{"id":651,"date":"2007-12-20T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=651"},"modified":"2007-12-20T23:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T23:26:00","slug":"sons-deeds-bite-huckabee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=651","title":{"rendered":"Son’s deeds bite Huckabee"},"content":{"rendered":"

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http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/78241<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/o:p><\/p>\n

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Pulaski County Sheriff-AP <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Dogged: An incident involving his son David could hurt
\nHuckabee<\/o:p><\/p>\n

CAMPAIGN 2008<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A Son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Past Deeds Come Back To Bite Huckabee<\/o:p><\/h1>\n

By Michael Isikoff<\/span> and Holly
\nBailey | NEWSWEEK<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Dec 24, 2007 Issue | Updated: 2:51  p.m. ET
\nDec 15, 2007<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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As Mike Huckabee<\/span><\/span><\/a>
\ngains in the polls, the former Arkansas<\/span><\/span><\/a> governor is finding that
\nhis record in office is getting more scrutiny. One issue likely to get
\nattention is his handling of a sensitive family matter: allegations that one of
\nhis sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp<\/span><\/span><\/a> in 1998. The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee<\/span><\/span><\/a>, then 17, from his job as a
\ncounselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark<\/span>. It also
\nprompted the local prosecuting attorney\u00e2\u20ac\u201d bombarded with complaints generated by
\na national animal-rights group<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto
\nwrite a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether
\nDavid and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state
\npolice never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey<\/span><\/span><\/a>, then the director of
\nArkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff
\nand personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the
\nlocal prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed
\nchief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s
\nintervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later,
\nhe was called into Huckabee’s office and fired. “I’ve lost confidence in
\nyour ability to do your job,” Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason
\nHuckabee cited was “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had
\nthat problem,” according to Bailey. “Without question, [Huckabee] was
\nmaking a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his
\nson,” says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little
\nRock<\/span>, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a
\n“courageous” and “very solid” professional.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Huckabee called Bailey’s account “totally untrue”
\nand described him as a “bitter” exemployee. “I asked him to resign
\nbecause he had so alienated the entire state police,” he said. “It
\nhad nothing to do with my son.” Brenda Turner, Huckabee’s then chief of
\nstaff, and Kevin Crass, the Huckabee family lawyer, also disputed Bailey’s
\naccount, although both acknowledged talking to him about the dog killing.
\n“I asked him, ‘Is it normal for the state police to \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 investigate
\nsomething that happened at a Boy Scout camp?’ ” Turner says. “We
\nwanted the same treatment that anybody else would get.” (Animal cruelty in
\nArkansas<\/span> is a misdemeanor, not a felony.)<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The details of the incident remain murky. The Animal Legal
\nDefense Fund got an anonymous fax that summer alleging that David Huckabee and
\nanother youth had been involved in the hanging of a stray dog at the camp on
\nJuly 11. A local animal-rights activist, Joyce Hillard, later contacted the
\ncamp director. Notes of Hillard’s report to the defense fund read, “Boys
\nconfessed & were fired. Dir. is making excuses, saying dog was sic &
\nboys were putting him out of his misery.” (The director told NEWSWEEK only
\nthat a stray dog was “put down” and that the counselors were fired
\nfor violating the Scout credo to be “kind.”) The father of the other
\ncounselor was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in August 1998 as saying
\nthat his son found the dog “hung over a limb and choking.” David
\nHuckabee did not respond to requests for comment. (In April of this year, he
\nwas arrested\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand paid a fine\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhen he forgot to remove a loaded gun from his
\ncarry-on luggage at Little Rock airport<\/span>.) His
\nfather told NEWSWEEK that his son did not engage in “intentional
\ntorture.” “There was a dog that apparently had mange and was
\nabsolutely, I guess, emaciated.” A campaign official says David
\n“regrets” the incident and notes that he later made Eagle Scout.<\/o:p><\/p>\n


\n

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\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/78241 Pulaski County Sheriff-AP Dogged: An incident involving his son David could hurt Huckabee CAMPAIGN 2008 A Son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Past Deeds Come Back To Bite Huckabee By Michael Isikoff and Holly Bailey | NEWSWEEK Dec 24, 2007 Issue | Updated: 2:51  p.m. ET Dec 15, 2007       As Mike Huckabee gains in the polls, the former … Continue reading Son’s deeds bite Huckabee<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huckabee-shameful-record"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}