In defense of Mike Huckabee (a title I never thought I'd write.)

Occasionally I make a post in which I take a very unpopular position because I believe it is right.

Also occasionally I end up having to defend a conservative Republican because they were right about something.

And both of those are the case in this post.

A lot is being made in the media about the murder of four police officers in Washington State by Maurice Clemmons, an ex-con from Arkansas who was sentenced there to 95 years for a series of violent offenses but who subsequently had his sentence commuted by then-Governor Mike Huckabee (who ran for President in 2008 and may run again in 2012.) It's not the first time that Huckabee has been criticized for a pardon or sentence commutation; during last year's campaign he was criticized for letting a man go who later killed a woman in Missouri.

Certainly the families of the victims have a point that had Huckabee not commuted Clemmons' sentence to time served then the tragic events of this week would never have happened and four parents (and all four of the murdered officers were parents) would have tucked their children into bed last night instead of a grieving spouse having to explain to those children why daddy (or mommy, as one of the murdered officers was a woman) won't be there to tuck them in ever again.

And you can be sure that people working for Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and any other potential 2012 Republican nominee is filing every story about this for use later (and yes, I'm sure that David Axelrod has been putting together a file on this story too, in case Huckabee gets far enough to be running against Obama in 2012.)

However, Huckabee is correct when he points out that the board which makes recommendations made this recommendation and he acted on it. Further the whole affair highlights a broader issue.

Governors have the right to make pardons and commute sentences. But (Huckabee apparently being an exception) most make very few or none. The reason why is obvious: Even if 999 out of a thousand pardons or commutations go on and live productive, meaningful lives (meaning among other things that we as taxpayers are no longer paying to keep them locked up) it is the one out of a thousand who does something like murder four police officers in cold blood that you will keep hearing about. Nowhere is the old adage "nobody remembers what you've done right but everyone remembers your mistakes" more apropos than in politics. So most Governors simply don't want to take the electoral risk, and often refuse to even go along with the recommendations of a pardons board that in may cases they hand-picked themselves. Many never issue a single pardon or sentence commutation the entire time when they are Governor. True that pardons boards are far from infallible but when the system gets to the point where the final arbiter (a state Governor) because of fear of being attacked in some future election automatically refuses to consider a pardon or commutation request when one comes up, then the system has defeated itself. Why even have a way on the books to get a commutation or pardon if the answer even before reading the application is "NO?"

The truth is, most people who receive a commutation prove the people who gave it to them right (it's not like it's easy to even get a recommendation from the appropriate board in the first place,) and don't go on and re-offend. And at that, there are many who might not even need to be there in the first place: Millions incarcerated. But do they all need to be? I have a friend who is a convicted felon. He's made some mistakes and paid for them but he's not dangerous or evil, and he just wants to live his life (despite all the hurdles that are in the way every time he applies for a job or tries to get anything else done.) That Governor Huckabee had the decency when he was Governor to recognize that there was some hope for those felons who had been cleared by the pardons board (and knowing that he was putting his political career at some risk but taking it anyway) is commendable and should be applauded.

I wrote several years ago about the tough life that people have when they leave prison anyway (the prison that follows prison.) It's almost like we want them to fail. This isn't about revenge or about wanting to save a few dollars on rehab or job placement programs. It's about what we can do to prevent the return to prison by people who could be doing something with their lives besides eating food and sleeping in guarded institutions (very expensive guarded institutions) that the rest of us pay for.

Clearly in the case of Maurice Clemmons, Mike Huckabee turned out to be wrong. But it was no mistake to (in the broader scheme) be willing to take seriously his role as arbiter of these kinds of decisions and make the best decision he could, even knowing that it could hurt his political career someday.

Chicken crosses road; state police fail to solve mystery.

Well, we still don't know WHY the chicken crossed the road, but we do know which road (highway 17 north of Phoenix) and what the result was (a major traffic backup.)

Rooster on road backs up I-17.

Drivers found themselves contending with more than holiday traffic Friday when a chicken was found crossing the road.

Northbound Interstate 17 remains backed up north of Loop 101 after a rooster tried to cross the freeway about 11 a.m. at Arizona 74

"It's just a busy holiday - and of course the rooster," said Officer Robert Bailey, a DPS spokesman. "The rooster only compounded matters."

An officer removed the uninjured bird within 40 minutes, but Bailey expects the heavy Fourth of July traffic to remain slow-and-go through late this evening.

Unfortunately the article goes on to say that the officer took the bird to New River and released it, without first asking the chicken WHY it crossed the road!

This whole matter of motivation is the key question that should have been asked here. People have been asking why the chicken crosses the road since, well, there were roads and chickens crossed them.

With modern interrogation techniques, including some developed for use in cases of rendition, the chicken could have been made to confess why it crossed the road. Not just physical pain, but the infliction of terror. Just imagine a state patrol officer walking into the room where the chicken was being asked, "Just one more time, WHY?" dressed up as Colonel Sanders, holding a knife and a fork. THEN you'd hear some squawking, yes, you would.

Yes, the Obama administration has banned some of these techniques (so no terrorist ever has to worry about Colonel Sanders conducting the inquiry) and for that I am glad. But even with kinder, gentler interrogation techniques ('Do you want a cigar?') some effort should have been made to solve the mystery of why the chicken crossed the road before the rooster was let go, so that he can come back and cross another road someplace.

We knew this lawsuit was coming, but here the police should prevail.

Last year, a forty-five year old New York woman named Carol Gotbaum was detained by Phoenix police officers on a charge of disorderly conduct at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. She had become enraged after missing a connecting flight to Tucson, and they put her in an airport holding cell. Within a few minutes, she had strangled herself and was dead.

It later came out that she was a disturbed individual, who was actually on her way to Tucson to enter an alcohol treatment facility. Her husband, upon learning that his wife was in police custody, called and urged police to check on her, informing them that she was 'suicidal'. But he called after she had already been dead for an hour.

What made this case unusual is that her family is politically powerful and well-connected in New York City. Her mother in law is reputedly second in line for the mayor's office. People get arrested for disorderly conduct in airports all the time (see Larry Craig.) However her family has the financial and political muscle to fight back, and they are. They are suing for $8 million, to be precise.

(CNN) -- The family of a woman who died last year while in police custody at Phoenix, Arizona's, Sky Harbor International Airport filed an $8 million claim Wednesday against the city of Phoenix and its police department, the first step in filing a wrongful death suit.

Carol Gotbaum, a 45-year-old mother of three from New York traveling to Tucson, Arizona, to enter an alcohol rehabilitation center, was taken into custody by Phoenix police on September 28 after she missed her connecting flight and flew into a rage.

She was left alone in a holding cell at the airport and subsequently died, accidentally strangling herself while trying to escape her handcuffs.

The claim accuses the Police Department of using "excessive and unreasonable force" on Gotbaum and failing to follow its own procedures in handling people who are obviously disturbed.

"Good people here made lethal, unreasonable mistakes, with catastrophic results for Carol, her three small children and for her husband," the claim says.

Gotbaum was treated "as if she was a dangerous criminal, rather than as a sick, intoxicated and vulnerable person she was," it says. "She had no weapon and never threatened anyone."

City attorneys responded to the claim, saying that police officers acted properly and responsibly in restraining Gotbaum.

Certainly there is a good case that could be made here, but the truth is that when police make an arrest at an airport because someone is distraught, they have exactly that-- a distraught individual (and often an intoxicated, distraught individual, as Mrs. Gotbaum was.) There are many, many reasons why people can be upset, at an airport or anyplace else (and the simple act of getting arrested itself is likely to increase stress levels in most people, especially if they've never been arrested before), but when police make an arrest they follow procedure (which does include taking standard measures to prevent someone from hurting themselves). Carol Gotbaum was clearly at a much higher risk of that kind of thing, but there was no reason why Phoenix police would know that.

To be honest, I have one question. Flying is known to be a very stressful act (we aren't in the 'Fly the friendly skies' era anymore, thanks to airline deregulation which has placed a premium on the packing and delivery of people as cargo and has de-emphasized an enjoyable flying experience.) Things like missing flights, as well as missing luggage, getting 'bumped' off a flight, spending hours in a cramped position, flight delays and cancellations and other stressful things happen all the time. If Carol Gotbaum was in such a fragile mental state, why did not the family assign someone (or even hire someone) to accompany her and make sure she got to the treatment facility? Heck, if she had an alcohol problem she required treatment for in a place thousands of miles from home then why would they let her get on a flight unattended? She is known to have consumed alcohol on the flight she got off of, and the story I linked to describes her as 'intoxicated.' Alcohol, which she certainly had access to in the air, is known to be fuel for the kind of volatile situations like the one she was involved in.

I feel for her husband and her family, but I feel that they are as much (or more) to blame for her death as is the Phoenix police department.

It's not my job to enforce the smoking ordinance.

Yesterday, Arizona officially became 'smoke free' in most public buildings (except for tobacco shops, private veterans or fraternal organizations, and some bars and restaurants with outdoor patios where smoking will be permitted.) By law, the ordinance does not extend onto reservations (so likely some reservations will do what cities around Tempe did when it passed a similar ordinance and become a haven for smoker-friendly bars and restaurants.)

The proposition to do this was passed by the voters with more than 70% of the vote back in November, so businesses have had half a year to prepare. I do understand that businesses don't like being forced to do something that might adversely affect their business (as the Tempe ordinance did in fact put some Tempe businesses out of business, so clearly bars and restaurants near a reservation will have to sweat things out) but the half a year gave them time to in most cases make provisions, such as remodeling to create a sealed off outdoor patio if smokers are a major part of their clientele.

For the most part the first day seemed to have gone well, with a few isolated problems (including a bar manager and patrons who openly flouted the law in an act of civil disobedience)

So I was reading the article on it in today's Arizona Republic linked here when I stopped at the following line:

"The people who think they are going to get away with it are nuts," [state health director Will] Humble said. "The reality is that just about every non-smoker who goes out in public is one of our inspectors."

There, I have a problem. It's true that I don't smoke and have no desire to be around it, and as such welcome the new law. However, I'm not a cop, and I'm not going to become part of the 'smoke police.' As long as somebody isn't being obnoxious about it, if I see an addict getting their drug fix then I'm just not inclined to go call the cops. They may need treatment, and if I know them well enough I may suggest it, but as a non-smoker I'm just not going to flip a gasket if someone lights a cigarette. And I certainly don't want Mr. Humble telling me that I'm "one of his inspectors." This has a vaguely sinister feel to it, reminiscent of societies like the former East Germany or Saddam Hussein's Iraq when people were encouraged to call the authorities to report even the smallest violation of the most trivial rule. That sort of thing led to a lot of mistrust and division within society, when a person couldn't even trust their own next door neighbor or family members, knowing that they might be an agent of the secret police.

Smokers are addicts who have a substance abuse problem. But they aren't evil people, or the enemy, and we shouldn't be treating them like they are.

By the way, has it hit anyone that apparently the state is now more worried about people smoking cigarettes than they are about people smoking marijuana? Granted, I think we should legalize pot for those who use it, but it is an interesting irony that if someone smoked a cigarette in public there is a hotline in place to report it and the police would be right there to fine whoever owns the property, but not if they smoked a joint.