by Bob Barr
as published on The Conservatives.com

From the Tiger Woods mansion in Windermere, Florida to the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capitol; and from the coffee shop near Seattle, Washington where four police officer were savagely gunned down over the past weekend, to the Little Rock-based website of former Arkansas Governor Mick Huckabee, legal questions have dominated the nation’s news in the post-Thanksgiving period. Everything else will have to wait.

The momentous question about how many more billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of US military personnel will be poured into Afghanistan, has at least temporarily taken a back seat to questions about Tiger’s driving abilities and his marital bliss. The trillion-dollar health care legislation pending in the US Senate is less important this week than questions about what Huckabee knew and when did he know it, about an alleged cop killer who was released prematurely from state prison at Huckabee’s directive. And, regardless of what happens elsewhere in the world, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will likely have to continue fielding questions about why a publicity-seeking couple managed to waltz into a state dinner at the White House, shake hands with the president and hug the vice president, all without ever having been invited to the event in the first place.

There are important legal and political lessons to be gleaned from each of these incidents.

The first, and clearly the most tragic of the Thanksgiving week’s incidents, involves the cold-blooded murder of four uniformed police officers sitting at a coffee shop just outside Seattle, Washington. Unfortunately for former Arkansas Governor and likely future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, there is a direct link from the hand of the apparent shooter, Maurice Clemmons, to the pen of the former governor. Although the link – a clemency order – between Clemmons and Huckabee is nine years old, the damage it has visited on Huckabee is both immediate and lasting. And while many governors of many states, and many presidents of both major parties, have been bitten after the fact by those to whom they granted clemency who later turned out to be unworthy of such benevolence, this case involving Huckabee is not one that can be sloughed off as unforeseeable.

At the time he received clemency in 2000, Clemmons was serving a 60-year sentence and possessed a criminal record well-known to the prosecutors who counseled Huckabee to deny the request. Victims of Clemmons’ criminal acts also urged Huckabee to deny the favored treatment he wound up receiving. Although Clemmons left Arkansas four years later (after having been re-incarcerated in that state) for the Pacific Northwest, he continued to behave erratically and violently, and was in fact out on bond at the time of last Sunday’s multiple murders. The charges currently pending against him included second-degree rape of a child. A local prosecutor had Clemmons evaluated for mental competency, but a psychologist early in November found him “competent” -competent to commit mass murder, perhaps.

While there is plenty of blame to go around in Washington state for the lenient and irresponsible manner in which a man already proven to be violent and probably mentally unstable, was allowed to remain at large, the signature of Mike Huckabee on a clemency order nine years ago, will continue to reverberate politically and cause serious damage to his presidential aspirations.

The lesson here? Think long and hard before granting clemency to a man serving a 60-year sentence for crimes of violence; especially when your own prosecutors, along with the victims of the criminal acts perpetrated by the clemency-seeker strongly oppose clemency.

Last week, a well-coiffed couple walked up to the White House at the start of an evening’s activities in honor of visiting Indian Premier Singh, bluffed their way past Secret Service officers and presidential protocol personnel, hugged Vice President Joe Biden, and shook hands with the president himself. Tareq and Michaele Salahi accomplished this breach of presidential security even though their names appeared on no White House or Secret Service guest list.

Member of Congress, including Senators Jon Kyle (R-AZ) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) lashed out at the brazen publicity hounds, clamoring for their prosecution by federal authorities. Bayh equated their behavior to that of the infamous “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid. Such hyperbole aside, the breach of security is quite serious, though perhaps not as serious as some would have us believe; after all, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Salahi had weapons on their persons.

Still, there is a lesson here – if you are a White House employee or a Secret Service agent detailed to the White House, and a man and a women demand access to the president and the vice president at a state dinner, do not let them in without making sure they are cleared to enter.

Finally, despite the titillating stories and rumors surrounding the single-vehicle accident involving golfing great Tiger Woods outside his mansion in Florida early last Friday morning, and notwithstanding any damage to his professional or business endeavors, there is a critical lesson here for Woods and for other persons who have caught the eye of law enforcement and who officers wish to interview -don’t.

Florida law enforcement authorities have every right to investigate the circumstances of Woods’ accident and its immediate aftermath (when his wife apparently bashed out the window of the Cadillac SUV he was driving); after all, he collided with a municipal fire hydrant and crashed into a tree on someone else’s property. However, Woods has no obligation to assist police in their effort to establish that he might have violated the law. In fact, he has good reason not to do so.

The legal landscape is strewn with people who decided they were bright enough to attempt to talk their way out of having charges brought against them, and who were then rewarded with indictments for obstructing justice or misleading the authorities. If there is any doubt in Tiger Woods’ mind, he might want to place a quick call to Martha Stewart.