And Avedon has a nice summary of Hucklebee’s Wayne Dumond problem and its implications:

Murray Waas actually has new information on Huckabee and the rapist. To the question, “Who could have predicted that a serial rapist would rape and kill more women if he was prevented from serving his sentence?” the answer is: “Almost everyone.” [The letters are on record] And they all warned Huckabee, who let him out anyway because he was only jailed in the first place for raping someone who was related to Bill Clinton. Like Atrios says, the Clinton-haters really were/are lunatics.

But then we knew that. Now Hucklebee, of course, puts it all on the parole board, they did it, no pressure, it’s all been politicized, blame The Clenis, blah, blah, blah, crawfish, crawfish, crawfish:

When he spoke about the case, Huckabee suggested his role in the decision to parole DuMond was limited.

Huckabee said it was the decision by Clinton and Tucker that made DuMond eligible for parole, and Huckabee declined to reduce DuMond’s sentence further.

In 1996, Huckabee sent a letter to DuMond saying parole was the best option for him, the National Review reported.

“I’ve never made a decision about the DuMond case other than the decision to write the letter” to DuMond, Huckabee said. “That was my decision, but I didn’t parole him, because governors don’t parole people in Arkansas.”

However, Charles Chastain, a parole board member at the time, told ABC News he felt pressure from Huckabee when the board considered DuMond’s parole in 1996.

The Arkansas Times reported in 2002 that two other board members said they were influenced by Huckabee to parole DuMond.

Huckabee denied he asked the board to approve DuMond’s parole.

“No, I did not,” Huckabee said Sunday. “Let me categorically say I did not.”

Hmmm…. Well, if that’s true, why has Huckabee suppressed his Dumond files?

(Most blogs have been focusing on telling the, er, colorful details of Dumond and Huckabee, but this aspect of Waas’s story seems just as important to me. Beltway rules: It’s the coverup that kills you!)

Huckabee has refused to release his gubernatorial administration’s records on the matter, saying that he was concerned for the privacy of Dumond’s victims and that the records contain sensitive law enforcement information.

The Arkansas Parole Board also refuses to make public any letters or warnings it received from Drumond’s victims. “We don’t release comments for or against a clemency application or a parole case,” the Board’s spokesperson told Huffington Post, “except when they are comments from public officials.”

But most of the women assaulted by Dumond and interviewed for this story say that Huckabee could have made information public while guarding their privacy. Law enforcement authorities also scoffed at the idea that anything in the records would have harmed an ongoing investigation since Dumond is no longer alive .

The records revealed in this story — including correspondence between Dumond’s victims and Huckabee, as well as the governor’s own file regarding Dumond — were provided to me in the fall of 2002 by a Republican staffer to then-Gov. Huckabee.

I made the decision not to make the files public at that time because of concern for the privacy of the rape victims and their families. I felt that their right to privacy outweighed the public’s right to know, although I understand why many people would disagree.

Now that Huckabee is running for president, and after consulting with the victims and their families, I have decided to proceed, given what his actions on the case - and his attempts to whitewash his involvement in it — say about his judgment and integrity.

During a 2002 bid by Huckabee to be re-elected governor of Arkansas, the staffer who provided the documents attended a meeting where Huckabee and top aides expressed concerns that information in the files showing that other women had told Huckabee about being raped by Dumond might somehow become public, and thus become an issue for his opponent. The information remained secret, and Huckabee won a tight race for re-election.

The staffer said that during that same period, another senior aide to Huckabee suggested asking other state agencies, which might have portions or even the entirety of the Dumond file, to transfer their records to the governor’s office. If the files were transferred, the aide to Huckabee said, they would no longer be obtainable by reporters or political opponents under the state’s Freedom of Information statute.

Arkansas has one of the most progressive Freedom of Information laws in the country. People need only to make requests orally whereupon state officials have to quickly respond and make them public. Governors, in sharp contrast, have wide latitude in deciding which of their own files to make public.

“The files had to be disappeared because there just wasn’t a plausible explanation for the governor’s stance [!],” the former staffer said. “I mean, what could the governor say? That he believes these women made up their stories? That women lie when they say they are raped?”

Asked on Tuesday whether Huckabee would release his file on Dumond, campaign spokesperon Alice Stewart said, “We’re not the governor, we don’t have the file.” Asked if Huckabee would ask the current governor to release the file, she responded, “No. I don’t want to see it. You apparently want to see it.”

Nice work, there, Alice. At the very least, you have to worry if Huckabee is ready for the national stage; a well-known and long-running scandal, and the campaign spokesperson doesn’t have the talking points prepared? (See a tiny bit of snark from Big Beige on this point.)

But at the worst… Well, what’s in the files that Hucklebee won’t release? Pressure from the Clinton-hating loons that brought us Whitewater? I mean, I’d hate to think that ordained Southern Baptist pastor Hucklebee has a blind spot toward raped women the same way his church has a blind spot toward raped boys. Not to mention our famously free press. Eh?

NOTE Of course Hucklebee pressured the board for Dumond’s release. Via BIg Orange, Murray Waas again:

Directly contradicting Mike Huckabee’s claims, his former senior aide tells the Huffington Post that, as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee indeed told the state’s parole board that he supported the release of a convicted rapist.

The senior aide, Olan W. “Butch” Reeves, personally attended a controversial parole board meeting with Huckabee in Oct. 1996.

“The clear impression that I came away with from the meeting was that he favored Dumond’s release,” Reeves said, referring to convicted rapist Wayne Dumond. “And I can understand why board members would believe that to be the case.”

This stands in stark contrast [Translation: Huckabee’s lying] to Huckabee’s assertion, repeated at a press conference today that he “did not ask [the board] to do anything.” When asked directly about trying to influence the board, Huckabee responded: “No. I did not. Let me categorically say that I did not.”

But, according to Reeves, Huckabee actually told the parole board members that the prison sentence meted out to Dumond for his rape conviction was “outlandish” and “way out of bounds for his crime.” Huckabee believed there “was something nefarious” about the how the state’s criminal justice system had treated Dumond, Reeves said.

And note this:

Reeves’s admission comes as a surprise since the interview was encouraged by Huckabee’s presidential campaign. Reeves served as chief counsel to then-Gov. Huckabee until 2003, and was subsequently appointed by Huckabee as chairman of the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission. Reeves has donated to Huckabee’s presidential campaign.

Because, really, just leave out the rapes, the murders, the bottom-fishing Clinton-hater angle, and all that: the Hucklebee campaign encourages an interview with a source that ends up hurting them? Definitely not ready for the national stage. Granted, this year’s models of Rove, Hughes, Bartlett will rally round Huckabee soon enough, if he starts winning and getting some real money, but right now he’s looking like just another bumbling provincial Governor who needs more seasoning.

And didn’t the country already try electing a likeable Christianist who ran on compassion but wasn’t quite ready to be President?

How’d that work out for us?