Some of you may already know that Huckabee wrote a letter of behalf of a convicted rapist. He denies that he was deeply involved, but the CBS report argues otherwise.

As [Bill] Clinton rose to national prominence, the case came to the attention of his critics. Journalists and talk show hosts questioned the victim's story and suggested that DuMond had been railroaded by the former governor. Steve Dunleavy, a New York Post columnist, took up the case as a cause, calling DuMond's conviction "a travesty of justice."....

When Huckabee became governor in 1996, he expressed doubts about DuMond's guilt and said he was considering commuting his sentence to time served. After the victim and her supporters protested, Huckabee decided against commutation. But in 1997, according to the Kansas City Star, Huckabee wrote a letter to DuMond saying "my desire is that you be released from prison." Less than a year later, DuMond was granted parole.

Huckabee's office denied that the governor played a role in the parole board's decision, but there was evidence (exhaustively detailed here) to contradict that claim.

Charles Chastain, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who was on the parole board at the time, told CBSNews.com the governor met with the board to argue on DuMond's behalf.

"He thought DuMond had gotten a raw deal," said Chastain, who calls himself neutral towards Huckabee. "He said he'd been born on the wrong side of the tracks and hadn't been treated all that fairly."

"I don't think the governor quite understood about parole proceedings," added Chastain. "I thought of the parole board as a quasi-judicial body that wouldn't be lobbied or otherwise interfered with by anyone outside of it, so I was a little bit surprised by it."

After the meeting, Chastain said, a number of the board members "switched their vote" from the previous year, and DuMond was paroled.

This passage does not tell you the whole story. Here is the kicker.

In 1985, DuMond was convicted of the rape of a 17-year-old girl with a connection to then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton: She was the governor's distant cousin and the daughter of a major campaign contributor.

And that is where Arivosis has some very good questions for Huck.

Huckabee basically helped secure the guy's release because the convict had raped a distant relative of Bill Clinton - and being a distant relative of Bill Clinton, the right-wing attack machine said the woman who was raped wasn't credible (even though the guy was convicted), and they demanded that the rapist be set free because, after all, he only raped a Clinton. Well, it seems that Governor Huckabee agreed. He set the rapist free, and then the guy molested and murdered another woman. But even better? Huckabee now denies that he had anything to do with the release of the rapist/murderer. Funny, then why did Huckabee meet with the parole board on behalf of the rapist/murderer?

One can try to argue that it is a stretch to say that Huckabee deliberately set out to help the man who committed a violent act on Clinton's family. But I remember those days well. I remember the things they said and did. And it is not at all difficult for me that Huckabee would help them in any way he could, even if another person was harmed in the process. Remember, It's OK If You Are a Republican.