I guess this is why Mike Huckabee is leaning against running for president

Yesterday I was surprised to see that Mike Huckabee, who would appear to be the front-runner at this point for the 2012 presidential nod for those for whom Sarah Palin is just too batshit crazy, was leaning AGAINST a presidential run. At first I thought it was because it's far more fun to be a talk show host than to actually DO anything (something Mrs. Palin should consider as well). After all, no one cared during the 2008 campaign that Huckabee had pardoned a rapist after urging by lunatic wingnuts because the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, and that said rapist went on to rape and kill another woman. We already know what the right wing thinks about women and rape.

But now it turns out that the suspect in yesterday's shooting ambush of four police officers in Seattle was also pardoned by Mike Huckabee:

A man with an extensive criminal past -- whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then Gov. Mike Huckabee-- was being sought Sunday as a "person of interest" in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that Maurice Clemmons, 37, was one of several people investigators want to talk to and that he could not be called a suspect at this point.

In a news release, the sheriff's office said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. Clemmons was also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County, Washington state for third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

According to The Seattle Times, Clemmons was released from the Peirce County Jail last week, despite facing eight felony charges. Clemmons posted $15,000 with a bail bondsman, who paid the remainder of the man's $150,000 bail.

In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons' 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons' age at the time of the sentence.

After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper

Republicans haven't camppaigned on "law and order" for a long time. It's hard to do that when you are the party of Jack Abramoff and trumped-up wars. But I can see where, if one is safely ensconced in wingnut talk television, that it might be preferable to having to explain to those people who in 1988 responded to the Willie Horton ads just why TWO people you released from prison went on to commit more heinous crimes.