Clemency Call Seen Haunting Huckabee

We were very pleased to see Sunlit Uplands contributor, Gary Glenn, standing in defense of Mike Huckabee.

This is a tragic story, but the balance between justice and mercy, as Shakespeare made clear in his great play on this dilemma, Measure for Measure, cannot be achieved through scientific method. Governor Huckabee acted in good faith and made the best decision he could, nine years ago, with the facts that were available to him. He should not be held accountable for actions that could not be foreseen. After all, he's Constitutionally eligible to run for President, hasn't spent 20 years as a member of a church advocating racial hatred and contempt for the United States, and wasn't a community agitator for a criminal Marxist organization.

From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
By Alex Daniels

A jury won’t determine the fate of Maurice Clemmons, the man who police say gunned down four Lakewood, Wash., police officers Sunday before being shot by a lawman Tuesday.

But for several people close to the man who granted him clemency in Arkansas nine years ago, the political verdict is clear: The bloodshed over the weekend has dimmed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s political hopes.

On Tuesday, Jason Tolbert, the Arkansas coordinator of HuckPAC, Huckabee’s political action committee, resigned.

“The recent news of the last two days along with the response did play a role in this decision but was not the sole factor,” Tolbert said in a statement posted on his Web log, www.tolbertreport.com.

Other former staff members and campaign volunteers vented their frustration on Tuesday.

Huckabee’s justifications for the clemencies he granted as governor were “inadequate,” wrote Joe Carter on a Web site run by First Things, a publication of the Institute for Religion and Public Life, which describes itself as an “interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”

Carter was Huckabee’s director of opposition research early in the 2008 presidential campaign. He said that Huckabee, a preacher and former president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, placed too much faith in “restorative justice” and should have denied more requests for leniency.

“The unfortunate reality is that for politicians, unlike pastors, there are limits to compassion.”

Even some supporters say the weekend violence has undermined a potential 2012 Huckabee bid for the White House.

David Schmidt, director of an online grass-roots organization dubbed Huck’s Army, is among them.

“I’m still with him,” he said. “But I’m not saying this doesn’t hurt him, because clearly it does.”

Tom Forbes, who was Huckabee’s campaign coordinator in Whitman County, Wash., wrote on the Red County Web log that when he found out about Huckabee’sconnection to Clemmons, he “cringed.”

“For Huckabee to punt on his personal responsibility is beyond the pale. Let’s face it. No matter what Huckabee says or doesn’t say, his shot at the presidency is gone.”

‘FULL RESPONSIBILITY’

Huckabee’s first statement on the killings did not mention his role in Clemmons’ release.

“He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence,” Huckabee said in a statement released Sunday. The resulting reduced sentence - from 108 years to 47 years - made him eligible for parole and he “was paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.”

On Tuesday, Huckabee, a Republican, followed up with another statement.

“I take full responsibility for my actions of nine years ago,” it said. “If I could have possibly known what Clemmons would do nine years later, I obviously would have made a different decision. But if the same file were presented to me today, I would have likely made the same decision.”

Huckabee, who hosts a television show on Fox News and a radio show on the ABC Radio Network, has not said whether he will take another shot at the Republican presidential nomination.

Over the weekend, shortly before the police officers were killed, Huckabee had suggested on Fox News that he was leaning toward skipping the 2012 race.

He has trailed other Republican politicians, notably former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in raising money. But he has scored well, leading the field in several early polls, and conservative Christian voters demonstrated their support for him in September, when he won the Value Voters Straw Poll.

Ed Rollins, Huckabee’s campaign chairman last year, declined an interview request Tuesday.

He said in an e-mail “I still like him and admire him and would not rule out helping him in the future.”

POLITICALLY ‘DIFFICULT’

Huckabee’s record on granting clemencies was an issue during his failed 2008 presidential run.

During his 10 1 /2 years as governor, Huckabee commuted the sentences of 163 prisoners, including 12 murderers.

In December 2007, Romney, one of Huckabee’s rivals in the race for the Republican nomination, criticized the Arkansan for granting pardons and commutations in an “arbitrary or capricious manner.”

Much of the attention on the clemency issue during the campaign was focused on Wayne DuMond, a Forrest City resident convicted of rape in 1984.

Huckabee, who had said he would like DuMond to be paroled, spoke with the state Parole Board in late 1996. Some of the members later said they had felt pressured by Huckabee to release Du-Mond, a claim Huckabee denied. DuMond was paroled in January 1997. Three years later DuMond, who had moved to Missouri, sexually abused and suffocated Carol Shields in a Kansas City apartment. Critics say Huckabee shoulders the blame for working to free DuMond and Clemmons.

“This isn’t Huckabee’s first Horton moment,” wrote Michelle Malkin, a conservative commentator on her Web log on Tuesday. Malkin referred to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who was released from custody in Massachusetts on a weekend furlough in 1986 and disappeared. Nearly a year later, he raped a woman in Maryland.

Former President George H.W. Bush used Horton’s story prominently in his successful 1988 presidential campaign, when he defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis, who supported the weekend furlough program.

Bush’s opposition researcher, James Pinkerton, first got wind of the issue when reading transcripts of the Democratic primary debates. Al Gore had raised the issue to suggest Dukakis was soft on crime.

During the 2008 race, Pinkerton was a senior adviser to Huckabee.

“That’s ironic, isn’t it?” said Paul Brountas, who served as Dukakis’ campaign manager.

Brountas said the Horton issue helped cement in voters’ minds the perception that Dukakis was soft on crime. He doesn’t think the issue will stick with Huckabee.

“This is early for Huckabee,” he said. “By the time he announces, much of this will have worn off.”

Pinkerton did not return calls Tuesday. Nor did former Sen. Tim Hutchinson, the former U.S. senator from Arkansas who campaigned heavily for Huckabee.

Arkansas state Sen. Gilbert Baker, an announced candidate for the U.S. Senate, campaigned for Huckabee during his 2008 presidential bid.

“Politically, it is very difficult,” Baker said. “It gives folks an opportunity to make political points.”

He added that he is still a “strong” Huckabee supporter, saying he’d be “favorably disposed” to supporting him again, should he decide to run in 2012.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan and another Huckabee supporter, said he’d support him in 2012.

“I don’t think this one decision is going to define Mike Huckabee as a man, a Christian or as a political candidate,” he said.

Schmidt, the director of Huck’s Army, said that it is not fair to compare Clemmons to Horton. Horton was a murderer at the time of his furlough, Schmidt said, and Clemmons was convicted of burglary and robbery.

“It would be comparable if you could see a pattern, or if there were known serious offenders getting out early when they shouldn’t have.”

Does that include Wayne DuMond?

“That’s a fair question,” said Schmidt. “It does open it up for discussion.”

The Great Man's 135th Birthday

Today marks the 135 birthday of our blog's patron, Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, the greatest man of the twentieth century, a valiant defender of freedom and Christian civilization, who, in the words of President Kennedy "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."

We revere his memory and hope that all political leadership might always be measured against his imperishable standard. He was also a great historian who appreciated to his core the great patrimony that has come down to us from from the fields of Runnymede with Magna Carta, to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the English Bill of Rights, the Glorious Revolution, and the American Declaration of Independence.

May his vision of an organic unity among all the English-speaking peoples, united by history, culture, religion and purpose, grow and protect a world too ready to embrace small despots.

Obama Makes History: Thanksgiving Proclamation First Ever to Omit Direct Mention of God

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

President Obama's brief proclamation of Thanksgiving Day on November 26 was unique among all recorded Thanksgiving proclamations by his predecessors: it is the first one that fails to directly acknowledge the existence of God.

The beneficence shown by God to America is a theme that traditionally defines the Thanksgiving holiday, and this theme is strongly emphasized in the original Thanksgiving Day proclamations and consistently acknowledged even by modern presidents.

Obama's unprecedented proclamation, however, only makes indirect mention of God by quoting George Washington, stating: "Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed 'by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.'"

The proclamation goes on to call Thanksgiving Day "a unique national tradition we all share" that unites people as "thankful for our common blessings."

"This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and our Nation throughout the year," it continues.

All other presidential Thanksgiving proclamations directly refer to "God," "Providence," or another appellation for the divine being.

But Obama's historic decision to avoid directly mentioning God in the Thanksgiving proclamation doesn't necessarily come as a surprise. Earlier this year Obama similarly made history on Inaguration Day by explicitly referencing "non-believers" in his speech, which, according to USA Today, was the first time in history that a President had done so. Obama has also said on more than one occasion that the United States is "not a Christian nation."

The second weakest reference to God in a Thanksgiving proclamation was issued in 1975 by Gerald Ford, who in his second year as President exhorted Americans to "reaffirm our belief in a dynamic spirit that will continue to nurture and guide us." But in his first address, Ford characterized Thanksgiving as a time "all Americans join in giving thanks to God for the blessings we share."

In 1969, President Richard Nixon's address referred to the "Source of all good" who "constantly bestows His blessings on mankind." In 1978, Jimmy Carter hailed the bounty provided by "Providence"; Ronald Reagan's 1982 proclamation mentioned "a divine plan" that established America.

Even President Bill Clinton affirmed in his first such proclamation that, "From the beginnings of our Nation, we have sought to recognize the providence and mercy of God with words and acts of gratitude," and called the spirit of Thanksgiving "acknowledging God's graciousness."

Presbyterian College - "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come"

The music department of Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, performs "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come" at the annual Christmas concert in 2008.

We Remember; We Give Thanks

Former British Policeman Backs Barack Obama 'Birthers' Conspiracy Theory

A former British policeman is using his Scotland Yard training to help the Birthers, a group of conspiracy theorists, in trying to unseat President Barack Obama.

From The Telegraph

Neil Sankey, who has almost 20 years experience serving in Special Branch and the Bomb Squad, is now devoting his energies to proving that Mr Obama is not a natural born US citizen.

He joined the Birthers after meeting Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the group, which disputes Mr Obama’s claim that he was born in Hawaii.

Over the past year, Mr Sankey has been integral in some of the most aggressive efforts to remove him from office by claiming that his presidency is illegitimate.

He tried to block Obama's inauguration last year by contacting all 538 electoral college representatives who formally elect the president.

Mr Sankey has also carried out an investigation into Mr Obama's personal identification history which he claims shows a suspicious number of social security numbers

He has refuted allegations that his attempts are racially motivated, claiming that he disagrees with Mr Obama’s politics and is convinced that he is not genuine.

Mr Sankey, who moved to California in the 1980s to set up his own private detective agency, told the Guardian: “The objection is not Obama's colour but his politics.

“I like him as a person, I just wish he was genuine.

“It's quite obvious to me — America is heading towards a socialised state just as has happened in Europe. Socialised medicine, everyone on the dole, and when everything collapses you tip the scales into Marxism."

Mr Sankey joined Hampshire Police in 1961 before being seconded as a detective sergeant to Scotland Yard. During the 1970s he tracked left wing political groups and the IRA. He became a naturalised American in 1985.

He believes that his British police training is proving crucial to the work he is now pursuing for the Birthers. He said he uses the same techniques he employed to analyse the IRA's associations, to trace Mr Obama’s past.

Taitz added: “He has had superb training. I have the greatest respect for Scotland Yard.”

Most recently, Mr Sankey carried out a search of databases that he claims produced 140 different identification numbers and addresses for "Barack Obama". He admits the findings prove nothing — there is nothing to link the entries to the president — but he believes it raises further doubts that need investigating.

He told the Guardian that his fascination with Mr Obama’s heritage began with the realisation "that this man wasn't what he said he was. He wasn't an ordinary Democrat — he was far more extreme than that."

During the 2008 US presidential election, rumours began to circulate on the internet that Barack Obama had not been born in the US, and was therefore not eligible for the presidency.

Mr Obama's campaign rebutted the claims, publishing his birth certificate proving that he was born in Hawaii, however, conspiracy theorists have dismissed it as a forgery.

Doubters believe that Mr Obama was born in Kenya and that he cannot be president because the US constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen... shall be eligible to the office of President".

Meet the President of Europe

From The Brussels Journal
By Paul Belien

Herman Van Rompuy. Get used to the name. He is the first President of the European Union, which with the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by all the 27 EU member states in early November was transformed into a genuine United States of Europe.

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. They chose one of their own. Herman Van Rompuy was the Prime Minister of Belgium. I knew him when he was just setting out, reluctantly, on his political career.

To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place. As John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”

In 1957, Belgian politicians stood at the cradle of the European Union. Their aim was to turn the whole of Europe into a Greater Belgium, so that wars between the nations of Europe would no longer be possible as there would no longer be nations, the latter all having been incorporated into an artificial superstate.

A closer look at Belgium, the laboratory of Europe, shows, however, that the country lacks more than patriotism. It also lacks democracy, respect for the rule of law, and political morality. In 1985, in his book De Afwezige Meerderheid (The Absent Majority) the late Flemish philosopher Lode Claes (1913-1997) argued that without identity and a sense of genuine nationhood, there can also be no democracy and no morality.

One of the people who were deeply influenced by Dr. Claes’s thesis was a young politician named Herman Van Rompuy. In the mid-1980s, Van Rompuy, a conservative Catholic, born in 1947, was active in the youth section of the Flemish Christian-Democrat Party. He wrote books and articles about the importance of traditional values, the role of religion, the protection of the unborn life, the Christian roots of Europe and the need to preserve them. The undemocratic and immoral nature of Belgian politics repulsed him and led to a sort of crisis of conscience. Lode Claes, who was near to retiring, offered Herman the opportunity of succeeding him as the director of Trends, a Belgian financial-economic weekly magazine. It is in this context that I made Herman’s acquaintance. He invited me for lunch one day to ask whether, if he accepted the offer to enter journalism, I would be willing to join him. It was then that he told me that he was considering leaving politics and was weighing the options for the professional life he would pursue.

I am not sure what happened next, however. Maybe word had reached the leadership of the Christian Democrat Party that Herman, a brilliant economist and intellectual, was considering leaving politics; perhaps they made him an offer he could not refuse. Herman remained in politics. He was made a Senator and entered government as a junior minister. In 1988, he became the party leader of the governing Christian-Democrats.

Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

Herman’s political career continued. He became Belgium’s Budget Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives and finally Prime Minister. He kept publishing intellectual and intelligent books, but instead of defending the concept of the good, he now defended the concept of “the lesser evil.” And he began to write haiku.

Two years ago, Belgium faced its deepest political crisis ever. The country was on the verge of collapse following a 2003 ruling by its Supreme Court that the existing electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), encompassing both the bilingual capital Brussels and the surrounding Dutch-speaking countryside of Halle-Vilvoorde, was unconstitutional and that Parliament should remedy the situation. The ruling came in response to a complaint that the BHV district was unconstitutional and should be divided into a bilingual electoral district Brussels and a Dutch-language electoral district Halle-Vilvoorde. This complaint had been lodged by… Herman Van Rompuy, a Flemish inhabitant of the Halle-Vilvoorde district.

In 2003, however, the Christian-Democrats were not in government and Herman was a leader of the opposition. His complaint was intended to cause political problems for Belgium’s Liberal government, which refused to divide the BHV district because the French-speaking parties in the government refused to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court. The Flemish Christian-Democrats went to the June 2007 general elections with as their major theme the promise that, once in government, they would split BHV. Herman campaigned on the issue, his party won the elections and became Flanders’ largest party.

Belgium’s political crisis dragged on from June until December 2007 because it proved impossible to put together a government consisting of sufficient Dutch-speaking (Flemish) and French-speaking (Walloon) politicians. The Flemings demanded that BHV be split, as instructed by the Supreme Court; the Walloons refused to do so. Ultimately, the Flemish Christian-Democrats gave in, reneged on their promise to their voters, and agreed to join a government without BHV being split. Worse still, the new government has more French-speaking than Dutch-speaking ministers, and does not have the support of the majority of the Flemings in Parliament, although the Flemings make up a 60% majority of the Belgian population. Herman became the Speaker of the Parliament. In this position he had to prevent Parliament, and the Flemish representatives there, from voting a bill to split BHV. He succeeded in this, by using all kinds of tricks. One day he even had the locks of the plenary meeting room changed so that Parliament could not convene to vote on the issue. On another occasion, he did not show up in his office for a whole week to avoid opening a letter demanding him to table the matter. His tactics worked. In December 2008, when the Belgian Prime Minister had to resign in the wake of a financial scandal, Herman became the new leader of the predominantly French-speaking government which does not represent the majority of Belgium’s ethnic majority group. During the past 11 months, he has skillfully managed to postpone any parliamentary vote on the BHV matter, thereby prolonging a situation which the Supreme Court, responding to Herman's own complaint in 2003, has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us.

Paul Belien is the author of A Throne in Brussels – Britain, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Belgianisation of Europe, Imprint Academic, Exeter (UK), Charlottesville, VA (US).