denouncing of the secular and atheist is apparently okay.

Now the trouble for secularists and atheists was hit on in one interview. That was on CNN, with the religious writer Robert Ostling. And he brought up the dismissal of the secular citizen to dismiss them and move on to how great a speech it was.

Some wit from the witty.

Here's a great quote from Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain):

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

- "The Lowest Animal"

More on Romney on Faith

More from other sites and blogs.

From Atrios a note on the man who introduced Romney today.

It's completely appropriate that Mitt was introduced by George HW Bush, the man who once said:

No, I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.to give a speech which included the line "

freedom requires religion."

Much of the time it seems that atheists are the only people who understand that importance of religious freedom, and for that we get accused of being hostile to it.

From Salon.com.

Here is the passage that troubles me: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

In the speech, Romney is attempting to pull off the "have it both ways" shuffle. He is aligning himself with those conservatives advocating more religion in the public sphere while simultaneously arguing that the doctrines of Mormonism should be off-limits in the campaign. In my judgment, Romney is half-right here -- no one should quiz him about his religious beliefs or vote against him because of his church. (For those who crave more on my views read today's piece.) But this back-and-forth is all part of the standard political debate that has been going on since, at least, the Supreme Court banned school prayer in 1963.

...

The objectionable point here is the ill-concealed notion that only those who are truly religious crave freedom. Secularists may, in Romney's vision, give lip service to freedom. But when the chips are down, they will presumably sell out liberty for a pair of backstage passes to the MTV Awards or a chance to rip the Ten Commandments from a courthouse wall. ...

And this line of Romney's has also been noted.

We are a nation "Under God" and in God, we do indeed trust. We should acknowledge the Creator as did the founders -- in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests.

So the obvious, what's that about judges? What test is going to be used by him then?

The other matter. He tries to subtly suggest that "In God We Trust" and "On Nation Under God" were enshrined by the Founding Fathers. This is something constantly foisted. No, the pledge changes and the money changes were things of the 20th century. And to use them as proof of the Founding Fathers intent is just plain dishonesty.

And I need a better causative argument for how exactly the lack of nativities and menorahs "in the public places" hurts liberty and America? How will an increase lead to better and improved freedom.

If I go and put up a Nativity scene, will he scrap the Patriot Act? Nope.

Romney on Faith

Well it is time for his little speech, far from Kennedy-esque.

TPM has the excerpts. And clearly this speech was not geared to wooing me.


And the speech starts.

So first he starts out with some irony calling on tolerance and no religious tests. This follows on his comments before about how he wouldn't put Muslims in high levels of his administration, maybe the lower levels.

He then goes on to cry out against the persecution of Christianity. Not enough nativities, menorahs, and Jesii on street corners. We apparently are tossing it away. He mentions the need for diversity of faith, and no state religion. But...we need to remember Christ all the more? How does this work?

And of course their was more red meat for conservatives.

The evil Secularist were mentioned. They...we, apparently are trying to impose out evil on America. And he took a jab at Europeans who are apparently insufficiently prayerful.

And the lovely line that no movement of conscious can go on without religious people. WHAT...UTTER...BULL! Secular types were backing Martin Luther King well before the Baptist finally stop being skittish about King's ideas.

It is the old story, as we have heard from Catholic and Anglican leaders. We need to join together, against the evil secularist.


So, don't worry Republicans, he's willing to play the role of true blue die hard conservatives.


Though it is interesting to hear the religious conservatives talking now that it is over and saying that he hasn't addressed the fact he was a Mormon and what is wrong with that. Will that attitude hold sway in Iowa?

Then again, I hope most conservatives don't think like Bill Bennett.

SHUDDER.

A disturbingly effective ad on domestic violence

Feministing links to a disturbing, but evocative Canadian PSA, that never saw air. It is easy to see why they might be squeamish. But it makes the point succinctly.

Huckabee's decision process

AMERICAblog has a list of Huckabee's clemency choices. An interesting read.


And his former aide has something to say about the Dumound case.

...

But, according to Reeves, Huckabee actually told the parole board members that the prison sentence meted out to Dumond for his rape conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime." Huckabee believed there "was something nefarious" about the how the state's criminal justice system had treated Dumond, Reeves said.

Reeves's admission comes as a surprise since the interview was encouraged by Huckabee's presidential campaign. Reeves served as chief counsel to then-Gov. Huckabee until 2003, and was subsequently appointed by Huckabee as chairman of the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission. Reeves has donated to Huckabee's presidential campaign.

Something nefarious? That's Huckabee's code for saying that he thought Bill Clinton was responsible for trumping up false charges against the rapist, since that's what all of Huckabee's good buddies on the far right kept telling him. And Huckabee believed it. Huckabee let his hatred for Bill Clinton cloud his judgment and it resulted in the rapes and murders of two women.

And now he's lying about it. Makes Rudy Giuliani lying about illegally using government funds to enable his extramarital affairs seem downright quaint.

The "attack" on Obama.

The attack is in "", as the slur is a claim he's secretly Muslim. Which is not really a slur, except in politics where being anything but white, male, old, and christian is bad.

TPM's Election Central has been following and digging out the story.

A nasty email has been spread around saying he's secretly a Muslim and probably tied to radicalism. It is a bunch of hooey, full of fear for the bible and the doom of America. Utter rot.

Apparently this chain email has been discovered to be passed along the chain by a Iowa County Chair for the Clinton campaign.

There is no evidence this was an act by the campaign proper, but it is an embarrassment, and plays into the view that Clinton says and does whatever she needs to win. So far, it seems, the campaign is trying to stay on top of this and fired the chair and disavowed the email.

This is the campaigns response at present.

Since seeing your post...we investigated this and below is a response from Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle:

"There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics. A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated."

Forrest shares her thoughts on the TEA controversy.

PZ Myers looks at the statement that Barbara Forrest has released since the director of science curriculum in Texas was forced out.

The recent unpleasant affair at the Texas Education Agency, in which the director of the science curriculum, Chris Comer, was pressured to resign, was triggered by Comer forwarding an email announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest. Forrest is a philosopher of science, and one of our leading advocates in the ongoing fight for better science education in the face of the nonsense the creationists are promoting. She's also one of their critics the creationists most fear, so it's not surprising that her name would elicit knee-jerk panic.

Forrest has now issued a formal statement on the termination of Chris Comer. You can download the pdf from NCSE, or read it below the fold. She doesn't pull any punches. Here's a taste, but you really should read the whole thing.

...

The Golden Compass

PZ Myers thoughts on what CNN and Donohue think of the new film, The Golden Compass, is too fun not to share.

Here's what CNN says about The Golden Compass:

Culture: A star-studded, big-budget fantasy film released for Christmastime features religion as the villain. Hollywood is collaborating with a militant atheist British children's book author to indoctrinate children.

Gregg Easterbrook (you already know to expect drooling idiocy) babbles without comprehension. Bill Donohue, of course, thinks it is a plot to corrupt children.

Get real. This movie isn't going to convert anyone to atheism. It's a fantasy story. It's got witches and talking bears in it. It's going to generate about as many new atheists as Tolkien's Middle Earth trilogy generated converts to worship of Eru and the Ainur. It has the nicely appreciated sop to secular interest that the author is an atheist who has no respect for Christian mythology, but this is not a propaganda film — it's entertainment. If your child's beliefs can be shattered by a CGI polar bear on a movie screen, you've got bigger problems than this one film.

I'm going to go see The Golden Compass this weekend. If it's a philosophical tract rather than an adventure story, I'm not going to enjoy it much.

And those of you who are upset that religion is one of the villains in this movie — get used to it. Religion is a villain in real life, too.

Brilliant. And I was getting annoyed watching the piece on CNN when they kept repeating the idea that this will corrupt and indoctrinate children into atheists.

Really?

How many were converted by Passion of the Christ (or any other blatantly religious movie) or Chronicles of Narnia (and the other veiled religious films). Sitting through two hours of fantasy threatens faith that much?

Just how shaky is high and mighty faith?

I plan to see the film this weekend to, assuming I can finish up research proposal and risk assessment in time. I don't like being preached at, hence no love for church time. Religion and religious organizations are baddies, for once. That ain't aloud? Why can't we have a story were the skeptics are right and the blindly pious are wrong?

Is that so wrong?

Plus polar bears and a girl hero (heroine). This sounds like a great film for kids.

Hmm. I am in the mood to watch The Hogfather again.

Cognitive Dissonance

Look at this video of Bush talking about the NIE and what it means about Iran. Then look up a definition of the term cognitive dissonance.


TPMtv:

Rove continues with the advice giving

Advive from Karl Rove on Crooks and Liars:

President Bush, down and all but counted out by friend and foe alike just three months ago, is rising like a bloodied but unbowed prizefighter, and Karl Rove predicts peril for Republicans and their presidential nominee if they shun the lame-duck president on the campaign trail. […]

...

If Dems are really lucky, Republicans will forget the fact that Rove’s record on electoral predictions is surprisingly weak and they’ll take his advice.

We can only hope.

Christians as the victims OR The MP who put the P in punce, and I can tell him where he can cram the M

BBC has a funny/sad story.

Mr Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin, Shropshire, has called a Westminster debate on Christianophobia for Wednesday.

...

He said he did not want to criticise people of other faiths, but wanted to "protect the Christian tradition".

...

He told the BBC: "The debate is not about doing God or theocracy. It's about ensuring that the Christian tradition of our nation is recognised.

"If mainstream political parties do not recognise and protect the Christian tradition of this nation then other more extremist parties will.

...

Mr Pritchard said the debate was particularly topical, as recent findings suggested four fifths of schools were not staging Nativity plays this year.

...

Sorry? I guess that seems like an odd problem. Even in evangel-crazzzy America the Nativity is not generally foisted on kids in schools.

But England is a land of traditions...and a state religion.

...

Mr Pritchard said many officials and public bodies forgot the work done by
Christians in charity, business and public service.

He added: "Some people seem to want to forget the Christian tradition
going back to the first century and its contribution to arts, culture and
science.

...

Yeah. And still all this comes down to foisting his faith on people and reminding people this is a christian nation first. Freedom of religion and speech, but don't ever not have Christ at the center of everything.

...

But Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular
Society, called Mr Pritchard's debate "a waste of precious parliamentary time".

...

He added: "Christians have absolutely nothing to complain about in this
country."

Mr Porteous Wood cited the fact that 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords
and that England has an established church.

He added: "The head of state is a Christian, the prime minister is a
Christian and almost all the cabinet are self-identified Christians. How on
earth can anyone imagine that Christians are disadvantaged or pushed to the
margins?"

Mr Porteous Wood also said: "Christians are not being pushed out of public
life, if anything they are over-represented."

...

You are the majority, are the state religion, and hold the power...and still!

It is like with the FOX news "War on Christmas" crap.

How dare I not hear Merry Christmas when ever I shop! That is discrimination and abuse of my religion! A secular plot, this is!


Christians like to remind everyone of the abuse that they deal with in China and North Korea, then they throw a fit about what the person at the cash register doesn't say. How does that not make you look a bit like an ass?


I like putting up a tree and lights, and giving gifts. But that is a choice I make. Does it really have to all be about you? Really? Come on.

Getting deeper into the NIE

More on what is going on with the Iranian NIE


Crooks and Liars: (with video)

It was a year ago this month that Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker that the White House (ie: Cheney) was pushing back against the release of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that had failed to find any evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program. Once again I guess you could say Sy is the polar opposite of ‘the boy who cried wolf’.’

...

It’s little wonder why Seymour Hersh is so often the target of fierce criticism from Bushco as he’s been a thorn in their side just as he has many an administration before them. Sy has earned his place as one of the US’s greatest investigative reporters/muckrakers ever after his exposing many of the greatest scandals of our time. He broke the My Lai massacre, the torture at Abu
Ghraib, and the CIA’s “Family Jewels” that led to the Church
hearings, and even Clinton’s bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, just to name a few of his more well known.

UPDATE: (Nicole) Marcy has a great NIE timeline…

The Power of The Weed

Feministing:

Yes, researchers in San Francisco (shocking, I know) have found that a
certain compound found in weed slows the rate at which breast cancer
spreads.

Are people still belly aching about the medicinal value of marijuana?

Huckabee continued...But Clinton started it. Yes he did!

The Clinton angle is one I was unclear on, as the victim was a distant cousin, so I was unclear how he made the assumption that there was a frame on this rapist.

Crooks and Liars points to the answers on Huffington Post.

...

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.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.[..]

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.

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, then the governor of Arkansas, and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.

...

This is a disturbing notion. Clinton = All bets are off. This is why laughing off the Right's obsession with Clinton is foolish. In AK, there was just a mad obsession with the man.

Holy cow, it’s unbelievable how far the right wing’s obsession about the Clenis goes. Huckabee is desperately trying to put daylight between himself and Dumond because Dumond’s release was all about discrediting Clinton. Again. Hillary was spot on right about that “vast right wing conspiracy”. And the saddest thing is I don’t know that Huckabee’s base would be as concerned about these kind of ethical issues to not vote for him. Do they care about Huckabee’s complete lack of knowledge of the Iranian NIE? Or evolution? Let’s face it, the bar for Republican understanding has been set pretty low.

UPDATE: Huckabee: God Responsible for My Rise in Polls Oy.

Ah, God did it, Clinton did it...Thanks for the reminder of the old reason Huck was creeping me out.


AMERICAblog with more.


And if he wanted to dispel the sense this was part of the anti-Clinton bias of AK Republicans, maybe trying to use Bill Clinton as a scapegoat wasn't the sharpest choice.

Huckabee rape defense: BIll Clinton made me do it

That's the Republican equivalent of the dog ate my homework. GOP presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee spoke today at a press conference about the growing controversy over his role in releasing a convicted rapist who then went on to rape and murder two more women. Huckabee has been giving conflicting answers for days now about the incident, and today came up with a novel excuse: It's Bill Clinton's fault. Six times during the press conference Huckabee invoked Clinton's name, trying to pin the blame on him for helping release the man who raped his cousin. Now, you can throw a lot of hurt at Bill Clinton, but suggesting that he'd help free the guy who raped his cousin, that's pretty far out there even for the far-right Clinton haters. And in fact, Bill Clinton had recused himself from the case because the victim was his cousin.

But even if Bill Clinton helped Huckabee enable the rape and murder of two women (which he didn't), that's the best Huckabee can come up? Clinton helped me do it?

And Huckabee's lament.

Huckabee in August 2007: I felt sorry for rapist

I felt sorry for him, I am sorry people who died and suffered, but...Clinton and the Democrats are the ones to blame.

Sure, he petitioned and pressured the parole board, but how does that place any responsibility on his shoulders?

Oh yeah, it's Bill Clinton's fault. Uh huh. Considering that's how Huckabee got into this mess, by doing the bidding of Clinton-haters who didnt' want to believe that a cousin of Bill Clinton was really raped, it does Huckabee no favors to be now proving that he's a member of the blame-Clinton posse, more interested in bashing Clinton than looking after the welfare of rape victims.

Yet another pass-the-buck Republican presidency, that's all America needs.

Huckabee issues fake passive-voice CYA apology to dead rape victims' families

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Huckabee is denying any involvement at all in the release of the rapist who then raped and murdered their daughters even though he met with the parole board on the rapist's behalf. The appropriate apology, the real apology, isn't "I'm sorry for your pain (that someone else caused)" - that's what you say when a friend's kid dies and you had nothing to do with it. The appropriate apology when you aided and abetted the rape and murder of two people's daughters is "I am responsible for your daughters' deaths, it was a terrible error in judgment, I was wrong, and I am sorry. What can I do to set things right?"

Huckabee is also saying today, “Nothing I can do or say can reduce their level of grief.” Actually, a real apology, and not a passive-voice CYA non-apology, would be a good start.