So said Mike Huckabee in his 2008 run for president. An interesting piece done by Mother Jones points out a Huck hypocrisy in his 2007 call for open government and his destruction of computer hard drives in his last days in the governor’s office before handing the keys over to Beebe.
Reporter Siddhartha Mahanta ponders what was on the crushed hard drives: “The records could provide details on any number of unsettled controversies involving a governor that faced at least 15 ethics complaints concerning, among other things: his failure to report gifts and outside income, his alleged use of state funds and resources for political and personal purposes, and the pardon of a convicted murderer and rapist who went on to kill again once released.”
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Out of the fifteen ethics complaints how many were found to be valid? And how many were found not to be? Reporting on how many are filed and not reporting the results looks a little fishy.
Mother Jones is a very liberal-leaning publication, I’m not surprised the distinction between valid and non wasn’t made. For what it’s worth, I’m researching it right now.
UPDATE: Of those complaints, Huckabee was cited by the ethics commission for five including two unreported gifts and three to cash, misuse of the state plane, $14,000 that went to Janet in his 1992 U.S. Senate campaign, and $23,500 from an organization in which the donors are unknown, according to MSNBC.
You’ve sure got it out for Huckabee don’t you? How is it that so many people can take minor faults in those they disagree with and distort them into a huge story, yet completely ignore far worse faults in others simply because they belong to the same party? Why is it you’re so accepting of the destruction the Democrats have done to our economy and our nation? Does it not bother you at all that we’re funding the Chinese military, our sworn enemy, because your party wanted to hand out free money to their friends, a large part of which went to other nations? Why no articles slamming those that have destroyed businesses, caused families to lose their homes, and taken food out of the mouths of children? Do you really find smashed hard drives to be a more important story than the funding of our enemy’s military?
I speculate that those hard drives could have contained the most beautiful poetry in the world. I justify this liberal usage of my imagination by claiming that Huckabee would be too embarrassed to have people find his writings so he had them destroyed. If that sounds ridiculous and makes you chuckle then you know how many of us felt after reading this piece.
It’s disturbing that so many in the media have chosen to toss aside the Journalists Code of Ethics and use their positions of power to play politics instead of simply reporting them with an honest effort at being unbiased. You wrote this article before researching the facts, using a source known to be extremely biased, you quoted a pseudo-reporter who’s doing nothing but speculating without a shred of evidence to support the accusations, and you’ve attempted to make a whopping $37,500 seem like a big deal while ignoring the trillion dollar crimes committed by the people the media is working so hard to protect. Do you not see the problem here?
For those who want limited, constitutional government, Mr. Huckabee’s hard drives are the least of the problems.
Mike Huckabee = Big Government Conservative Busybody
James, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and maybe when I’m blue in the face from frustration you will finally get it: I’m not a Democrat, I’m not a Republican, I’m a registered Independent.
That being addressed, all I’ve been trying to do is post stories from around the web about Mike Huckabee because he’s got an Arkansas tie, and while I may like national and international news and politics, this blog is supposed to be predominantly El Dorado/Arkansas-based. As Huckabee is a potential presidential candidate, he’s big news right now. It’s not my fault that all the news that comes out about him tends to be negative — you can blame it on the press (which you have) or blame it on Huckabee himself. You’ll also note in the comment to Mark B. that I researched which of those ethics complaints turned out to be true and which were false, as well as admitting that Mother Jones is a very liberal-leaning publication.
And yes, as a reporter those hard drives are important to me, I’m a big proponent of open government. By taking the action to smash those hard drives he stopped the clamoring media from finding out what was on them, which I find suspicious. The fact is that he did smash those hard drives, that is indisputable. Feel free to use your imagination as to what was on them (I’d love to believe it was the poetry you mentioned, but I’m not that naive).
Ken, agreed. I’m waiting for the Huckster’s presidency in which we are federally mandated to only eat 1,000 calories a day and all fast-food restaurants bite the dust.
My comments stem from the fact that pretty much all of your attacks on people are against Republicans. When a journalist constantly attacks Republicans while ignoring far more serious issues stemming from Democrats, it seems fairly clear where that journalist’s loyalties lie regardless of what check box they marked on a piece of paper.
Just to be clear on my end as well, I do not care for Huckabee. I wouldn’t vote for him if he ran for President. That being said, your posts about him are very unfair. You used a known biased source that’s also known to both twist the facts and hide the ones that don’t suit their purpose, and you quoted a “journalist” that made wild speculations that have no supporting evidence.
The facts as they are known are these:
As he prepared for transition, his personal working papers were copied and cleared from the old, dated hard drives. These papers are not covered by any laws regarding retention. He could have destroyed them all, but he didn’t. He donated them to Ouachita Baptist University.
His official papers were archived with Arkansas Secretary of State’s office as required by law.
Before Mother Jones printed their story, they contacted the Arkansas Times and were told no laws were broken. The Arkansas Times commented on this issue in their blog: http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2011/04/04/huckabee-and-the-crushed-hard-drives
Bill Clinton did the exact same thing with his working papers, with one exception. To this day nobody has seen his working papers. I wonder if anyone attempted to create a scandal about his missing papers.
So if you want to speculate, the only direction you can go is that Mike Huckabee was far more open and honest than Bill Clinton was, and if he really did have something to hide he wouldn’t have donated his papers to a University. Yet you still attempted to paint him with the brush of dishonesty. He did nothing wrong, nor did he do anything illegal, and your attacks against him are unfounded.
If you really do think that all the news about him is negative then you should be looking at your sources. There’s an old saying, if you look hard enough for something eventually you’ll find it.
All I have to say about my sources of information is a Google News search for Mike Huckabee pulls up 10 stories on the main page, six of them have negative tones concerning Huckabee’s actions or comments, the other four are straight news about him in the polls.
I’d like something positive to report about the man for once (if only to escape the barrage of flak I seem to constantly catch) but there isn’t much right now, other than the polls which are constantly changing and don’t seem to agree with one another.
That’s the nature of news. 90% of it is negative, and when you’re googling for news, 90% of what you see on the page are reposts of one or two negative articles. So when you go to google and search for Mike and see 1,000 hits of negative news, you need to understand that those 1,000 hits are most likely referencing the same things. It’s worse when the article being referenced is an extremely biased one that fails to report the facts. The net has given us access to enormous amounts of information that can easily distort your view on things.
I went through a whole bunch of google pages after searching Mike Huckabee. I see, for the most part, four stories. The Natalie Portman thing, his stance on Evolution, the destroyed hard drives thing, and the Maurice Clemmons story. Those thousands of hits you see are based on 4 stories. When you google his name, you’re not seeing thousands of negative articles about Mike. You’re seeing four. I think that’s pretty good for a politician, even if I don’t care for him myself.
If you haven’t written a blog about his stance on evolution you should put that on your list. I’d probably agree with what you said on that one. That’s my main problem with him, he doesn’t understand science and gets the basics of evolution completely wrong, and also believes it contradicts his religious beliefs. If he kept it to himself it would be fine, but he wants to change our education system around it and that is not acceptable.
This is the very first line in the Journalist’s Code of Ethics. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
— Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
Mother Jones doesn’t follow the code and actually goes out of their way to break it. Same goes for a lot of other sites on all sides of the fence. It’s a pretty bad idea to take anything from any site that doesn’t follow the code, especially if it involves trashing a person’s character. When you wrongfully speak badly of someone and damage their reputation, it’s impossible to take it back. The damage is more permanent than a tattoo. That’s why the very first line of the code of ethics says what it says. It’s that important.
I agree with you on the evolution point, I worry about what he could potentially do to the education system if he got into office.
In this instance I think you’re wrongfully criticizing my use of Mother Jones. I didn’t say the story was the most straight news piece ever, I even admitted it was a left-leaning publication. What I said was it’s an “interesting piece” and submitted the link alongside a quote from the author. I didn’t comment on the piece other than my agreement that the two actions in pushing for open government and then destroying the hard drives don’t jive.
I think your frustration is more at the comments by Mother Jones because what I wrote was simply that it was an interesting piece and whether you agree with it or not, want to take it at its word or completely disregard it, it’s still a good read.
Regardless, if you find good news about Huckabee, please send it to me.
The discussion about evolution is a good one. If the federal government followed the U.S. constitution and stayed out of education, then a president’s beliefs about evolution would be irrelevant to being president.
And so it is with much of federal government involvement in a whole host of issues, especially social issues. If the federal government stayed out of them there would be a lot less controversy about them nationally.