Huckabee - more to confirm Brantley's report

My previous post about Mike Huckabee was mostly based on the reporting by Arkansas reporter Max Brantley in Salon. Brantley describes a man who has few ethics, a real imagination about how to use his power as governor of Arkansas to line his own pocket, and little proof that he is much of an executive. Here is confirmation of Brantley's reporting and some additional information about his wife that is similarly not all that flattering.

Check out these confirming reports:

• Huckabee goofs may not bode well for 2008 from MSNBC. Here is a part:

  Huckabee said he doesn't see any ethical problems with accepting the gifts, which are allowed as long as they are worth less than $100 - unless based on a "bona fide personal, professional or business relationship."
  
  Politics
  Click here to share your thoughts on political matters, including the presidential campaign, fundraising, the Iraq war, immigration and a potential international conflicts.
  
  Gifts to spouses are allowed if not used to bypass the law. Wedding gifts are allowed, too.
  
  Huckabee said the gift registries were set up under "weddings" because Target and the Dillard's department store did not have a registry for housewarmings.
  
  Ethics Complaints
  The state Ethics Commission has investigated 14 complaints against Huckabee and validated five. Two pertain to unreported gifts - a $500 canoe and a $200 stadium blanket - and three to cash the governor or his wife received but did not initially report:
  
  * $43,150 from his 1994 lieutenant governor's campaign for use of his personal airplane,
  * $14,000 Janet Huckabee received from his 1992 U.S. Senate campaign, and
  * $23,500 from a tax-exempt organization he incorporated with others in 1994, but whose funding source isn't known. The Action America organization, Huckabee said, was set up to coordinate parts of his private-sector speaking schedule during his three years as lieutenant governor.

  
  
• Slush fund - Huckabee tapped mansion acount for himself.
  Huckabee was caught using the state fund to maintain the governor's mansion for personal expenses for himself and his family.
• Then the American Spectator writes:

  Ask lots of folks in Arkansas, including Republicans, and a fair number will probably tell you that Huck is for Huck is for Huck. National media folks like David Brooks, dealing in surface appearances only, rave about what a nice guy Huckabee is, and a moral exemplar to boot. If they only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics. [Snip]
  
  Once, Gov. Huckabee even had the gall to file suit against the state ethics commission. He lost.
  
  Fourteen times, the ethics commission -- a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group -- investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And, as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at any real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way.
  
  He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor's mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a "charitable" organization he set up while lieutenant governor -- an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious "charity."
  
  Huckabee has been criticized, reasonably so, for misusing the state airplane for personal reasons. And he and his wife, Janet, actually set up a "wedding gift registry" (they had already been married for years) to which people could donate as the Huckabees left the governorship, in order to furnish their new $525,000 home.
  
  According to the Arkansas News Bureau (Feb. 1, 2003), "Huckabee's personal lawyer, Kevin Crass of Little Rock, has said Huckabee believes there should be no limit on gifts short of a bribe." After all, said Janet Huckabee, public officials like her husband should be automatically trusted: "Until you absolutely positively know that the man has outright lied to you, it should be enough that the man's word is that everything was done appropriately, legally, to the best of his knowledge to the letter of the law."
  
  Of course, her reasoning refutes itself: If one is precluded from even questioning "the man's word," how can one possibly find out in the first place whether the official "has outright lied to you"?

So Huckabee is apparently an ethically challenged individual with a large desire to line his own pockets. He also has not demonstrated any real executive ability.

But he looks and sounds good on TV. And he is from Arkansas, like a previous President, without that nasty disability of being a (shudder) Democrat! In the absence of an anointed Republican candidate, what more could the corporate media ask for as a potential President? They papered over or ignored Bush's excessive alcohol and drug use before age 40, his going AWOL from the Air National Guard, his failed businesses, his incompetence in the weakest governorship in the U.S. and his DWI conviction. Surely they can do the same for Huckabee (even if they can't for Giuliani.) But things have changed since 2000. Many more of us have Internet access.

The information reported her MIGHT reach the corporate D.C. based media before they make fools of themselves pumping up the religious grifter, Huckabee.

Oh, wait. It's too late for that, isn't it.