Four white police officers murdered by compassion

(Note: further comments have been posted.)

UPDATE: Huckabee’s clemency of the future mass murderer Maurice Clemmons wasn’t a one time thing. In the late 1990s the Huckster was as committed to releasing violent felons on society as Michael Dukakis had been ten years earlier. Michelle Malkin has a lot of information on the controversy in Arkansas ten years ago between then-Gov. Huckabee and the prosecutors who strongly protested his Dukakis like policy.

About the career criminal who murdered four Lakewood, Washington police officers this morning as they drank coffee and prepared for their day’s work at a local coffee shop, we’re informed by the Seattle Times:

Clemmons, who was recently released from jail, has an extensive criminal record in Pierce County and Arkansas, court records show. He currently faces eight criminal charges in Washington state.

Did I read that right? He was released from jail despite eight criminal charges pending against him? And that’s not to mention the fact, referenced in the previous entry and explained here in detail, that in 2000 Mike Huckabee, the sentimental evangelical governor of Arkansas, commuted Clemmons’s sentence after he had served 11 years of a 108 year sentence (or perhaps it was a 203 year sentence, I’ve lost count). Huckabee released Clemmons, notwithstanding the fact that he was an extremely violent and dangerous individual, because of his “young age” (17) at the time of his crimes. Huckabee was more concerned about being compassionate to a declared enemy of society than he was about protecting society.

Did this kind of thing happen routinely in America prior to, say, 1960? No. But now it happens all the time. Because nonjudgmental liberal society is not serious about protecting its members from its declared enemies. Sometimes it does so, but much of the time it doesn’t.

And here’s the result.

These:

Sgt. Mark Renninger, Officers Ronald Owens,
Tina Griswold and Greg Richards

wiped out by this:

Maurice Clemmons

Comments

Alan S. writes:

Hopefully this will finish off Huckabee’s 2012 presidential campaign. Dukakis was crippled by the Willie Horton ads. This clemency should do likewise to Huckabee.

LA replies:

Huckabee’s dead meat, or he should be. The only people that will support him now are the terminal “Would you put Jesus in jail for life?” people.

Richard W. writes:

Just watched King 5 news. Neighborhood surrounded, they know the house he’s in.

He probably will be arrested shortly.. But not yet. He might die in the SWAT raid.

(And honesty, who could blame the police at this point…. if they capture him, again, some idiot liberal judge will probably free him again.)

A. Zarkov writes:

From the Seattle Times article,

“Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.”

and,

“Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination last year, issued a statement tonight calling the slaying of the police officers “a horrible and tragic event.”

If Clemmons is found responsible, “it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State,” Huckabee said.

He added that Clemmons’ release from prison had been reviewed and approved by the Arkansas parole board.”

Note that Huckabee tries to pass the buck to the parole board for his misjudgment. Why did he not listen to the prosecutors? Note also that a sentence is not a sentence because the governor can always commute it. So when someone gets sentenced to “life in prison without possibility of parole” it really doesn’t mean that because the parole board just sends the case to the governor for clemency. This a fraud that the criminal justice system perpetrates on the public. Jurors get told that they can substitute “life in prison without possibility of parole” for a death sentence and they fall for it. Little do they know that later the person they didn’t want ever paroled will get paroled with the aid of the governor. I doubt that Clemmons was eligible for parole, but that didn’t matter; the board simply decided to parole him anyway and sent the case to the governor.

Normally we think of clemency and parole as two separate processes, and they should be. Clemency should be invoked only for special circumstances such as the discovery of new evidence, not as an end run around the parole process. Few people (even lawyers) seem to understand this fraud on the public. It’s pure liberalism. Huckabee wanted to feel good, and he let a natural-born killer out of jail under the lame excuse that he did his crimes as a youth. But Milton told us:

The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day

Liberalism is all about feelings, not results.

Sent by Clark Coleman, from The Corner:

Huckabee Granted Clemency to Man Wanted in Police Killings [Rich Lowry]

Maurice Clemmons, the 37-year-old Tacoma man being sought for questioning in the killing of four Lakewood police officers this morning, has a long criminal record punctuated by violence, erratic behavior and concerns about his mental health.

Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.

“This is the day I’ve been dreading for a long time,” Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’ Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings.
11/29 09:54 PM

LA replies:

He’s dead meat.

LA continues:

Correction: My “dead meat” remark about Huckabee assumes the existence of a society that still has standards and accountability; and, of course, that’s no longer the case, at least when it comes to people who have gotten into trouble for doing liberal things. So the only thing we can say for certain is that Huckabee will pay a lasting price for this. How serious it will be, we don’t know. But his clemency of this monster will hang over him. People will not let him forget it.

Posted November 30 at 12:20 p.m.

Charles T. writes:

I do not like Huckabee. I have never liked Huckabee. He is one arrogant, self-righteous man. When one of my Christian friends pointed out something they liked about Huckabee I reminded him that Huckabee suggested that if you opposed illegal immigration you might be racist. My friend just smiled weakly and said, yeah, that is a strange statement. Of course, most of my Christian friends were favoring Huckabee because he was “pro-life.” Evangelicals are one dimensional on this subject and they cannot connect the dots concerning a candidate’s political positions and the consequences from those positions.

Huckabee is typical of the modern evangelical Christian. EVERYTHING they do and say must reflect the love of Jesus as they understand it and the church currently teaches it. This means—in general—they must not be judgmental about anything that anyone does. And, of course, this fits in with your understanding of liberalism and their principles of non-judgmentalism. Much of The evangelical church and many churches in the other Christian denominations are simply the religious wing of liberal secularism. Our churches have been co-opted by the left. I see no other way to understand Huckabee’s stupidity and negligence. Jesus has been reduced to a heavenly sugar-daddy who forgives everything versus the Jesus I read about in scripture who respects and upholds the law of his Father and gives his life on behalf of his redeemed to deliver them from the demands of his Father’s holy law.

This brings up another question that I have been wrestling with for a long time. Is evangelical Christianity authentic Christianity? Given the actions I see from public evangelicals like Huckabee; and from my own acquaintances; I am concluding that evangelicalism—as it is currently explained and practiced—is not Christianity. Why? Because many evangelicals are not willing to hold people responsible for their behavior. Their focus is on compassion only. Compassion has trumped good solid doctrine concerning the two areas of mercy and justice. If one is compassionate, then one has arrived at spiritual maturity. Nothing else really seems to matter. Just forgive and forget. I have actually heard that phrase from a pastor in the pulpit. Much of the compassion one sees from evangelicals—both in private and public—is done for self-promotion only. Oh, I almost forgot; if you actually hurt and despise your family and friends for the welfare of someone you barely know; then you really have arrived.

This type of rudderless compassion we see from Huckabee is not really compassion at all. It is anarchy and the results are horrific.

A friend once told me of his opposition to the death penalty. The reasoning goes like this: what if a murderer would repent and become a Christian in the future? The death penalty cuts that chance off. I kid you not! That is the evangelical mindset. It nauseates me. My religious, compassionate Christian friend does not understand that the issue of repentance is between the prisoner and God Almighty. I don’t believe The Lord needs our knowledge of the future to help decide the eternal fate of any individual. My friend reminds me of Huckabee. This same friend told me that if I was pro-life, i.e., against abortion on demand, that I must also be against the death penalty. In other words, many people, Christians and otherwise, cannot distinguish between the innocence of a child in the womb who has committed no crime against another human being, and the guilt of an adult who has knowingly murdered a fellow human being.

Huckabee fits the bill of everything I have described here. He is a self-serving, self-righteous phony. The fruits of his belief system cost four police officers their lives and has introduced a lifetime of grieving to their families; courtesy of a mis-guided Christian’s compassion. This whole episode brings shame on the governor’s office of Arkansas as an institution, our law enforcement system, on Huckabee himself, and worse, on Christianity. Even though what Huckabee is practicing is not Christianity, there are many opponents of Christianity who will use this to their advantage.

I hope you are right about this ending his political career. I will not let any of my friends forget this.

LA replies:

You wrote: “Much of The evangelical church and many churches in the other Christian denominations are simply the religious wing of liberal secularism.”

It is a truism that liberalism is secularized Christianity. But what your comment makes me realize is that liberalism now so dominates the West that much of Christianity is little more than liberalism plus a liberalized Jesus.

Karl D. writes:

A couple of days ago (before the massacre) Huckabee was being interviewed on FOX news. According to a poll (I forget who ran it) he topped the list ahead of Palin (with a healthy margin) for the Republican nomination in 2012. Needless to say I was floored.

Markus writes:

Huckabee’s sentimentalism is not biblical Christianity. I’m a born-again believer. A young-earth creationist. I make no apologies for my beliefs, say what you will. But part of my belief system—and this has traditionally been shared by most evangelicals—is that sin has consequences. Huckabee should understand this. That’s why there is a gospel of salvation—because sinful man needs a sin-atoning substitute. That’s why Christ died on the cross.

It follows then—not just logically, but explicitly, throughout the New Testament scriptures—that those who commit sin against their society (i.e., criminals) must be punished. Paul writes, “The powers that be [who] are ordained of God … [who] beareth not the sword in vain … a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:1, 4). Peter writes, “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well” (1 Peter 2:13-14).

There are many evangelicals who hold to the old, apostolic view. We certainly believe that a Maurice Clemmons could find redemption through Christ. But we understand this to be spiritual redemption, and that it does nothing to negate the crime he has committed in the eyes of society. He—like all criminals—must therefore be punished to the full extent of the law.

Even George W. Bush, of all people, recognized this principle when he refused to commute the death sentence for Karla Faye Tucker. Thus, Huckabee makes the often-sentimental Bush seem like a hard-headed, old-school Puritan on this issue.

I agree with you that Huckabee’s political career should be over. And I hope Maurice Clemmons becomes the new Willie Horton. This was a wicked, despicable crime—and one that could have been avoided but for the interference of a sentimental, feelings-oriented “Christian” governor who has put his Lord to an open shame.

Thanks for nothing, Mike!

James P. writes:

I just loved the non-judgmental headline from the Seattle paper:

Maurice Clemmons, man wanted for questioning, has troubling criminal history

Good liberals would never say anything like “Maurice Clemmons, man wanted for questioning, is crazy and evil.”

As for Huckabee calling it a “tragic event,” it was not a tragedy, it was a crime, and it was a crime that Huckabee could have prevented. “The system” did not fail, Huckabee did.

From the story, I am sure that if Clemmons is captured alive, he will plead insanity, and if this plea succeeds, then so-called “mental health professionals” will have an opportunity to release him again in the future. A society that permits feral humans to roam free is truly insane.

Richard W. writes:

I know you’re not a breaking news site! Anyway, he wasn’t in the house he was dropped off at.

Stephen T. writes:

What a piece of garbage Huckabee is. This should effectively be the end of his political career and I hope it is. I’ve known guys like him all my life: slick, phony fundamentalists who use religion as a way to grease their way through life and never get their hands dirty and make a killing in B.S. occupations like politics. He justified his pro-illegal alien policy with a lot of “Christian charity” malarkey. But everyone should be aware that he also quietly opened a state gov’t agency that functioned to connect Arkansas employers with officials of the Mexican government so as to funnel illegals directly from Mexico to specific companies that wanted them (and that played ball with the Huckabee administration/campaign contributions.) There was nothing like this in any other state in the union—imagine an agency whose entire raison d’etre was to conspire with crooked employers and a foreign government to make certain citizens of its own state were deprived of jobs. He’s an old-time “Preacher Man” fake right out of a Mark Twain or Will Rogers satire.

I remember when his fat son was arrested for horrifically torturing a stray dog to death for fun and how the “compassionate Christian” Huckabee made light of it and tried to get his degenerate spawn off. But what kind of a home—and what sort of parents—produce a psycho kid who grows up to torture animals in the first place? There is not a liberal democrat on the scene who I have lower regard for than this Republican “conservative.”

Paul K. writes:

There is a quote from Adam Smith that I wish Huckabee had taken into consideration: “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

Of course, Huckabee as already absolved himself of any responsibility.

LA replies:

Meaning he is once again showing mercy to the guilty—himself.

Gintas writes:

Huckabee sure did his part pushing the anarchy in anarcho-tyranny, didn’t he? Shrewd operator or useful idiot?

Shrewsbury writes:

In a way the massacre in Lakewood is very similar to the massacre at Fort Hood! In both cases you have non-Europeans, enabled by liberalism, indeed all but encouraged by liberalism, to find their destiny in slaughtering white people.

Mark Jaws writes:

I am disappointed in this—to say the least. I knew the Huckster had not been a solid conservative with respect to illegal immigration and that he was inflicted with Southern white guilt syndrome, but his pardoning these savages is unforgivable and as such represents the nails in his political coffin. I hate going back to this, but this is why mobs used to lynch folks—they wanted quick and final justice.

LA replies:

When the realization finally sinks in that no matter how severe and absolute the sentence imposed on a murderer may sound,—“three life sentences plus a thousand years with absolutely, positively no chance of parole”—it is absolutely meaningless, because the Governor of the state has the power to issue a commutation or pardon and wipe the sentence out and release the evil-doer back on the street while his victims lie mouldering the grave, then society finally realizes that it has no recourse but the death penalty, imposed as quickly as possible.

David B. writes:

Huckabee was on O’Reilly’s FNC show tonight (). It’s not his fault, Huckabee said. It also repeats at about 11:30 ET.

LA replies:

I saw the segment. Huckabee pointed out, correctly, that what authorities did in Washington State (releasing a man who had other charges against him for extreme violence) was much worse than what happened in Arkansas. At the same time, Huckabee claimed that all the advice he got was to commute Clemmons’s sentence and that he got no contrary advice. That appears to be an out and out lie. It contradicts what the prosecutors in Arkansas have said, that they were pleading with him not to commute Clemmons. I’ll have to read in more detail Michelle Malkin’s coverage of what happened in Arkansas ten years ago which I linked at the top of this thread.

LA writes:

A reader sends this Heather Mac Donald comment. Judging by the crack about “a specious religious belief that one is in touch with one’s favored divinity,” I assume this was not posted at the Corner, where Mac Donald keeps her bitter anti-theism on ice, but at her website Secular right.

Huckabee and the Tacoma police massacre
November 30th, 2009—Heather Mac Donald

A specious leftist belief that the criminal justice system is racist has undoubtedly led to more disastrous criminal justice decisions than a specious religious belief that one is in touch with one’s favored divinity. And perhaps Mike Huckabee’s high rate of sentence commutations resulted from his best efforts to empirically evaluate the evidence presented to him by parole boards, rather than, as has been speculated upon, religious inspiration. Still I am never reassured to learn that an elected representative may be praying for guidance or consulting the bible in making political decisions.

Though this line is impossible to enforce and certain not to be followed, the only valid materials for political decision-making in my view are publicly-enacted laws and as much actual knowledge about the world as a politician can get his hands on. I doubt whether a Christian would take much comfort in learning that a politician with power over his life is consulting with Allah in deciding upon a public line of action, since he does not regard the Koran as a valid source of either divine revelation or political authority. Nor would the Christian be wholly confident that the Allah-inspired politician was moved by rational evidence in constructing his belief system or in reaching the conclusions that he drew from it. Though prayer may merely consolidate a leader’s existing inclinations, it could also give them a zealotry or dubious certitude that they do not deserve.

A few years ago, one of the neo-con-theo-con movement’s most revered religious figures lectured me on overincarceration, a subject he clearly knew noting about, during a black-tie dinner. It was hard to escape the suspicion that his prim self-righteousness about the prison rate was fueled in large part by his belief that he had a particular in with God, though perhaps I do him an injustice.

[end of Mac Donald post]

Mac Donald’s line of argumentation again reveals the intellectual level of a village atheist, a person who is ignorant of and bigoted against two thousand years of Western Christian civilization, who seems to think that European Christian leaders’ decision process over the millennia has been devoid of reason and has amounted to no more than “Jesus told me to do it,” and whose own “conservatism” is no deeper than realizing that the radical left is bad.

Paul T. writes from Canada:

“Paul K writes: There is a quote from Adam Smith that I wish Huckabee had taken into consideration: “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

The 18th century was, needless to say, well ahead of us. Samuel Johnson approvingly quotes one “Hale” (the English judge Matthew Hale): “Let me remember, when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country” [Rambler No. 60].

As for pinpointing the locus classicus of the liberal-Huckabee position, it would be hard to beat the following:

“On Oct. 7, 1971, Canada’s solicitor general, Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, spoke to the House of Commons “to outline and explain the reforms that were undertaken a few months ago by the Penitentiary Service, and other reforms that are planned for the future:

“For too long a time now, our punishment oriented society has cultivated the state of mind that demands that offenders, whatever their age and whatever the offence, be placed behind bars. Even nowadays, too many Canadians object to looking at offenders as members of our society and seem to disregard the fact that the correctional process aims at making the offender a useful and law abiding citizen, and not any more an individual alienated from society and in conflict with it.

“Consequently, we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than [the] protection of society”.”

“Rather than”—couldn’t be clearer, could it? This was, of course, under Pierre Trudeau (who had served as Minister of Justice before becoming Prime Minister) … but it’s only gotten worse since then, though our spokespersons have learned to be less candid in their statements.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2009 01:37 AM | Send