Maurice Clemmons. Freed by politician Mike Huckabee over the protests of his victims.

This story is a compilation of research by D.A.G.

• Between 1996 and 2004, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee commuted the sentences of more prisoners than all of Arkansas’s neighbors combined.
• He also commuted more than twice the sentences of his predecessors combined.
• Maurice Clemmons, who was serving a 108 year sentence for violent crimes and muggings, appealed for clemency in 1999, giving Huckabee an epic sob story about how he fell in with the “wrong crowd”.
• The victims and prosecutors of Clemmons’s crimes protested his freedom, but Huckabee did not care. To him the opinion of a criminal was more important than his victims. Huckabee commuted Clemmons’s sentence to 47 years, making him eligible for parole.
• The Arkansas Parole Board unanimously granted Clemmons parole.
• Just a year later, in 2001, Maurice Clemmons, in violation of the law and his parole, committed robbery in Ouachia County, AR. Due to bureaucratic bungling, he was not charged until 2004. Subsequently, his lawyer argued his case be dismissed because of the delay. The charges were dropped, and Clemmons was again freed.
• From 2004 to 2009, Clemmons moved from Arkansas to Washington and from sociopathy to complete psychosis, making death threats, assaulting police officers, throwing rocks at people and cars, forcing his family to strip naked, and sexually assaulting two female relatives, 12 and 11.
• Clemmons was arrested in Pierce County, WA on charges of second degree child rape. Two psychologists found him to be completely insane and dangerous. Nevertheless, Pierce County Judges John McCarthy and Thomas Felnagle set combined bail for Clemmons at $190,000, well under the expected $300,000.
• After being rejected by two bail bond agencies for his history of failure to appear in court, Jail Sucks Bail Bonds posted his bail and Clemmons was free which allowed him to commit his final act of murdering four Lakewood police officers.
• In addition, Mike Huckabee freed rapist Wayne Dumond in defiance of the pleas from Dumond’s victims. Within a year of his release, Dumond raped two more women.

D.A.G. Says: “I accidentally my whole political career.”

Former judges Michael T. Conahan and Mark Ciavarella. Kidnappers.

Original Story

• Two former Luzerne County judges accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes to illegally detain teenagers in private detention facilities are partially immune from civil lawsuits.
• The decision was made by U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo and will mean difficulty if not outright impossibility to collect damages from corrupt judges Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella for the lives of the youths they ruined.
• In particular Ciavarella would be immune to civil judgements because his actions were in a courtroom, as though that is somehow a justification.
• According to Judge Caputo, the plaintiffs cannot appeal this decision, however the two kidnapper judges can.

D.A.G. Says: Hey Ciavarella and Conahan, drop the soap. Repeatedly. Caputo should be ashamed of himself, putting the letter of the law above what is right.

Thanks Genevieve!

An Eagle Scout and soldier suspended from school for having the tools to protect himself.

Original Story

• 17 year old Matthew Whalen is an Eagle Scout, on the honor roll, taking Advanced Placement classes, and never been in trouble with the law.  He’s received commendations from the City of Troy and the Boy Scouts of America for saving a woman’s life, and he has completed Army basic training. All in all, a solid guy.
• Last month, officials at Lansingburgh Senior High School found a two-inch pocket knife in Matthew’s locked car last month. The knife was a gift from his grandfather Robert Whalen, the Hoosick Falls Police Chief. The knife was never removed from the car but was part of a survival kit.
• Even though a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal code, the school confiscated his knife and suspended him for 20 days.
• Lansingburgh Central School District Superintendent George J. Goodwin refuses to comment on the school’s decision and will not even speak to Whalen or his family.
• Whalen’s entire future career is now in jeopardy thanks to the school’s actions.

Superintendent George Goodwin can be reached at 518-233-6850

Really, it's not what it looks like!

Original Story

• Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) have both advocated that the United States, not Israel, should attack Iran in order to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
• The rationale stated by Graham was that if Iran were to obtain such weapons, “Israel will be more imperiled,” and if Israel were to attack Iran, “it will rally the Arab world around Iran and they’re not aligned now. It’s too much pressure to put on Israel.”
• Chambliss adds “The problem with military action also is that you’re probably not going to be able to stop the production of uranium by just a simple airstrike… Lindsey’s right. It’s an all or nothing deal. And is it worth that at this point in time, when we know they have the capability? We can slow them down, but a full-out military strike is what it would take.“

D.A.G. Says: Poe’s law in full effect here.

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Original Story

• On the recommendation of Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Seattle Public Schools could change a decades-old policy and allow students with D averages to graduate from high school.
• When asked if he thought D students should graduate, he said “Yeah, because they can still get a job and stuff.”

D.A.G. Says: Printing diplomas makes people smarter the way printing money makes people richer.