Thread: A Son’s Past Deeds Come Back To Bite Huckabee

This is an ugly story!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/78241

A Son’s Past Deeds Come Back To Bite Huckabee
By Michael Isikoff and Holly Bailey | NEWSWEEK
Dec 24, 2007 Issue | Updated: 2:51 p.m. ET Dec 15, 2007


As Mike Huckabee gains in the polls, the former Arkansas governor is finding that his record in office is getting more scrutiny. One issue likely to get attention is his handling of a sensitive family matter: allegations that one of his sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998. The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee, then 17, from his job as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark. It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney— bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group—to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas's state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee's chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor's request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee's Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer's intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee's office and fired. "I've lost confidence in your ability to do your job," Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason Huckabee cited was "I couldn't get you to help me with my son when I had that problem," according to Bailey. "Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son," says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a "courageous" and "very solid" professional.

Huckabee called Bailey's account "totally untrue" and described him as a "bitter" exemployee. "I asked him to resign because he had so alienated the entire state police," he said. "It had nothing to do with my son." Brenda Turner, Huckabee's then chief of staff, and Kevin Crass, the Huckabee family lawyer, also disputed Bailey's account, although both acknowledged talking to him about the dog killing. "I asked him, 'Is it normal for the state police to … investigate something that happened at a Boy Scout camp?' " Turner says. "We wanted the same treatment that anybody else would get." (Animal cruelty in Arkansas is a misdemeanor, not a felony.)

The details of the incident remain murky. The Animal Legal Defense Fund got an anonymous fax that summer alleging that David Huckabee and another youth had been involved in the hanging of a stray dog at the camp on July 11. A local animal-rights activist, Joyce Hillard, later contacted the camp director. Notes of Hillard's report to the defense fund read, "Boys confessed & were fired. Dir. is making excuses, saying dog was sic & boys were putting him out of his misery." (The director told NEWSWEEK only that a stray dog was "put down" and that the counselors were fired for violating the Scout credo to be "kind.") The father of the other counselor was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in August 1998 as saying that his son found the dog "hung over a limb and choking." David Huckabee did not respond to requests for comment. (In April of this year, he was arrested—and paid a fine—when he forgot to remove a loaded gun from his carry-on luggage at Little Rock airport.) His father told NEWSWEEK that his son did not engage in "intentional torture." "There was a dog that apparently had mange and was absolutely, I guess, emaciated." A campaign official says David "regrets" the incident and notes that he later made Eagle Scout.

This is just the begining of the dirt on Huckabee..........

Originally Posted by Bulldogger

This is an ugly story!
The father of the other counselor was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in August 1998 as saying that his son found the dog "hung over a limb and choking." David Huckabee did not respond to requests for comment. (In April of this year, he was arrested—and paid a fine—when he forgot to remove a loaded gun from his carry-on luggage at Little Rock airport.) His father told NEWSWEEK that his son did not engage in "intentional torture." "There was a dog that apparently had mange and was absolutely, I guess, emaciated." A campaign official says David "regrets" the incident and notes that he later made Eagle Scout.

[/quote]

HOW could it be that the poor dog just happened to be found "hung over a limb and choking"? And then the kid gets stopped from carrying a loaded gun at an airport? The kid sounds strange, and good old dad Mike Huckabee sounds like he is covering up something.
While it is admirable and an honor to make "Eagle Scout", it doesn't make you a better person, or more normal than any other young man.

Well remember we just learned this morning that Huckabee lied about his degree in theology. He is a compulsive liar and that scares me out of my boots !!!

Huckabee's theology degree? Now says ain't necessarily so
Campaign admits candidate doesn't have claimed religious credential

Posted: December 14, 2007
7:20 p.m. Eastern


© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


Former Gov. Mike Huckabee

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network he had a theology degree, he told voters in Iowa he had a theology degree, he repeated the claim in last month's CNN YouTube debate ... but, his campaign now says, it was not true.

Huckabee's claim began unraveling following his offhanded comment about Mormonism in a New York Times interview last weekend.

Reporter Zev Chafets wrote: "I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. 'I think it's a religion,' he said. 'I really don't know much about it.'

"I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: 'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'"

In the interview, Huckabee's account of his education made no mention of his having earned a theology degree.

Chafets wrote: "If young Mike Huckabee was ever rebellious or difficult, there's no record of it. He preached his first sermon as a teenager, married his high-school sweetheart and went off to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. There he majored in speech and communications, worked at a radio station and earned his B.A. in a little more than two years. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist James Robison, who bought him his first decent wardrobe and showed him how to use television."

(Story continues below)

While Huckabee apologized personally to fellow candidate and Mormon Mitt Romney for his remarks, Chafets' characterization of the former Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist pastor as a seminary dropout who did not seem well-versed in comparative religion, drew the attention of political bloggers.

National Review's Jim Geraghty cited Huckabee's claimed theology degree when criticizing the candidate for telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer he had been trying to avoid talking about the subject with Chafets but the reporter was "comparably well-schooled on comparative religions."

"I'm going to call horsepuckey on Huckabee's claim that a New York Times reporter knew more about comparative religions than [a] guy with a theology degree," Geraghty wrote.

That prompted Joe Carter, Huckabee's research director, to respond to Geraghty by e-mail.

Jim,

Governor Huckabee doesn't have a theology degree. He only spent a year in seminary.

Also, it's not surprising that he doesn't know much about the specific beliefs of the LDS church. There aren't a lot of LDS members in Arkansas; they comprise just .007 percent [sic] of the population (about 20,000 out of 2,810,872 people). Most Southern evangelicals don't have much exposure to that particular religion. Even in seminary you're not likely to study the LDS faith unless you take a class on apologetics.

Joe

Carter made a math error – 0.7 percent of Arkansas' residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints.

Today, following a news conference announcing that former Reagan confidante, Ed Rollins, has become Huckabee's national campaign manager, the candidate was asked about a PowerlineBlog story that he did not have the theology degree he had claimed.

"I have a Bachelor of Arts in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate work," Huckabee answered. "And then I have 46 hours on a master's degree at Southwestern Theology Seminary. So, my degree as a theological degree is at the college level and then 46 hours toward a masters – three years of study of New Testament Greek, and then the rest of it, all in seminary was theological studies, but my degree was actually in religion."

Speaking in Iowa in October, Huckabee told a sympathetic crowd, "Anytime you have been a person who was identified as a pastor and you've got a seminary education and theology degree, people tend to worry about you."

In November, while appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Huckabee said, "People look at my record and say that I'm as strong on immigration, strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I'm stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well. And know the threat of it is absolutely overwhelming to us."

Last month, during the CNN YouTube debate, Huckabee responded to a question to the candidates about their belief in the Bible: "Sure. I believe the Bible is exactly what it is. It's the word of revelation to us from God himself. ... And as the only person here on the stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don't fully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite god, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their god is too small."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=59222

You know, my oldest son is a Boy Scout and working on his Eagle rank. I asked him to read the story posted above about Huckabee's son. The first question out of his mouth was "Why didn't the Scouts kick him out or at least remove his rank?" Then, "That boy should be put somewhere. Something is wrong with him. He coulda called a vet or rescue organization instead of hanging the dog."

What Huckabee's son did to the dog goes against the Scout creed- not to mention any MORAL creed that he should posess as a human being. The fact that Huckabee brushed his son's dirty deeds under the rug says a LOT about HIS character as well.

One of the early 'symptoms' of a sociopath is cruelty to animals at a young age. Wonder if he was a bedwetter too?

Huckabee is nothing more than a house of cards and let the collapse begin!!!!!!

So his son hangs the emaciated dog rather than try to help it?? Look how dad tries to spin this: his son did not engage in "intentional torture" of a mange dog, blah, blah.

florgal wrote

The fact that Huckabee brushed his son's dirty deeds under the rug says a LOT about HIS character as well.

Then he should make a fine CFR member. The CFR applauds people who are good at creative secrecy. Shucks, Hickabilly, as far as the conspiracy to dismantle your own country goes, you da man!