Willie Horton take 2

[Wezil]

Wezil News has her at 100% favourable.

I want to see her leading the 2012 Republican ticket.

[Asher]

I'm pretty sure Fox News only polls trailer parks.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm pretty sure Fox News only polls trailer parks.

Trailer parks will play a big role in whether Palin can win the 2012 GOP nomination or not.

[Wezil]

Any poll number wrt Palin at this point his pretty meaningless. It's too far out from the next vote.

[loinburger]

It's a good litmus test for the intelligence of the American population subset being sampled.

[Berzerker]

this guy got 95 years for stealing stuff as a 17 year old?


what a prescient jury (or judge)

[Asher]

Good call KH

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/732960--suspect-in-killing-of-4-police-shot-dead-in-seattle?bn=1

Suspect in killing of 4 police shot dead in Seattle

SEATTLE – The man suspected of gunning down four police officers in a suburban coffee shop was shot and killed by a lone Seattle patrol officer investigating a stolen car early Tuesday, a sheriff's spokesman said. Four other people were arrested for allegedly helping the suspect elude authorities during a massive two-day manhunt.

A Seattle police officer came across the stolen car in a working-class south Seattle neighbourhood about 2:45 a.m., Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel said. The officer approached the car, then detected movement behind him, recognized the suspect Maurice Clemmons and ordered him to show his hands and stop.

"He wouldn't stop," Pugel said. "The officer fired several rounds, took the person into custody."

Clemmons had a serious gunshot wound from one of the four officers killed in the coffee-shop shooting. He has since died from his injuries, Pugel said. Clemmons was carrying a handgun that had belonged one of the slain officers, Pugel said.

Police planned to arrest more people who helped Clemmons.

"We expect to have maybe six or seven people in custody by the day's end," said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County sheriff. "Some are friends, some are acquaintances, some are partners in crime, some are relatives. Now they're all partners in crime."

Troyer didn't immediately give the names of the four people already arrested on suspicion of rendering criminal assistance. On Monday, officers detained a sister of Clemmons who they think treated the suspect's gunshot wound.

"We believe she drove him up to Seattle and bandaged him up," Troyer said.

Authorities say Clemmons, 37, singled out the Lakewood officers and spared employees and other customers at a coffee shop Sunday morning in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle. He then fled, but not before he was apparently shot in the torso by one of the dying officers.

"I'm surprised that he managed to get away," Troyer said. ``The officer did a good job in Lakewood."

Killed were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42.

A couple dozen police officers milled around at the scene where Clemmons was apparently shot, shaking hands and patting each other on the back later Tuesday morning.

Police said they aren't sure what prompted Clemmons to shoot the officers. Clemmons was described as increasingly erratic in the past few months and had been arrested earlier this year on charges that he punched a sheriff's deputy in the face.

Troyer told the Tacoma News-Tribune that Clemmons indicated the night before the shooting "that he was going to shoot police and watch the news."

Police surrounded a house in a Seattle neighbourhood late Sunday following a tip Clemmons had been dropped off there. After an all-night siege, a SWAT team entered the home and found it empty. But police said Clemmons had been there.

Police frantically chased leads on Monday, searching multiple spots in the Seattle and Tacoma area and at one point cordoning off a park where people thought they saw Clemmons.

Authorities found a handgun carried by the killer, along with a pickup truck belonging to the suspect with blood stains inside. They posted a $125,000 reward for information leading to Clemmons' arrest and alerted hospitals to be on the lookout for a man seeking treatment for gunshot wounds.

"We need to get him into custody and we need to end this,'' Troyer said Monday night.

Authorities in two states were criticized amid revelations that Clemmons was allowed to walk the streets despite a teenage crime spree in Arkansas that landed him an 108-year prison sentence. He was released early after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence.

Huckabee cited Clemmons' youth in granting the request. But Clemmons quickly reverted to his criminal past, violated his parole and was returned to prison. He was released again in 2004.

"This guy should have never been on the street," said Brian D. Wurts, president of the police union in Lakewood. "Our elected officials need to find out why these people are out.''

Huckabee said on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor'' Monday night that Clemmons was allowed back on the street because prosecutors failed to file paperwork in time.

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons' parole in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee's comments were ``red herrings.''

"My word to Mr. Huckabee is man up and own what you did,'' Jegley said.

Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse.

But he was released from jail after posting bail with the assistance of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.

Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress.

"The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," a Pierce County sheriff's report said.

[bumfister]

Damnit, apparently I'm not the first one to come up with the analogy. A search for "Willie Horton" turns up 200+ results on Google News from the last few hours...

In fact the analogy was used on MSNBC last night.

[KrazyHorse]

Which would be after I posted this thread.

[loinburger]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2009/11/30/mike_huckabee/index.html

If clemency for Maurice Clemmons -- now the fugitive suspect in the shooting deaths of four police officers -- were the only fatal error committed by Mike Huckabee as governor of Arkansas, he might be able to shift blame to the state's law enforcement system and even run for president again in 2012. Yet the Clemmons commutation that he granted nine years ago is only one among several cases that raise serious questions about Huckabee's judgment.

On Sunday morning, Clemmons is alleged to have walked into a coffee shop in Parkland, Wash., a town south of Seattle, and shot the officers without provocation or warning. Reportedly hit in the torso by return fire from one of the cops who later died, he escaped and reportedly remains at large.

Having accumulated five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington, according to the Seattle Times, Clemmons was undoubtedly a danger to the community who ought to have been returned to prison long ago by law enforcement authorities. Only days before the police shooting, he was released on $150,000 bail from a jail in Pierce County, Wash., where he was incarcerated on charges of raping a child.

As Huckabee suggested in a statement released on Monday, courts and law enforcement agencies in Washington should probably share the blame for Sunday's carnage. "Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, " the statement said, referring to Clemmons, "it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."

In short, Huckabee was arguing, the killings attributed to Clemmons were not Huckabee's fault. Certainly they were not his fault alone. But this incident has revived memories of other decisions he made that later led to terrible consequences. The damage to his political future will hinge on how deeply news organizations now delve into those cases -- and the bizarre faith-based rationale behind his use of the clemency and pardon powers of the governor.

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murdered now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.

The real engine behind Dumond's release, however, was a Baptist minister and ultra-conservative ideologue named Jay Cole, who also happened to be a friend of Huckabee. Cole would tell the governor about his visits with the supposedly innocent Dumond, when the minister and the prisoner would read the Bible and pray together.

Perhaps the worst instance of that same syndrome, chronicled in detail by Arkansas journalists, concerned an Air Force sergeant named Glen Green, who was sentenced to prison for life after confessing that he had raped and killed a teenage girl. After beating the woman with nunchucks, he violated her almost lifeless body, ran over her with his car and buried her in a swamp. But yet another preacher friend of Huckabee's named Rev. Johnny Jackson somehow persuaded the governor that this incredibly brutal killing had been an "accident" -- and that Green had repented, come to Jesus and therefore should be freed.

Two years ago, I noted that Huckabee knew almost nothing about the Green case beyond what his preacher pal had told him. He consulted neither the prosecutor nor the victim's family, and overruled the dissent of his own parole board. After he announced that Green would be released, the furious public reaction forced him to reverse the decision. Yet he continued to release murderers and other violent criminals despite angry dissent from local prosecutors.

Huckabee granted mercy to prisoners whom he chanced to meet, to prisoners who had personal connections to him or his family, and especially to prisoners who were vouchsafed to him by the pastors he had befriended during his years as a Baptist minister and denominational leader. Among the thugs who benefited from his mercy was a robber who beat an old man to death with a lead pipe.

During the 2008 campaign, Huckabee's arrogance and stupidity mostly escaped the full scrutiny of the national press corps, in part because his stint as a contender was so brief. But next time, if there is a next time, he should get no such free pass -- and his claims to divine guidance ought to be thoroughly debunked.

[RGBVideo]

Then again, the Repubs are just going to run a sacrificial lamb in '12. No way any smart politician runs

you do realize that this most probably means romney, right? he has a horrible and ineffective track record in political campaigns.

[Wezil]

I wouldn't declare Obama unbeatable in 2012 at this point. While he certainly may win a second term he will in all likelihood be dealing with a bad war and bad economy/debt. Tough things to run on. His bonus is that he will be running against a Republican.

[-Jrabbit]

1. If the Repubs are going to run a sacrificial lamb in 2012, seems like this would be the perfect time to go with the now-smudged Huckabee. If he should somehow win, the right is in bliss. And in the more likely case that he loses, they never have to worry about him again.

2. Best phrase in this thread, by far:

...posting bail with the assistance of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.

[KrazyHorse]

[-Jrabbit]

I know it's only 30 seconds, yet can't help but think I will be very sad if I click that...