What is it about the Huckabees and dogs?

In the infamous Huckabee Christmas Card we witnessed more than just a god-awful sense of fashion, but the Mrs. seemed to be strangling the family dog in order to make it endure this assault upon good taste. Now we discover that the strangling dogs may run in the family.

The rather large Huckabee standing beyond the Reverend, his wife, and the unhappy pooch is David Huckabee. Please note that in fundamentalist circles the sin of gluttony gets almost no mention -- they are too concerned about gay couples getting married.

David was previously employed at Camp Pioneer, a camp for boy scouts, in Hatfield, Arkansas. But David was fired. The Boy Scouts of America said it was over an “unfortunate incident” where he, and others, acted in ways “not consistent with the Boy Scout mission.”

Apparently a dog strayed onto the camp ground and Mr. Huckabee and his friends formed a lynch mob. They grabbed the poor animal and hung it to death. Many people would be appalled by that. I consider it a sign of progress -- at least they stopped lynching black folk. However, I guess the new Religious Right doesn’t have need to harangue blacks -- after all they have gays and Mexicans providing them with all the fodder they need.

Lynching a dog is illegal and one group wrote the state police asking for a prosecution over the killing. But the state police refused. And the director at the time, John Bailey, said that Huckabee’s staff leaned on him big time to avoid prosecuting the governor’s son. Bailey’s reluctance on the matter lead to his dismissal from the job. According to Bailey then Governor Huckabee called him into his office and fired him saying: “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had that problem.”

And the former FBI chief in Little Rock says that Huckabee “was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son.”

Huckabee and his loyalists say that Bailey was fired because he alienated the police. But Huckabee’s lawyer and chief of staff do admit that they called Bailey and discussed the incident.

Of course Huckabee’s personal intervention to spare his son charges for lynching a dog is nothing compared to another Huckabee intervention. In that case, which we hope to discuss later, Mr. Huckabee personally intervened to win a parole for a convicted rapist. The rapists was a popular cause among fundamentalists at the time who entertained the notion he was innocent. Huckabee went personally to the Parole Board and had an illegal meeting with them where no records were kept. Several board members said that Huckabee personally demanded that rapist be released and the board, which previously had denied parole, granted it on Huckabee’s demand. The rapist was released and in short order raped again and murdered his victim.

I guess if that didn’t bother Mr. Huckabee the lynching of some stray dog by his own son is of little concern.