Huckabee and the Released Serial Rapist Who Moved on to Murder

When it rains Huckabee, it pours…

A lot of people are linking to Murray Waas' piece in the Huffington Post, Documents Expose Huckabee's Role In Serial Rapist's Release, which I highly encourage you to read (as well as Waas' 2002 article in the Arkansas Times about the case, to which I linked back in May)—because Huckabee's role as governor in getting Wayne Dumond released is not just some trumped-up bulllshit. It's extremely important, not only because it is indicative of his increasingly obvious contempt for women, but because it illustrative of an unwillingness to accept responsibility or hold himself (or his people) accountable. (Sound familiar?)

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.

No one could have predicted. The GOP should make that their new party slogan.

I'll also again recommend this piece in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette by Gene Lyons, which describes Huckabee as "rash, devious, incapable of admitting error, a crybaby and definitely not…presidential material."