Huckster, Mike Huckabee,  another family values Repblican,  is hoping you never look in his closet because there's a Willie Horton hiding in there. Read the following interview with Arkansas columnist Gene Lyons.

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BUZZFLASH: Tell us a bit about GOP Arkansas Governor Huckabee in his pardoning of a guy named Wayne Dumond.

GENE LYONS: Dumond was convicted of raping a young 16 year-old girl who had the misfortune of being a distant cousin of Bill Clinton's. And for that reason, the right-wing became obsessed with the idea that Dumond was framed. What made the case front page news was that in between his arrest and his conviction, somebody castrated him. Actually, the state police think he did it himself, apparently not as uncommon as you'd think - and the local sheriff, infamous for tolerating illegal gambling and bootlegging in his country, kept Dumond's testicles in a formaldehyde jar on his desk. It's grotesque. Things like that happen, and you feel like you're living in the Middle Ages. Or a Flannery O'Connor tale anyway.

BUZZFLASH: Wasn't, Huckabee lobbied to argue for Dumond's commutation? Eventually Dumond was commuted, then Dumond went out and killed someone, right?

GENE LYONS: That's correct. He came into office promising to pardon him. It was then the girl's father and some law enforcement people said wait a minute now, you need to think about this more. The evidence in the case was very strong. The simplest way the prosecutor had of explaining it to me was this: What do you think the chances are that this little girl who was held at knifepoint for hours by this guy, then runs into him on the street weeks later after he had shaved his beard off, and she says "Oh my God that's him. There he is! That's the guy that did it!" What do you think the odds are she picked out a guy with a long list of assaults and sexual offenses just off the street? I mean, if you're going to portray him as an innocent flower, shouldn't you look at his rap sheet? Wouldn't that be one of the things that would influence your judgment on this case, Governor Huckabee? But he had never done that, and he never read the transcript of the trial.

BUZZFLASH: Well Dumond was subsequently freed and he killed someone else right?

GENE LYONS: He's been formally charged in one murder in Kansas City, and he's under suspicion in another one. He's going on trial pretty soon in Kansas City. Now ordinarily, that would have been the end of Huckabee.

BUZZFLASH: Well certainly a Democrat couldn't survive from something like that.

GENE LYONS: Huckabee's strategy was just to flat out lie about it. "Well, you know, I had nothing to do with that. That was somebody else's fault. It wasn't mine."

Amazingly, the newspaper that I WRITE for was going to let him get away with it. I just called the library and said would you please forward me all the stories from such and such a date. And I wrote a column about Huckabee'S stating he didn't have anything to do with commuting a rapist who went out and killed again. And then all off a sudden the news department started doing what they should have been doing a week or more earlier - comparing Huckabee's alibis to his earlier statements and actions. I'm not sure if they would have done that if I hadn't written that column.

If Huckabee was a Democrat, believe me, it would be the only news story in Arkansas. It would have already sucked the life out of the guy. He'd be finished. Can you imagine if Clinton had done something like that?